Language education via audio/videoconferencing (LEVAC): A discursive investigation

• Private online language tutoring is rapidly growing in popularity.
• There is a dearth of research on pedagogies of private online tutors.
• Analysis of different ‘long-term’ teacher–student dyads shows a consistent pattern.
• Lessons are based on recursive every-day interviewing sequences.
• It is alarming that students perform limited discursive functions.

The study seeks to identify discursive patterns of private online English lessons, perceived as satisfying by adult language learners from Russia. The analysis shows a stable discursive structure with asymmetrical role distribution between teachers and students. The study also shows that most language produced during the lessons was relatively simple and covered everyday topics. The dataset provides illustrations of two medium-specific characteristics of this learning environment: (i) the use of emoticons to complement speaking and (ii) interruptions from external users. The study raises questions regarding the use of teaching materials in private online teaching context, the learning outcomes of the identified curriculum genre and an apparent difference in pedagogic behaviour of native and non-native English tutors in relation to grammar error correction. The findings of this study will be of interest to a wide range of English-teaching stakeholders, including teachers, teacher-trainers and educational developers.