There is a dearth of research on oral academic language use in seminar-type classes in higher education. Addressing this gap, this study focuses on working with international students speaking English as an additional language and their course instructors to explore spoken classroom interaction patterns in graduate-level seminar classes.
Canadian universities and colleges are increasingly characterized by a growing number of international students participating in higher education (Marshall et al., 2012). Accordingly, cross-cultural and multicultural interactions are becoming the norm in various postsecondary classroom settings. However, previous studies on discourse used in academia have been focused more on working with students speaking English as a native language (Mauranen, 2012) and exploring written aspects (e.g., research articles) compared to interactional oral language use in classrooms (Englander, 2009; Olinger, 2011). Addressing these gaps, this study focuses on working with international students speaking English as an additional language and their course instructors to examine patterns of interaction in graduate-level seminar-type classes in a Canadian university. My research questions are: 1) what are international students and their instructors' patterns of interaction in seminars? and 2) what are the roles of seminar instructors in their spoken interactions with international students? Using a sociocultural framework, this multiple case study (Yin, 2018) draws on community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and sociocultural theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Data were collected through interviews and classroom observations of two courses (Assessment and Evaluation and Multilingualism and Multiculturalism) for the duration of one term (12 weeks). Analyzing sequential interaction patterns of international students and their course instructors, this study shows that the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequence is the basic structure of spoken academic interactions in seminar classrooms which is in line with previous research (e.g., Basturkmen, 2002). Moreover, instructors utilized questions as a way of "scaffolding" (Vygotsky, 1978) students' understandings of course materials in student-teacher interactions. These two courses differed in that the instructor of the Multilingualism and Multiculturalism provided a combination of longer feedback and new questions to facilitate responses and give more prompts, while the instructor of Assessment and Evaluation provided shorter feedback to encourage students as they respond to her initial question. By exploring seminar interaction patterns of international students and their instructors, this research helps to further understand intercultural classroom discourse in higher education and contributes to supporting and assisting international students' active participation in classroom interactions.
