CLASSROOM

DISCOURSE
 By:
M. Reza
Risma Mustikasari
Yanti
 1.
Classroom Discourse
Introduction
 The term classroom discourse refers to the
language that teachers and students use to
communicate with each other in the classroom.
Talking, or conversation, is the medium
through which most teaching takes place, so
the study of classroom discourse is the study of
the process of face-to-face classroom teaching.

Communication in the classroom is so

important because it underpins everything that
goes on in the classrooms.

Classroom communication is highly complex

and central to all classroom activity.
Four features of classroom discourse:

1. Control of the interaction.

2. Speech modification.
3. Elicitation.
4. Repair.
1. Control of the interaction

The roles of the participants (teacher and learners)

are not equal, they are asymmetrical.

Teachers decide who speaks, when, to whom and

for how long.

Learners, on other hand, do not enjoy the same

level of control of the patterns of communication.

Comprising a teacher question, learner response

and teacher feedback is another feature of
classroom discourse that exemplifies the ways in
which teachers control the interaction.
2. Speech Modification

Characteristics of all classroom discourse is

teachers modification of their spoken language.

The modification strategies used by teachers are not

accidental; they are conscious and deliberate and
occur for a number of reasons.

In many cases and in many parts of the world, a

teachers articulation of a second language may be
the only exposure to the language that learners
actually receive.
3. Elicitation techniques

Elicitation techniques are the strategies used by

(normally) teachers to get learners to respond.
Typically, elicitation entails asking questions.

Classroom discourse is dominated by question and

answer routines, with teachers asking most of the
questions, while learners ask correspondingly few
questions.

Apart from display questions, teachers also ask

genuine, more open ended questions, designed to
promote discussion and debate, engage learners
and produce longer, more complex responses.
4. Repair

Repair simply refers to the ways in which teachers

deal with errors.

four types of error correction in naturally occurring

conversation: self-initiated self repair, self-
initiated other repair, other-initiated self repair,
other initiated other repair (Sacks et al. 1974).
The IRF exchange structure

A teacher Initiation, a student Response, and a

teacher Feedback, commonly known as IRF, or IRE,
Initiation, Response, Evaluation.

IRE is preferred by some writers and practitioners

to reflect the fact that, most of the time, teachers
feedback is an evaluation of a students
contribution.

This three-part structure was first put forward by

Sinclair and Coulthard in 1975 and is known as the
IRF exchange structure which is have huge impact
to understanding teacher and learner
communication.
Initiation, Response, Feedback/Evaluation.
Based on this very brief extract, we can make a
number of observations about IRF:

It enables us to understand the special nature of

classroom interaction.

It enables us to understand why teachers talk so

much more than learners: for every utterance made
by a learner (R), teachers typically make two (I, F).

It allows us to see how, if overused, classroom

interaction can become very mechanical, even
monotonous. Teachers need to be aware of this.
From this brief introduction to the exchange
structure of classrooms, we can make a number of
important observations:

All classroom discourse is goal-oriented. The

responsibility for establishing goals and setting
the agenda lies largely with the teacher.
Pedagogic goals and the language used to achieve
them are very closely related, even intertwined.

The prime responsibility for what is said in the

classroom lies with the teacher. Teachers control
the discourse through the special power and
authority they have, but also through their control
of the discourse. They control who may speak and
when, for how long and on what topic. They
control turn-taking through the use of IRF; not
only do they initiate a response, they offer an
evaluation further evidence of control.
 Learners take their cues from the teacher and
rarely initiate a response. Their role, one which
they are socialized into from a very early age, is to
answer questions, respond to prompts and so on.

The IRF sequence enables us to understand

interaction in the classroom, and comprehend its
special nature. An awareness of IRF enables us to
consider how we might vary interaction more and
introduce alternative types of sequence.

An understanding of the IRF sequence enables us

to model spoken language in the world outside the
classroom, suggesting ways of constructing
dialogues for teaching, role-plays for practicing
conversation, etc.
2. Classroom Discourse
and Teaching
Teachers can do much to improve their
professional practice and enhance learning by
studying their own interactions with students.

The starting point here is to consider how

classroom contexts are created through interaction
and to then identify how teachers might gain a
closer understanding of specific features of the
interaction.

We then look at the place of interaction in one

specific teaching methodology, task-based
language teaching (TBLT), before looking at the
ways in which teachers use of linguistic and
interactional resources can result in enhanced
teaching.
Task-based language teaching (TBLT)

TBLT is derived from Communicative Language

Teaching (CLT). It aims to bring real-world
contexts into the classroom, and it emphasizes
the use of language for completing tasks rather
than as a focus for study.

By completing a task with others, especially

oral communicative tasks, learners are able
to identify gaps in their own knowledge,
notice connections between different
linguistic features, find ways of saying
something even when they do not have the
most appropriate language, and so on.
Classroom discourse and teacher development

One of the most useful ways to help teachers develop and

improve their professional practices is to place
classroom discourse at the centre of the process.

It addresses four key areas for teacher development that

can be addressed by looking at classroom discourse data:

1. Improving questioning strategies

Three-way classification of questions was
devised, enabling questions to be analysed according to:
a) Form
b) Content
c) Purpose
2. Making the discourse more communicative.

From their self-evaluations, the following

features of communicative classroom talk were
identified:

Referential questions, which require greater effort and

depth of processing on the part of the teacher, one
possible reason for language teachers preference for
display questions over referential questions.

Content feedback, where the focus is on meaning,

rather than language form.

Wait-time. This is the amount of time a teacher waits

after asking a question before getting a response.
3. Improving interactive decision-making.
4. Dealing with reticence.
The practitioners in the study reported a number of
strategies used to overcome reticence in the language
classroom:

Lengthening wait-time. Silence was considered to be a

waste of time because, as one teacher commented, time is
too precious. while silence is not necessarily a bad thing,
excessive wait-time can increase learner anxiety.

Improving questioning strategies. Tsui notes that one

of the strategies identified by the teachers in the study was
to improve their questioning strategies by asking more
referential questions and fewer display questions.

Accepting a variety of answers.

Making use of group work and peer support.
Providing content feedback.
 3. Approaches to
Studying Classroom
Discourse
Approaches to studying classroom discourse

To understand classrooms must begin with description, as

Kumaravadivelu observes: What actually happens there [in
the classroom] largely determines the degree to which
desired learning outcomes are realised. The task of
systematically observing, analyzing and understanding
classroom aims and events therefore becomes central to any
serious educational enterprise. (Kumaravadivelu 1999: 454)
Recording and transcribing classroom interaction

Multiple interactions are the norm and multi-party talk

underpins every action, every activity, every moment. Not only are
there technical problems associated with recording what actually
happens, there are, more importantly, enormous issues associated
with transcribing spoken discourse as written text.

Recording

The first decision that must be made is how to record

classroom interaction. Basically, there are four choices:

1 audio-recordings;
Audio recordings are, in many ways, the easiest
means of capturing spoken interaction in classrooms. The
main difficulty associated with audio-recordings is the
presence of background noise a constant presence that
can make deciphering very difficult.
2 video-recordings;
Video-recordings are a relatively straightforward
means of recording interaction in the classroom and have
the added advantage of providing a visual representation of
what happened.

3 observation;
the observer focuses on one detail in the interaction
such as teachers use of questions, oral feedback,
learnerinvolvement, etc.

4 narrative.
A narrative approach to recording classroom
observation entails the use of an observer who writes a
descriptive account of the lesson as a narrative.
Transcription

The main concern of transcription is to represent reality as

accurately and faithfully as possible. In the same way that
photography sets out to provide a visual record of reality, a
transcript offers a written record of a spoken interaction.

The important decisions are taken at the time a transcript is

produced: these decisions will inuence understandings of
reality, our ability to interpret the data and our potential to
make changes to practice if that is our intention.
In the first extract, the main details of the original interview
have been retained. As we read the extract, we get a good sense
of Freds feelings of being a nerd, what this means, why they
like it and so on.

From an interviewers perspective, it seems to offer sufficient

detail of the interview, without burdening the reader with
unnecessary detail

Essentially, extract 4.1 is a summary of the interview and is

highly typical of the kind of data used as evidence in
qualitative research reporting interviews. While it certainly
captures the essence of that encounter, it omits all the detail of
the interaction.
Alternative approaches to studying classroom
discourse

Alternative approaches for studying classroom interaction,

beginning with corpus linguistics (CL).

The main advantage of CL is that it offers rapid and reliable

profiles of classroom discourse and enables us to
understand how linguistic features work in specific
classroom contexts.

For example, I commented on the ways in which discourse

markers (such as you know, you see, right, ok, next, etc.)
perform key functions in classrooms and, when used
properly, greatly assist the learning process.
CLs main disadvantage is that it largely ignores the finer
details of classroom interaction and fails to recognize the
ways in which meanings are jointly achieved. A combined
CLCA approach was proposed as one way of overcoming
such shortcomings, allowing a multi-layered perspective
that offers a description of both linguistic and interactional
features.

There is a recognition that classroom discourse cannot be

viewed as being all of a oneness, where interactional and
linguistic features occur in a more or less fixed and
predictable way. Instead, variable approaches recognize that
classroom interaction proceeds in line with the pedagogic
goals of the moment.
Micro-contexts are co-constructed in the interaction as
participants work towards clearly defined, and constantly
shifting, goals. So, for example, if the teachers goal is to set
up a pair-work task, she may use long teacher turns,
frequent pausing, specific discourse markers (such as first,
next, then), and so on.

Recognizing that classroom discourse is constantly shifting,

that goals are always changing and that language use and
pedagogic goals must work together are, I suggest,
fundamental to teacher development. One of the most
effective means of developing as a teacher is to gain closer
understandings of classroom interaction.
Thankyou for your attention!