Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson [1] stated that “the organization of taking turns to talk is
fundamental to conversation, as well as to other speech-exchange systems.” Since these scholars
developed a systematic mechanism of turn-taking in English conversations in 1974, much research
has been conducted on the field and turn-taking has become a central issue in pragmatics and
conversation analysis. Under the scope of conversation analysis, this study was conducted to
discuss the turn-taking mechanism in general and the turn-taking strategies in particular in casual
Vietnamese conversations. Video ethnography and stimulated recall were applied to collect data
for analysis, with which a system of turn-taking signals in Vietnamese conversations were
developed. The system included both verbal and non-verbal signals, namely adjacency pairs, name
nomination, appositionals, recompleters, overlaps, syntactic cues, prosodies, pause, gaze directions,
head movement, kinesics, and postures. These strategies were, then, compared and contrasted to
those applied by the English speakers to detect any patterns that stand out. On the whole, many
strategies applied in the two languages are identical; whilst differences were spotted in the use of
prosodies, pause between turns, lexicons, and overlap in the two languages. With such findings,
implications for teaching English in Vietnam are discussed to wind up the study.
