Learner pragmatics at the discourse level: Staying “on topic” in a telecollaborative eTandem task

Data for the present study is drawn from Language LINC, a corpus of telecollaborative eTandem interactions. Methodologically, the present paper applies tools from conversation analysis (CA) in a sequentially sensitive analysis of the collection of announcements. In addition to a careful qualitative analysis of each case, a quantitative analysis is presented in order to uncover variation in the methods employed by the learners as opposed to the expert speakers. This mixed method approach is considered with respect to its place in the CA research tradition (Stivers, 2015) and its fit for analyses of authentic, consequential interactions in the interlanguage pragmatic tradition.