Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Linguistics and Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/linged

Problematic directives in pedagogical interaction

Hansun Zhang Waring , Barbara L. Hruska 1
TESOL/AL Program, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th St., PO Box 66, New York, NY 10027, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 4 July 2012

Keywords:
Directives
Pedagogical interaction
ESOL
Pre-service and in-service teachers
Teacher education
Classroom research
Conversation analysis
Discourse analysis
Ethnography

a b s t r a c t
Directives are integral to teachers pedagogical repertoire, and their efcacy crucial to optimizing learning outcomes. Based on data from a videotaped tutoring session collected at an
after-school early literacy program, we describe the specic ways in which certain practices
of directives can hinder learner participation and compromise learning opportunities. The
analysis is done predominantly in the conversation analytic (CA) framework, and ethnographic details are utilized to contextualize, elaborate, and enrich the CA analysis. Findings
of this study contribute to the existing work on directives as well as that on teacher practices
in pedagogical interactions.
2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Directives are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something, such as questioning, inviting, suggesting,
requesting, advising, and the like (Searle, 1976). Such attempts, not surprisingly, are integral to teachers pedagogical repertoire, and their efcacy crucial to optimizing learning outcomes (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008;
Emmer, Evertson, & Anderson, 1980). For this paper, the directives we are interested in are those that demand information
and are typically implemented via questions (e.g., How do you spell manatee?). The ability to fashion such directives productively can be a challenge for novice teachers (Chilcoat, 1989; Duffy, Roehler, Meloth, & Vavrus, 1989). One difcult skill
for example, is asking ne-tuned elicitation questions that attend to learners emerging understandings (Echevarria et al.,
2008; Evertson & Emmer, 1982; Fisher et al., 1980; Wong & Waring, 2010, p. 268). In this paper, we describe the specic
ways in which certain practices of directives can incur difculty in learner understanding and thereby hinder learner participation and diminish learning opportunities. Our aim is to achieve a ner understanding of this important pedagogical
practice in hopes that greater awareness would lead to greater efcacy. Potential audiences for this work include preservice
and inservice teachers, teacher educators, classroom researchers, and conversation analysts.

1. Background
Two concepts are pivotal to our current inquiry: directive and learning opportunity. In what follows, we synthesize the
literature on each in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and various approaches to discourse analysis.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 212 678 3795; fax: +1 212 678 3428.
E-mail addresses: hz30@columbia.edu (H.Z. Waring), hruska@tc.edu (B.L. Hruska).
1
Tel.: +1 212 678 3795; fax: +1 212 678 3428.
0898-5898/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2012.06.002

290

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

1.1. Directives
Directives are considered a type of speech act that includes command, order, request, beg, invite, advice, etc. by philosophers of language (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1976). Some empirical work on directives yields taxonomies that outline the forms
of directives (e.g., need statements, imperatives, hints) and how such forms are systematically correlated with various
social and situational factors (Ervin-Tripp, 1976). As Goodwin (2006a) writes, [d]irectives may take alternative forms, and
make different claims about how the recipient is positioned with respect to them. Some directive formats suggest that the
addressee has complete control over whether the requested action will in fact be performed (p. 137). She found that during
the childrens game of jump rope, bald imperatives are expected in the midst of the activity while more indirect forms are
used at junctures of the play activity (Goodwin, 2006a, p. 137). In her study of physicians use of directives, West (1990)
found that male doctors use more aggravated forms of directives that stress status difference (e.g., imperatives) while female
doctors use more mitigated forms (e.g., proposals for joint action) and that the latter are more likely to secure patient compliance. By contrast, Goodwin (2006b) shows that girls routinely use aggravated forms of directives when they are positioned
as the experts of the jump rope activity.
Other studies have focused on what directives do in interaction. Particularly relevant for the present paper is previous
studies focusing on pedagogical interaction. In her work on how teacher directives in a Chinese heritage language school
contribute to language socialization, He (2000) categorizes the directives into instructional directives and disciplinary directives. Instructional directives are used to implement classroom procedures and teaching agendas and tend to be initiating
directives, and disciplinary directives are used to discipline students and often done in response to prior talk or behavior (He,
2000). Koshik (2010) shows how teachers use designedly incomplete utterances (DIUs) to elicit correction and alternative
questions to prompt the learner to self-correct. In sum, prior work on directives has offered important insights into how
directives are formulated, how that formulation varies across speakers, and what directives accomplish. The current study
contributes to this literature on directives by detailing certain specic features of directives that might incur difculties in
learner understandings.

