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Investigating engagement response tokens in spoken narrative discourse

This paper reports the results of a recent project undertaken at a Midwestern university language programme to improve the methodology of teaching interactive listening skills and developing NNS students’ interactional competence. To document their current awareness and use of interactive listening skills, this study focuses on the analysis of response tokens used by NNS students in spoken narrative discourse. Response tokens are high‐frequency turn‐initial lexical items which occur in responses in everyday spoken genres, and which reveal various levels of the listener’s interactional engagement. In this study, the form and use of two kinds of engagement response tokens, surprise and assessment tokens, in NNS–NS and NS–NS interaction are examined. The findings of this study underline the need to raise students’ awareness of pragmalinguistic features of surprise and assessment tokens through explicit instruction.