6. Classroom interaction and learning opportunities across time and space

Our data for this chapter comprises recordings of 12 advanced adult language learners within a single English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom as they work collaboratively over repeated cycles of teacher fronted and related group work tasks. Our interest is in classroom interactions as they evolve across time and in both public and private spaces. As such, our approach owes much to recent ecological accounts of the role of interaction, emphasizing the complex and situated nature of learning (van Lier 2004). In doing so, we wish to pick up on aspects of classroom interaction that are missed in more taxonomic approaches to interaction analysis, but which are nevertheless important components of how classroom interaction contributes to learning.