1.2. Learning opportunities

Learning opportunities in pedagogical interaction refer to opportunities that allow new understandings to be negotiated
and implemented in assisted use (cf. Waring, in press). The connection between interaction and learning opportunities is
succinctly articulated by van Lier (1994): [w]e need to isolate those characteristics of interaction which provide opportunities for learning, and then see how they are embodied in the different kinds of interaction that we can identify (p. 72). After
detailing four types of pedagogical interactions that include transmission (delivery of information), recitation (IRF), transaction (information exchange), and transformation, where talk is jointly managed by all participants, van Lier (1994) suggests
that as one moves along a continuum from transmission toward transformation, opportunities for learning are likely to
be enhanced (p. 80). In his study of teacher talk and learning opportunities, Walsh (2002) claims that learning opportunities are facilitated when language use and pedagogical purpose coincide but missed when there is a signicant deviation
between language use and teaching goals at a given moment in a lesson (p. 5). For example, doing error-correction in a
minimal and straightforward manner would coincide with the pedagogical focus of uency and thereby facilitate learning
opportunities.
The connection between interaction and learning opportunities has also been envisioned via the mediating concept
of participation: if we assume that greater participation leads to greater learning, interaction that promotes participation
would also promote learning. This view is in consonance with the sociocultural perspective that conceptualizes learning
as increasing participation (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; Young & Miller, 2004). Various interactional practices have been
identied as promoting or blocking participation. Unnished TCUs (turn-constructional units) (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson,
1974), for example, are effective tools for eliciting learning participation in a bilingual third grade class (Lerner, 1995). In a
quiz game designed for review purposes in a high school classroom, teacher elicitation delivered in a particular prosody can
succeed in enhancing learners interest and participation (Hellermann, 2005). When teachers engage in identify shifts such
as positioning himself momentarily as a learner, classroom interaction can blossom into a full-edged discussion where
meaning is jointly explored by all participants (Richards, 2006). In her study of an academic foundations for success (AFS)
class created to bring students of different abilities together to explore how to be a successful high school student, Rex (2000)
shows how the teacher successfully achieves interactional inclusion using discourse moves of a sociocultural mediator. By
contrast, using a counter-question in response to learner questions raised during group work can transform the nature of
interaction from learner-directed to teacher directed, and thereby hinder participation (Markee, 1995). Participation may
also be curbed by bypassing a learner-initiated topic (He, 2004). Waring (2008) found that in certain contexts, the use of
explicit positive assessments (EPAs) can deliver the news of case closed and thus no further discussion warranted. Equally
obstructive is what she calls chained IRFs (Waring, 2009) where a series of IRFs are used consecutively to carry out an
instructional activity. In sum, prior work on learning opportunities has focused on the types of interaction, sometimes
mediated by the notion of participation, that facilitate or obstruct learning opportunities. The current study contributes
to this existing literature by describing another set of practices that can compromise participation, and thereby learning
opportunities.

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

291

2. Data and method

Data come from a videotaped tutoring session collected at an after-school early literacy program for kindergarten through
second grade ESOL (English to speakers of other languages) students. Mindy, the tutor, was an undergraduate elementary
education major. As a monolingual native English speaker in her early 20s, Mindy had no previous formal teaching experience
or training. Nora, the tutee, was a rst grade native Spanish speaker from Mexico with strong oral English prociency. She
was at a rst grade level in English literacy skills. While providing 60-min one-to-one tutorials twice a week for 10 weeks,
Mindy was concurrently enrolled in a required eldwork ESOL practicum course. She was trained in methods of early literacy
instruction for ESOL students and was required to follow a particular format although she was free to decide what and how
to teach. This is their sixth tutoring session together and the third formal lesson. The rst three lessons were devoted to
getting to know each other and conducting assessments.
Mindy was usually cheerful, creative, and willing to be exible although she always approached the tutorial sessions
with a prepared lesson plan as required by the program supervisor. Nora tended to be strong-willed and like to do things
her own way, but she was making consistent progress in literacy development and was usually engaged in Mindys lessons.
In the approximately 10-min interaction used for this paper, Mindy is trying to help Nora spell the word manatee, where
the focus of the lesson is on spelling words ending with ee. Spelling the word manatee was not in Mindys original
lesson plan. She added it at Noras request in order to maintain her interest as the latter had been previously engaged with
a manatee gurine used to introduce the lesson. In fact, Mindy had quite deftly transitioned Nora from activity to activity in
the rst part of the lesson, securing her cooperation and ongoing engagement by allowing Nora to have input and choice as
the lesson progressed (Waring & Hruska, 2011).
Although the analysis is done rst and foremost in the conversation analytic (CA) framework (see ten Have, 2007 for a
thorough introduction), ethnographic information is utilized to contextualize, elaborate, and enrich the CA analysis, and in
particular, it is used in our overall discussion of the implications of the ndings. Attempts to combine CA and ethnography
have long been an issue of much interest and debate (Fitch, 1998; Moerman, 1988; Nelson, 1994; Sanders, 1999; Waring,
Creider, Tarpey, & Black, in press). CA is an analytical tool designed to uncover the tacit methods and procedures of social
interaction by conducting detailed analysis of naturally occurring data transcribed from audio or video recordings (see
Appendix for transcription notations). Analysis begins with the meticulous inspection of single instances. The goal is to
uncover the meaning of interaction from the participants perspective, and this is done by close scrutiny of how each turn is
produced and received as evidenced in such minute details as pause, prosody, word choice, timing, sequential position and
the like. The application of CA to applied linguistics has gained some momentum since the beginning of this century (e.g.,
Markee, 2000; Seedhouse, 2004; Waring, 2011).
The line-by-line analysis yielded by an initial CA treatment was then considered from the vantage point of one author
who is intimately familiar with the study context. As the creator and supervisor of the program, she understood the program
intent, the school context, the developmental level of the students and student teachers, and the instructional materials.
As the course instructor, she was responsible for the initial and on-going training of the student teachers. She was always
on-site during lesson delivery and provided observational feedback on teaching as well as commentaries on written work.
In addition, she was able to draw from a broad educational context of 20 years of K-12 teaching and seven years of teacher
training. Such depth of experience is grounded in a synthesis of classroom-based eld notes of 300 preservice teachers
over 8 years of observation in two major US urban settings, thirty ve videotaped recordings of preservice teachers during
lessons, 100 videotaped post-observation conferences between preservice teachers and supervisors, and 300 preservice
teacher written lesson plans and lesson reections. Drawing upon this rich resource of ethnographic background brings
much breadth and depth to our understanding of the initial CA ndings.
3. Analysis
As we join Mindy and Nora in the data below, the smooth navigation that Mindy has achieved earlier in the lesson (Waring
& Hruska, 2011) begins to disintegrate. As shown in our earlier paper, when Nora made various s distracting moves such as
uttering silly sound strings, disengaging gaze, or producing whiney gestures and body movements, Mindy deployed a range
of resources including aligning with Noras world, maximizing Noras participation, and mitigating opposition in successfully
managing Noras resistance and accomplishing the transition from one lesson segment to the next. The analysis below shows,
on the other hand, that what initially appears to be Noras inability to understand questions or follow directions turns out
to be more of a problem of a different kindthe nature of Mindys directives. In what follows, we describe specic features
of such directives with regard to clarity and relevance. An initial CA analysis is followed up with an ethnographic account
addressed to the discussion of each feature.
3.1. Clarity of the directives
One clarity issue involves ambiguous reference or wording. In the following segment, Mindy and Nora have just nished
reviewing the words that end in ee, and Nora has demonstrated her competence in matching the gurines of tree, bee
and manatee with the actual words in a book. They each have a small whiteboard and marker for this task and a common

