Developing Interactional Competence in the Era of ChatGPT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66947/pasaa.v74i1.4009Keywords:
conversation analysis, AI, ChatGPT, interactional competence, language teaching, language learning, teaching speaking, learning speakingAbstract
The advent of ChatGPT has redrawn the boundary of pedagogical
discourse, where the dyadic configuration of teacher-student has, for
many, become triadic -- one that includes AI as a relevant third party.
Within applied linguistics, AI-focused research has predominantly
targeted the teaching and learning of writing (Fang & Han, 2025). The
work on AI and speaking, on the other hand, has largely involved
perception studies documenting its positive impact on learners’
willingness to communicate (Goh & Aryadoust, 2025). In this paper, I
explore the role of AI in the teaching and learning of speaking, and in
particular, the development of interactional competence. Based on a
corpus of 30 learner-AI interactions and 30 learner-proficient speaker of
English interactions beginning with a single prompt, I demonstrate the
ways in which ChatGPT excels and fails at acting as a useful conversation
partner in developing the learners’ interactional competence. I end with a
discussion on the usefulness of CA in grounding our pedagogical
appraisals of new technologies as well as ways in which language teachers
can leverage ChatGPT to advance their goal of developing learners’
interactional competence.
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