Seyed Mohammad Alavi; Baqer Yaqubi; Mostafa Pourhaji
Volume 8, Issue 18 , December 2016, , Pages 1-18
Abstract
The prevailing pattern of classroom interaction is a tripartite exchange structure known as IRF (teacher initiation, student response, teacher follow-up/feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Although it has its own contributions to classroom discourse, it has been criticized on several grounds, ...
Read More
The prevailing pattern of classroom interaction is a tripartite exchange structure known as IRF (teacher initiation, student response, teacher follow-up/feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). Although it has its own contributions to classroom discourse, it has been criticized on several grounds, particularly for affording minimum learner participation opportunities (Kasper, 2001). An alternative practice has been promoting learner initiation and agency through moving out-of-IRF. However, when the form of interaction is teacher-fronted, IRF becomes the centerpiece and moving out of it tends to be difficult. This paper aims at exploring first what learners need to take initiatives and exercise agency in teacher-fronted interaction, and second how teachers can play a facilitative role in this process. Conversation analytic study of an EFL teacher’s naturally-occurring interaction with learners during a homework review activity demonstrates how the teacher’s extended wait-time practice affords a learner the interactional space needed to initiate a question and voice her locus of trouble. Moreover, the teacher's consistent extended wait-time practice after the learner’s initiation functions as an invitation bid for other learners to orient to the trouble and successfully negotiate it in their learner-learner interaction. Extracts of this study portray learners’ management to drive their own learning.
Mostafa Pourhaji; Seyed Mohammad Alavi
Volume 7, Issue 15 , May 2015, , Pages 93-123
Abstract
This study aims at empirically furthering awareness of the organization of interaction in EFL classes. Informed by the methodological framework of conversation analysis, it draws upon a corpus of 52 three-hour naturally-occurring classroom interaction to identify classroom interactional contexts based ...
Read More
This study aims at empirically furthering awareness of the organization of interaction in EFL classes. Informed by the methodological framework of conversation analysis, it draws upon a corpus of 52 three-hour naturally-occurring classroom interaction to identify classroom interactional contexts based on the structuring of the pedagogic goals in turn-taking sequences. Conversation analytic procedures were then paired with quantitative procedures to explore the distribution of the identified contexts within the macro-context of classroom discourse and to investigate the effect of interaction-external factors, i.e., teachers’ training and learners’ levels of language proficiency, on the distribution of the identified contexts. Analyses of extracts from the transcribed data led to the emergence of four interactional contexts: form-oriented, meaning-oriented, skill-oriented, and management-oriented contexts. As to their distribution, form-oriented and skill-oriented contexts were found to be constitutive of the bulk of interaction, with meaning-oriented context comprising the smallest proportion. A two-way multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the distribution of all identified contexts was significantly affected by learners’ levels of language proficiency. Teachers’ training had a significant main effect on just form-oriented and management-oriented contexts. The findings of this study draw teachers and teacher educators’ attention to the necessity of a change in the status quo of EFL classroom interaction.
Baqer Yaqubi; Sediqeh Karimpour
Volume 5, Issue 12 , December 2013, , Pages 109-134
Abstract
Teacher questions are claimed to be constitutive of classroom interaction because of their crucial role both in the construction of knowledge and the organization of classroom proceedings (Dalton Puffer, 2007). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering ...
Read More
Teacher questions are claimed to be constitutive of classroom interaction because of their crucial role both in the construction of knowledge and the organization of classroom proceedings (Dalton Puffer, 2007). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering different question types believed to be helpful in creating the opportunities for learners’ interactions. Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL teachers manage understanding-check questions in their talk-in-interaction. For this purpose, six EFL teachers’ discursive classroom practices were observed, video-recorded, and transcribed line-by-line in its entirety. Through the microanalysis of the transcribed data, our findings suggest that EFL teachers vary in their management of understanding-check questions and the teachers’ understanding-check questions tend to serve different functions in the different micro-contexts identified. Three major sequential environments emerged to feature understanding-check questions in this study: Activity-boundary environment, post-instruction environment and within-activity environment. The findings of the study indicate that understanding-check questions at activity boundary environment are designed to accomplish dual functions, however those launched in post-instruction and within-activity environments maintain a singular focus on ensuring absolute understanding of the just-given explanation or instruction.