292

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

Fig. 1. Extract 1 Line 06.

eraser. They have begun to spell manatee letter by letter and have so far completed m-a-n-a-t with two more letters to
go (Note: B refers to board in the transcripts below):
(1)
01 Mindy:
02
03Nora:
04 Mindy:
05 Nora:
06 Mindy:
07
08 Nora:
09 Mindy:
10
11 Nora:
12 Mindy:
13 Nora:
14
15 Mindy:
16

{((picks up B and tilts to N direction)) mana:,

[{tee::?-((glances at Ns B and withdraws own))}
$[mhhmm[nnnnn]-((back to seat))$
[Okay,] wha[t did-]
[(yeh.)]
what did all {these- ((reaches for tree))}
[((picks up and repositions tree))}
[tre[e:::::::]
[letter-] what did they {end in.-((brings closer
green book with tree and bee and me))}
tree: -((looks to green book))
[How did they e:nd. ((points to book))]
[((N begins to look down and start writing))]
((writes while M looks))-(5.0)
How d- ho- okay so, write down
[the tree: the bee,]-((refers to book))

In line 04, Mindy begins a directive sequence with a wh question. She quickly comes to a cut-off and initiates self-repair
with the insertion of all, thereby switching the focus from manatee to ee words in general. The pronoun these in line
06 would thus refer to words such as tree or bee, but this word reference clashes with her nonverbal gesture of reaching
for tree the object (see Fig. 1), which is quickly repaired with a cut-off and letter, although, like tree the object, a letter
would not end in anything either. Another cut-off ensues as Mindy redoes the question in its entirety: what did they end in,
substituting letter with they and bringing closer the green book with the ee words. By the time this ve-word directive
is completed, it has undergone three self-repairs. In her attempt to ll the X slot of what did X end in then, Mindy goes
from what was mostly likely to be manatee to all these, to letter, and nally, they. That Nora is closely monitoring
these quick oscillations is in part captured in the frame below, where she brings her gaze to the tree precisely at the time
when Mindy reaches the tree, and she utters tree immediately thereafter in line 08. The multiple changes in a short
directive as well as Noras close monitoring of such changes may be creating obstacles to Noras efforts to comply.
That Nora indeed displays trouble understanding Mindys directive can be observed in the next few lines. By the time the
directive is heard in its entirely without a glitch, Nora responds with tree in line 11, which is clearly not a tted answer
to what did they end in, but with her gaze on the book, the repetition of tree may suggest that she is nally making the
connection that the teacher is referring to the actual words in the book, not the gurines on the desk. Still, Noras difculty
is further evidenced in Mindys attempt to rephrase her original directive in line 12 as well as Noras conduct of writing
tree rather than the ee ending sought by Mindy. (It is not clear from the video what Nora is writing exactly but inferable
from Mindys later uptake.) One might argue, as one reviewer points out, that Nora is responding to Mindys directive in
the best way she could, gathering from the latters nonverbal gestures that involves the gurine tree and the book with
the words tree and bee that Mindy may be asking her to write down these words. Note that either what did they end
in. or How did they e:nd. is designed in such a way that makes a wide range of unrelated answers potentially acceptable:
in happiness, quietly, with a comma etc. In other words, it is still not entirely clear what Mindy is after. Rather than
further pursuing a project that seems to have reached a dead end, however, Mindy temporarily shifts her agenda to build
on, rather than reject, the task that Nora has now initiated, i.e., writing down tree and bee.
Briey, in Excerpt 1, we have observed some lack of clarity in Mindys directive and Noras difculty in responding to that
directive in a way that aligns with Mindys goal despite her close attention and best efforts. Specically contributing to the

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

293

Fig. 2. Extract 2 Line 10.

problem are (1) the multiple self-repairs in a short question; (2) the conicting verbal and nonverbal referents for these;
(3) the question design that fails to adequately limit the range of acceptable answers.
The next segment contains another reference problem except that in this case the problematic item is not a pronoun but
a noun. Nora has just nished writing tree and bee on her board next to the unnished manatee. Mindys directive of
underline the similarities is given when Noras gaze is neither on Mindy nor on what she is pointing to on the board:
(2)
01 Nora:
02 Mindy:
03 Nora:
04 Mindy:
05 Nora:
06 Mindy:
07 Nora:
08
09 Mindy:
10 Nora:
11
12 Mindy:
13
14 Nora:
15 Mindy:
16 Nora:
17
18

((writes)) o:::h ((erases and nishes writing))

[Okay so underline the] [similarities.-((pen over words))]
[((looks to the green book))] [((moves to manatee on B)) ]
[W h a ts t h e sa
]=
[((turns to what M is pointing to))]
= [me in the word
] [tree: and bee.
]
[((back to manatee again))] [((turns to tree and bee))]
(0.2)
Un[derline it.
[((draws one long line under everything she wrote))(the le::tters?)
What letters. What letters {are the same in each word.((points successively to tree and bee))}
u:h
((draw line between manatee and the other words))
t:, t:, ((points to t in manatee and then in tree with pen))
{(1.0)-((looks to M))} e:, e:, -((points to e in bee and then tree))
((points shaky pen and closes in on manatee again))

Note that similarities without a post-modier such as between x and y is a rather vague characterization of what
Mindy is trying to elicit from Nora. As no immediate response is forthcoming from Nora, Mindy unpacks similarities into
Whats the same in the word tree and bee. (lines 04 and 06), which explicitly locates the two relevant words but produces
a new source of ambiguity: the question could mean either what letters the two words have in common or what letter is
repeated in each word. Meanwhile, Nora shifts her attention back and forth between the unnished manatee and the two
words Mindy is pointing to. After a brief gap in line 08, Mindy begins to repeat her imperative using the singular it for the
earlier plural similarities, further entangling the issue.
That Mindys directive is unclear to Nora is not only shown in her indiscriminating underlining (line 10) (see Fig. 2), when
she underlines all of the letters instead of the ee ending that Mindy was targeting, but also in her repair initiation the
letters? (line 11), and her difculty persists as Mindy reformulates the directive in line 12. As Nora gears up for answering
(line 14), Mindy draws a line separating the unnished manatee and the other ee words, suggesting that manatee is
not relevant here. Nora, on the other hand, starts to pick out similar letters across all three words: There is a t in manatee
and one in tree; theres an e in bee and one in tree! These are clearly not the response of ee Mindy has been seeking
all along. Again, Mindys directives here are not only produced as unfocused but also treated as such by Nora. Each of her
next attempts to pursue compliance generates a new source of difculty. What contributes to this confusion in part appears
to be the unspecied references (e.g., similarity with regard to what) or the conicting messages (e.g., singular it vs. plural
similarities).
The next extract illustrates a different kind of lack of clarity unrelated to vague wording, unspecied references, or
conicting messages. Prior to the segment, Mindy has drawn seven short lines on Noras board for her to write the seven
letters of manatee on, and the last two letters are yet to be spelled. To prompt Nora to nish, Mindy refers back to the title
of the book, in response to which Nora adds an extra blank and starts to write bee in the nal three spaces (lines 0110):

294

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

Fig. 3. Extract 3 Line 04.

(3)
01 Mindy:
02
03 Nora:
04 Mindy:
05
06 Nora:
07
08 Mindy:
09 Nora:
10 Mindy:
11 Nora:
12 Mindy:
13 Nora:
14 Mindy:
15
16
17
18
19 Nora:
20
21 Mindy:
22 Nora:
23 Mindy:
24
25
26 Nora:
27
28 Mindy:
29

((lines omitted)) do you remember what< two

letters those we:re?-((N looks down the whole time))
()?
((close mouth, gazes away from N, down to desk in frozen motion))-(0.8)
((reaches for book))
[O::::h-((prepares to write))
[{This is the title of our book.-((picks up book))}
[The tree the bee and me:]
[((adds one blank))
] ((writes b))
W[oo.
[((writes e-{e))-bee.}
ma:natabee?
ma:ntab[ee?
[Were looki:ng for ma:natee. {We- we
dont need that extra- letter.=I gave you enough
letters-((erases bee))} {to spell the wo:rd.
-((redraws the spaces))}
[>Look at- look at< the title of this book.
]
[((moves eraser aside and positions to write))]
((draws another space while M watches))=
=We dont need th[at.
[>Oh.<
((erases)) I gave you enough spaces. {((shows green
book))-Can you te::ll what they have in common.
= and what they end in.}
((draws three spaces on the next line)) Oh the: (0.5) the:
tree, ((draws one more space))
How does tree end.=Whats- where are the two
last letters.

That Noras response to Mindys initial elicitation in lines 0102 is not on target can be seen in what Mindy does both
nonverbally and verbally in the next few lines. Her looking away and down to the desk with her mouth closed in frozen
motion (instead of providing any feedback to Noras response) (see Fig. 3) appears to be a moment of re-strategizing, if you
will, the outcome of which is her reference back to the book in line 07. Note that as soon as Mindy reaches for the book, Nora
lets out a change of state token oh as she prepared to write (line 06). What she proceeds to do specically, however, is
adding an extra space and uses the three blanks for writing down bee a word from the book. As one reviewer points
out, she seems to understand that she needs to somehow spell bee with manat and goes as far as adding more space to
accommodate this goal. So, although for Mindy, calling attention to the ee words in the book is a step toward helping Nora
spelling the nal ee in manatee, this connection seems completely lost on Nora, who proceeds to treat the words in the
book now as the focus of her task. In other words, as Mindy directs Noras attention to the book in the service of spelling
manatee, the latter reinterprets her task as having now become the spelling of the words in the book. This tension between
manatee and the words in the book remains unresolved as Mindy continues to switch her focus between the two (lines
14 and 18), and Nora continues her attempts to spell the words in the book (lines 20, 2627).
As can be seen, what dissolves the focus of Mindys directive here is her pendulum swing, in her pursuit of a targeted
response, between the task at hand and what Nora appears to view as a different, unrelated undertaking. In other words, we
are speaking of the clarity issue from Noras perspective even though for Mindy perhaps, every move she makes is clearly
focused on helping Nora spell the nal two letters of manatee. One might therefore argue that had Mindy taken the time
to explain the reason for bringing in the book, Nora would have had an easier time focusing on the manatee task. In other
words, the relevance of the directive is left unexplained, which is the focus of our next section.

