Developing Interactional Competence

'Nguyen's book is one of the very few original contributions made by applied linguists to the debate over what constitutes learning. She reviews theories of cognitive and behavioral change, of the complementary roles of learners and teachers, and she queries the reluctance by some discourse analysts to even recognize the concept of learning. Out of this mass of conflicting claims and contradictory positions, Nguyen steps forward with a longitudinal analysis of the interactions of two novice pharmacists as they begin to exercise their professional skills in counseling patients. Do they learn? From every theoretical perspective they do. And what they learn is how to effectively counsel their patients: how to sequence their actions, how to manage topics, how to respond to their patients' concerns, how to make their expertise accessible to their patients, and how to share their patients' perspectives. Through her insightful analysis of learning in these interactions, Nguyen makes an important contribution to the learning debate and provides valuable advice for professional trainers.' - Richard F. Young, Professor in English Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, University of Wisconsin-Madison

'This significant book applies conversation analysis (CA) uniquely to the consultation process between patients and pharmacists. Although schools of pharmacy have long embraced and taught pharmacy students to provide patient-centered consultation, repeated studies have documented that community pharmacists rarely ask patients open ended questions, tailor their consultations to patients or engage patients effectively to monitor the adverse and efficacious effects of regimens at refill times. Pharmacy schools can learn a great deal from CA's micro-analytic skills as modeled here to identify key elements in the sequence that hinder or facilitate meaningful exchanges between patients and pharmacists. Uniquely the book tracks the growing skills of two novice pharmacists in a way never before presented in Pharmacy. We have much to learn from this careful study's research approach and findings in order to better train our students and evaluate their licensure readiness.' - Betty A. Chewning, Ph.D., F. AphA Professor in Social and Administrative Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison