Videoconference interaction is one of the most popular interactive modalities of the 21st Century and this modality is also very extended within the University context. In Sweden, for example, the number of online courses increases continously and it is a fact that online teaching still carries several challenges. In the case of online language teaching the practice of spoken language continues being considered one of these main challenges, in part due to a lack of description of the conversational patterns through videoconference (Santos Muñoz, 2016).
In the present paper I focus on the description of the checking sequence of audio and video channels (SCH). Within videoconference, the SCH sequence appears systematically at the beginning of the conversation, presenting both similarities and notable differences with the traditional greeting sequence and summons sequence in face-to-face modalities (Schegloff, 1968; Gallardo Paúls, 1993). Based on the analysis of examples of real interactions extracted from an audovisual corpus of meetings among sutdents of Spanish, I will show, firstly, how the SCH is mainly oriented to help with the development of the subsequent oral interaction among the participants; secondly I will show how in many occasions the SCH sequence becomes the first thematic sequence of the spoken conversation, a fact that may be relevant not only for the effective establishment of the conversation itself but also from a didactic perspective, because the way it is produced may affect the (in)adequate performance of the SCH sequence, and this in the end may have consequences affecting the (un)effectiveness of the subsequent interaction among the online students.