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

295

Before we move on, it is important to note that the above analysis may be elaborated in light of a number of ethnographic
insights. First, when Mindy drew seven blanks for the seven letters of manatee, it was an attempt to provide Nora with
a one-to-one correspondence cue (i.e., one letter for each line), which is a common spelling scaffolding technique. As such,
Noras later disregard for the seven lines, as evidenced in her adding of a line to accommodate b-e-e as the last three letters
that result in manatbee, displays her specic lack of understanding of the one-to-one correspondence. Second, as we have
seen, Mindys use of ambiguous pronouns is problematic for Nora. It is, in fact, common for English language learners to
become confused in such circumstances, and it is typical for novice teachers to be unaware of such confusion. Teachers
ramble on about he, she, it, they, these and those while students are left to sort out what is being referenced. The
difculty is compounded when the pronouns may occur in a different location in English than in their native language(s).
Often, teacher training texts suggest that teachers use proper nouns and nouns instead of pronouns for clarication when
working with ESOL students (Reiss, 2001), which would have claried Mindys directives. Third, novice teachers may not
realize that ESOL students cannot always tell the difference between movements that are scaffolding language, and those
that are extraneous to the words currently being uttered. When Mindy reaches for the tree and other gurines to group them
together (see Extract 1), for example, she is unaware that Nora is following her movements and attempting to associate them
with what Mindy is saying. It is often difcult for students to decipher what to attend to and what is important and relevant
to the teachers language and the task at hand. Such confusion as we observe in Extract 1 is also evident among other novice
teachers and their students in this context. Finally, throughout the exchanges, Mindy does not appear to understand that
her own ambiguous language is the source of Noras seemingly inappropriate responses. Her command that Nora focus
in Extract 3, for example, implies that the problem is Noras lack of attention rather than the nature of her own directives.
This, too, is typical of teachers at this level of development, who sometimes appear unable to think outside their own line
of reasoning or take the students perspectives.

3.2. Relevance of the directives

Aside from issues of clarity, directives can also become problematic when their relevance is left unexplained. Recall that
in Extract (1), Mindy produces multiple self-repairs in her formulation of what did they end in. Her initial switch from
the specic word manatee to ee words in general without an account, in fact, jumpstarted a 7-min long odyssey where
she encountered multiple difculties in getting Nora on board with her agenda. Throughout the process, Nora clearly does
not see the relevance of spelling tree and bee in helping her spell manatee, which appears to dampen her interest in
complying with any of Mindys directives related to tree or bee since her goal is to nish spelling manatee: she would
attend to the unnished manatee by pointing to it or bending to touch it with her pen. Immediately prior to the segment,
Nora has just nished drawing a long line across the board in response to Mindys directive Underline it. (see Extract 2
above). Mindy is now trying to get Nora to notice the ee ending common to tree and bee:
(4)
01 Mindy:
02 Nora:
03 Mindy:
04 Nora:
05
06
07 Mindy:
08 Nora:
09
10 Mindy:
11
12
13 Nora:
14
15 Mindy:
16
17 Nora:
18 Mindy:
19 Nora:

Wh-What letters are the same in each word.

u:h
((points/draw line between manatee and the other words?))
t:, t:, ((points to t in manatee and then in tree))
{(1.0)-((looks to M))} e:, e:,
((points shaky pen and closes in [on manatee again))
[So::[: both-]
[m:::::::]
((puts X on the unnished manatee))
Dont x that? Okay, were gonna focus. Where tree
is >spelled what-< what letters make up the word
[tree.
[((erases and stops))-manatee not the::re,
((more erasing))
[Were gonna work on ma>natee]
[were gonna< get there.]
[.HHHHH] O::[:::h-((looks down at B))]
[so- How dy spell.
] tree.

ma:nat(h)[e:: - ((heads for more erasing))]

Mindys directive in line 01 ts into her larger move, one that was unaccounted for, from manatee to the spelling of
other ee words in order to notice a pattern, and the relevance of the specic directive here is also left unaccounted for, i.e.,
no explanation is given for why the letters in tree are bee are being worked on. We have noted the ambiguous wording
in what letters are the same in line 01(Extract 2) and will not repeat that analysis here (lines 0105). What we would like
to highlight is that immediately after offering her responses, Nora closes in onto the unnished manatee again (as Mindy
tries to formulate an upshot or highlight the similarities between the words) and proceeds to cross it out. This is Noras
4th attempt to get back to manatee, but by crossing it out, she appears to be asserting her understanding that spelling
the manatee is now completely out of the picture and that whatever they are doing bears no connection to manatee
whatsoever. She is, therefore, engaging in the task as she understands it although it is no longer the one she is interested in.

296

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

Fig. 4. Extract 4 Line 13.

Noras conduct is treated by Mindy with disapproval and dismissed as unfocused as the latter presses on with her next
question that focuses specically on the spelling of tree. Note that Mindy has now gone from write down tree and bee,
to underline the similarities and to how do you spell tree. Before she even nishes the question, Nora starts erasing the
unnished manatee and pronounces it gone (line 13) (see Fig. 4). As shown, as Mindy presses on with her agenda, so does
Nora.
In line 15, Mindy again reassures Nora, as the latter does more erasing, that manatee has not been forgotten. As Mindy
begins her second turn-construction unit, Nora continues to play in her created world of the disappeared manatee by
displaying astonishment with the large inbreath and the extended o::::h. As shown, Mindy persists in her questioning
regarding the spelling of tree (line 18), to which Nora only responds with one nal sotto voce lament for the manatee as she
reaches for more erasing (line 19). Again, as Nora lets go of the manatee, she is also displaying her (mis)understanding of
what the task has now become. Thus, one might argue that she is complying with the directive as she understands it although
that understanding is not in line with what Mindy intends. As can be seen in this extract, the relevance of answering a question
about the letters in words such as tree and bee is not made explicit to Nora, and that absence of explanation seems to
play a crucial role in the directives failure to engage Nora in the way targeted by Mindy.
Another exemplar for not explaining the relevance of a directive can be found in the next extract, where Mindy asks Nora
to circle the ee in bee. Prior to the segment, Nora has just circled the ee in tree. Again, Mindys agenda appears to
be to help Nora recognize the double e pattern in certain words so that she would be able to nish spelling manatee, and
again, that line of thinking is not made clear to Nora:
(5)
01 Mindy:
02 Nora:
03 Mindy:
04 Nora:
05 Mindy:
06 Nora:
07 Mindy:
08 Nora:
09 Mindy:
10
11
12

an then- (0.5) is there an ee in bee?

