"Well if we're wrong it's your fault": Negotiating participation in the EFL classroom

This micro-longitudinal conversation analytic study investigates how a group of 7th grade students in Sweden negotiates participation frameworks in EFL group work. The analysis follows the changes in participation of one student, Emma, during a collaborative vocabulary quiz used to test a homework assignment. At first, Emma's participation in the task is limited and her contributions are questioned by the group members. As the activity progresses, though, Emma increasingly volunteers relevant answers and her coparticipants progressively orient to her as a knowledgeable and legitimate participant. We document the interactional means by which the students in the group enable and restrain participation in the task, and we relate these to the local physical/spatial and organizational affordances of the institutional setting. The study demonstrates how the right to active participation is negotiated on a moment-by-moment basis in and through interaction in the embodied ecology of the language classroom.