Abstract

This study examines how face is protected for smoothly conducting English classes and building good relationships among class teachers (CTs), native English teachers (NETs), and students in EFL classes in an elementary school in Japan. In this study, interactions among the CTs, the NETs, and the students in English lessons were recorded for about 50 hours in total, and the transcribed data were analyzed partially on the basis of existing research on classroom discourse, conversation, and classroom-based conversation analytic approaches. The results show that the CTs, the NETs, and the students manage an irregular usage of Japanese by the NETs and of English by the CTs and the students in EFL classrooms by protecting interlocutors’ face in various ways, such as indirect repair and silence.

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