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This article uses conversation analysis (CA) to describe the structural properties of zones of interactional transition (ZITs) or talk that occurs at the boundaries of different classroom (and perhaps other institutionally oriented) speech exchange systems. Two types of ZIT are analyzed in detail. Counter question sequences (Markee, 1995) are interactions in which teachers, in order to regain control of the classroom agenda, insert counter question turns between the question and answer turns of question-answer-comment sequences initiated by learners. Tacticalfronting talk involves ambiguous or misleading claims made by learners to the teacher concerning precisely who is having trouble understanding problematic language. ZITs are loci of potential trouble, whose explication is of interest to both CA and second language acquisition researchers, and also to teachers and teacher trainers.

We use insights and methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis and discursive psychology to develop an account of embodied word and grammar searches as socially distributed planning practices. These practices, which were produced by three intermediate learners of Italian as a Foreign Language (IFL), occurred massively in natural data that were gathered during a 3‐week period from a third‐semester IFL course at a university in the United States. We develop a behavioral analysis of these data that shows: (1) what participants do during planning talk and how they do such talk and (2) whether they actually do what they planned to do.

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