Teachers' reaction to silence and teachers' wait time in video and audioconferencing English lessons: Do webcams make a difference?

This study uses Conversation Analysis to compare lessons conducted by the same teacher-student dyads in audio and videoconferencing. The findings show distinct differences in teachers' treatment of silence and teachers' and students' pausing behaviour in video and audioconferencing. Specifically, teachers tended to wait longer in videoconferencing and took the conversational floor faster in audioconferencing, thus leading to a higher number of overlaps with students' emergent turns. This suggests that teachers need to be trained for conducting lessons via audio and video conferencing, and that teachers and teacher trainers need to identify specific pedagogical behaviours for each of these contexts.