((looks)) mm h[m-((nods))
[Circle it.
((circl[es))
[just the ee. -((points to B))
[((still circling))]
[((looks at N))- $ silly.]Theres nob in tree:.,$
[ye(hh)h.]-((smiles, looks at M, and sits back))
[Okay, s]o what- wo- >were trying to spell<
manatee ri::ght?-((N slides down as she looks down and closes pen))
(0.8)
How do we begin it. M::ma::na,

The point of discovering the ee pattern through circling so that she could eventually nish spelling manatee is not
one that Nora has registered. She over-circles bee despite her success in circling just the ee in tree. For Nora, it appears
to be circling for the sake of circling rather than identifying the double e endings. In line 09, Mindy has an opportunity to
explain the relevance of the just-completed circling task by, for example, highlighting ee as the common feature between
tree and bee and one shared by manatee as well. That opportunity is missed, however, as she abruptly brings the focus
back to manatee in lines 0910. That Nora is not registering any connection between her current task and manatee is
further evidenced in her lack of response (see 0.8 s gap in line 11) to Mindys elicitation. Nora seems to have completely lost
interest in manatee by that time, as shown her bodily gesture of sliding down as well as her downward gaze (see Fig. 5).
After the gap, and Mindy opts for current-speaker-continues (Sacks et al., 1974) in line 12. In other words, the absence of
account has not only made it difcult for Nora to carry out the immediate directive of circling ee but also disengaged her
from the larger task of spelling manatee.

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

297

Fig. 5. Extract 5 Line 10.

Fig. 6. Extract 6 Line 22.

The reader might be interested to know that Mindy, with great relief and celebration (see Fig. 6), did eventually succeed
in getting Nora to complete the spelling of manatee. And one might argue that this eventual success is in part a result of
the painstaking negotiations and multiple attempts of trial-and-error we have observed so far:
(6)
01 Mindy:
02
03 Nora:
04 Mindy:
05
06 Nora:
07 Mindy:
08 Nora:
09
10 Mindy:
11 Nora:
12 Mindy:
13 Nora:
14 Mindy:
15 Nora:
16 Mindy:
17 Nora:
18
((lines omitted))
19 Mindy:
20
21 Nora:
22 Mindy:
23
24 Nora:

How does tree end.=Whats- where are the two

last letters.
ee?=
=>What about-< bee.
(0.5)
uh bee.
>Wh- what two letters [that< end it.]
[e.
] e.-((points to
book))=
=>What do you think< manatee ends in.
((looks at own B))
Manatee.-((points to manatee picture in book))
((looks at book))-No:: (),
Theres- two letters at the end.
((knocks pen on desk))
Theyre the sa:me letters that [en[Oh oh oh,-((looks and
points at book))
its the sa:me ending as
the[::se-] -((points to book))
[t:]e e.[t e e-((staccato moves))
]
[A(hhhh)w!((throws head back))]
$yes.$ [Put it i::n.-((points to B))]
[hheh heh heh hhh
]

Note that Mindys wording for her directives has become much more focused at this time (two last letters as opposed
to how do they end) (lines 01 and 07), and Nora displays no difculty supplying the responses. In addition, the connection

