Leslie Huishan Li ^*

• University of Macau, Taipa, China

This project investigates how lower-level English language learners achieve and maintain intersubjectivity, and thereby move in between co-constructed framings during a specific type of context-embedded task: improvised role-play. In language education settings, activity-accompanying interactions often display multi-layered participant orientations rather than just linguistic-bound execution. From Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis perspectives, linguistic actions have effects only when intersubjectively understood as so: the more complex an activity becomes, the more intricate intersubjectivity is required for it to proceed fluently. A close examination of sequence development in role-play activities makes visible how intersubjectivity is maintained as interlocutors orient to aligning and affiliative moves to prevent potential problems and maximize mutual contribution. Interlocutors' advancing increments become intersubjectively sustained constituent of ongoing interaction framings only when co-developed by the other party involved. The analysis also concerns the influence of online communication medium, with consideration of the increasingly necessitated role of online teaching. Results further propose the need for a dynamic concept of 'framing' in replacement of 'frame', and that analyzing conversations should consider multi-layered contexts of surrounding activities.