298

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

between manatee and the other two ee words is nally made explicit (lines 1618), thereby rectifying the earlier absence
of account for degressing away from the spelling of manatee. Thus, we have a nice example of the speed with which
Nora makes the connections when the directions become clear.
Again, a number of ethnographic insights can grant us greater access to the nature of the conduct as described in the
above CA analysis. First, Noras behavior of sliding down in her chair (Extract 6) or putting her head down on the desk is a
form of disengagement evident in other sessions with Nora, and it is usually an attempt to close or shift the current lesson
focus established by Mindy. Second, launching a task without providing any account for it is, again, behavior typical of novice
teachers. They are often observed to be plunging into a lesson without offering any clear goal or rationale. They struggle with
forming and articulating clear lesson objectives and are not always able to clearly convey these objectives to their students,
leaving students either aimlessly meandering through tasks or completely in the dark as to what they are to be doing and
why.
4. Discussion
In this paper, we have shown how certain issues of clarity and relevance can render directives problematic and incur
understanding difculties in pedagogical interaction. A range of practices can reduce the clarity of a directive, such as
multiple self-repairs, unspecied references, conicting messages, question designs that fail to adequately limit the range of
acceptable answers or the quick alternation of foci in pursuit of a response. This quick alternation is particularly problematic
when it is not accounted for. As shown, this is another major issue in the manatee episode as Mindy made a quick switch
from the spelling of manatee to the spelling of other words that end in ee without making explicit the rationale for such
a switch, i.e., spelling tree and bee as an intermediate step toward nishing the spelling of manatee. Mindys agenda
appears to be helping Nora not just to nish spelling manatee but also recognizing the pattern of ee words, the objective on
her written lesson plan. Unfortunately, Mindys internal logic was never explicitly articulated or adequately communicated
to Nora, and that failure to explain the relevance of her directives creates major obstacles to Noras understanding of and
engagement in the task as intended by Mindy. We have also shown that what is analyzable as a problematic directive is
also treated by Nora as such. We have observed Noras lack of understanding or misunderstanding in her responses to the
directives despite her ne-grained attention and conscientious efforts. We have also caught a glimpse of her disengagement
after prolonged lack of understanding of the relevance of the task. Examples of Noras responses include: not recognizing
the signicance of the lines, attempting to write something on the lines even though it wasnt the target word, ignoring the
lines, erasing the lines, and then performing her own disappearing act by sliding down in the chair away from the lines, the
whiteboards, and manatees altogether.
We argue that Noras difculty in understanding as incurred by the problematic directives compromises the extent to
which she can participate in the pedagogical task as designed by Mindy, and by extension, diminishes what could otherwise
have been a more productive learning opportunity. Indeed, Nora did eventually learn to spell manatee, and what we
witness in the bigger picture is how Mindy and Nora work together over time to jointly accomplish the task successfully.
Based on our detailing of the specic practices that appear to have constituted obstacles to Noras understanding, however,
we suspect that the goal could have been achieved with greater efcacy and that the pedagogical resources could have
been expended more productively within the limited time frame of the tutoring session. When teacher directives manage
to perplex rather than illuminate, the opportunities that allow new understandings to be negotiated and implemented in
assisted use can be diminished, if not entirely missed.
What transpired between Mindy and Nora provides an example of why teacher training literature often cites the effectiveness of explicitly stating lesson goals or objectives (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Chilcoat, 1989; Fisher et al., 1980; Rosenshine,
1987) with special emphasis for teachers working with ESOL students (Echevarria et al., 2008). When students do not know
what they are supposed to be doing or why, they can be constructing their own agendas in an attempt to make sense of a
task while never understanding what the overall lesson objective is and how to tell when it is accomplished. Our ndings
support the call for teacher explicitness in this area (Archer & Hughes, 2011; Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). In particular,
lesson vagueness (Smith & Cotten, 1980) has been shown to negatively affect student achievement and attitudes about a
lesson. Corbett and Wilson (2002) report that student prefer teachers who are able to provide clear assignment explanations.
In this lesson, we see how what started out as a spelling lesson could have disintegrated into a classroom management issue
where the student would be blamed for misbehavior that was in part the teachers own doing, which is a typical scenario in
classrooms with students of all age levels.
From a teacher education perspective, our ndings offer a number of practical implications for preservice and inservice
teachers as well as teacher educators in a variety of pedagogical contexts. First, a microscopic look into problematic directives
makes evident the precise junctures where miscommunication occurs during teacherstudent interaction and claries our
understanding of what leads students to behave in unexpected ways. It also brings to light the precise junctures where
successful directives are implemented. As shown, Mindy nally arrived at a clear explanation and achieved the desired
results. Such understandings can help us read future student responses in new ways, looking to our own language as a
source of confusion rather than assuming that fault lies with the student, and carefully fashion our directives in ways that
maximize compliance. Second, understanding how directives may misre also enables us to identify the specic areas in
which novice teachers need to expand their instructional repertoires, e.g., what might a teacher educator propose as an
alternative to an ineffective strategy? Seedhouse (2008), for example, shows how experienced teachers deliver instructions

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

299

successfully while trainee teachers manage to confuse the students. Third, like counter-questions or the bypassing of topic
initiations (e.g., He, 2004; Markee, 1995), directives are but one among other interactional resources that may cause problems
in teacher-learner interactions. It is important to enhance novice teachers awareness of how such resources can hinder
participation and compromise learning opportunities. Lastly, the issue of problematic directives may be particularly pertinent
to our work with ESOL students whose language prociency may come into play (Johnson, 1992). When ambiguous references
or extraneous non-verbal gestures are used, for example, how might such actions affect students in the early stages of learning
English?
In conclusion, prior literature on directives has greatly advanced our understandings of the forms, functions, and distributions of directives. Relatively little work has focused on how directives may incur confusion. By providing a detailed
look into some of Mindys directives and highlighting the features related to clarity and relevance, we hope to have offered
an initial glimpse into some of the issues that may render directives problematic from the outset. In addition, as outlined
earlier, the literature on interaction and learning opportunities has generated important insights into some conceptually
useful features of learning-conducive interactions such as participation or transformation. By taking a microscopic look into
an interactional practice such as directives, we hope to have contributed to our understanding of classroom interactional
competence (Walsh, 2006, 2011), and in particular, the small body of existing work in specifying the link between interaction
and learning opportunities not just conceptually, but empirically.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the detailed and productive feedback provided by the two anonymous reviewers. Thanks to
their dedication and expertise, the manuscript is stronger both conceptually and stylistically.
Appendix A. CA transcription notations
(.)
underline
CAPS

.
?
,
:
=

[]

soft
><
(words)
.hhh
$words$
(())
{(())-words.}

untimed perceptible pause within a turn

stress
very emphatic stress
high pitch on word
sentence-nal falling intonation
yes/no question rising intonation
phrase-nal intonation (more to come)
a glottal stop, or abrupt cutting off of sound
lengthened vowel sound (extra colons indicate greater lengthening)
latch
highlights point of analysis
overlapped talk
spoken softly/decreased volume
increased speed
uncertain transcription
inbreath
spoken in a smiley voice
comments on background, skipped talk or nonverbal behavior
{} marks the beginning and ending of the simultaneous occurrence of the verbal/silence and
nonverbal; the absence of {} means that the simultaneous occurrence applies to the entire turn.

References
Archer, A. L., & Hughes, C. A. (2011). Effective and efcient teaching. New York: Guilford Press.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chilcoat, G. W. (1989). Instructional behaviors for clearer presentations in the classroom. Instructional Science, 18, 289314.
Corbett, D., & Wilson, B. (2002). What urban students say about good teaching. Educational Leadership, 60(1), 1822.
Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., Meloth, M. S., & Vavrus, L. G. (1989). Conceptualizing instructional explanation. Teaching & Teacher Education, 2(3), 197214.
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. J. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model. New York: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Emmer, E. T., Evertson, C. M., & Anderson, L. M. (1980). Effective classroom management at the beginning of the school year. The Elementary School Journal,
8(5), 219231.
Evertson, C. M., & Emmer, E. T. (1982). Effective management at the beginning of the year in junior high classes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(4),
485498.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1976). Is Sybil there? The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5(1), 2566.
Fisher, C. W., Berliner, D. C., Filby, N. N., Marliave, R., Cahen, L. S., & Dishaw, M. M. (1980). Teaching behaviors, academic learning time, and student
achievement: An overview. In C. Denham, & A. Lieberman (Eds.), Time to learn (pp. 732). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
Fitch, K. L. (1998). Text and context: A problematic distinction for ethnography. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 91107.
Goodwin, M. H. (2006a). The hidden life of girls: Games of stance, status, and exclusion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Goodwin, M. H. (2006b). Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences. Text and Talk, 26, 513542.
He, A. W. (2000). The grammatical and interactional organization of teachers directives: Implications for socialization of Chinese American children.
Linguistics and Education, 11(2), 119140.
He, A. W. (2004). CA for SLA: Arguments from the Chinese language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 88(4), 568582.
Hellermann, J. (2005). The sequential and prosodic co-construction of a quiz game activity in classroom talk. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(6), 919944.
Johnson, K. E. (1992). Learning to teach: Instructional actions and decisions of preservice ESL teachers. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 507535.
Koshik, I. (2010). Questions that convey information in teacher-student conferences. In A. Freed, & S. Ehrlich (Eds.), Why do you ask?: The function of
questions in institutional discourse (pp. 159186). New York: Oxford University Press.

300

H.Z. Waring, B.L. Hruska / Linguistics and Education 23 (2012) 289300

Lerner, G. H. (1995). Turn design and the organization of participation in instructional activities. Discourse Processes, 19, 111131.
Markee, N. (1995). Teachers answers to students questions: Problematizing the issue of making meaning. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 6, 6392.
Markee, N. (2000). Conversation analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Nelson, C. K. (1994). Ethnomethodological positions on the use of ethnographic data in conversation analytic research. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography,
23, 307329.
Pavlenko, A., & Lantolf, J. P. (2000). Second language learning as participation and the (re)construction of selves. In James P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory
and second language learning (pp. 155177). New York: Oxford University Press.
Reiss, J. (2001). ESOL strategies for teaching content: Facilitating instruction for English language learners. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Rex, L. A. (2000). Judy constructs a genuine question: A case for interactional inclusion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 315333.
Richards, K. (2006). Being the teacher: Identity and classroom conversation. Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 5177.
Rosenshine, B. (1987). Explicit teaching and teacher training. Journal of Teacher Education, 38(34), 3436.
Rosenshine, B., & Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 326391). New York: Macmillan.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696735.
Sanders, R. E. (1999). The impossibility of a culturally contexted conversation analysis: On simultaneous, distinct types of pragmatic meaning. Research on
Language & Social Interaction, 32, 129140.
Searle, J. (1976). A classication of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 123.
Seedhouse, P. (2004). The interactional architecture of the language classroom: A conversation analysis perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
Seedhouse, P. (2008). Learning to talk the talk: Conversation analysis as a tool for induction of trainee teachers. In S. Garton, & K. Richards (Eds.), Professional
encounters in TESOL: Discourses of teachers in teaching (pp. 4257). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, L. R., & Cotten, M. L. (1980). Effect of lesson vagueness and discontinuity on student achievement and attitudes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72,
670675.
ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
van Lier, L. (1994). Language awareness, contingency, and interaction. AILA Review, 11, 6982.
Walsh, S. (2002). Construction or obstruction: Teacher talk and learner involvement in the EFL classroom. Language Teaching Research, 6(1), 323.
Walsh, S. (2006). Investigating Classroom Discourse. London, New York: Routledge.
Walsh, S. (2011). Exploring classroom discourse: Language in action. London & New York: Routledge.
Waring, H. Z. (2008). Using explicit positive assessment in the language classroom: IRF, feedback, and learning opportunities. The Modern Language Journal,
92(4), 577594.
Waring, H. Z. (2009). Moving out of IRF: A single case analysis. Language Learning, 59(4), 796824.
Waring, H. Z. (2011). Learner initiatives and learning opportunities. Classroom Discourse, 2(2), 201218.
Waring, H. Z. How was your weekend?: Developing the interactional competence in managing routine inquiries. Language Awareness, in press.
Waring, H. Z., Creider, S., Tarpey, T., & Black, R. Understanding the specicity of CA and context. Discourse Studies, in press.
Waring, H. Z., & Hruska, B. (2011). Getting and keeping Nora on board: A novice elementary ESOL student teachers practices for lesson engagement.
Linguistics and Education, 22, 441455.
West, C. (1990). Not just doctors orders: Directive-response sequence in patients visits to women and men physicians. Discourse & Society, 1(1), 85112.
Wong, J., & Waring, H. Z. (2010). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers. New York: Routledge.
Young, R. F., & Miller, E. R. (2004). Learning as changing participation: Discourse roles in ESL writing conferences. The Modern Language Journal, 88(4),
519535.