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Teachers research teacher talk
Abstract
This article describes an in-service training project designed to raise trainees' awareness, through the analysis of transcriptions
of teaching sequences, of the degree of communicativeness in their classroom interactions. The presence or absence of such
features of communicative classroom talk as referential questions, feedback on content, wait time, and learner-initiated interaction,
are used as ‘bottom-up’ markers of communicative, content-driven, teacher–student interaction. Trainees’ analyses showed evidence
of growing awareness of their non—communicative ritualized teaching behaviours, awareness that, at least in some cases, resulted
in improved classroom practice.
... Kumaravadivelu (1993) concluded his discussion by arguing that CLT teachers will succeed in making their classroom genuinely communicative if they are provided with these strategies, trained on implementing them in their teaching and motivated to invent more microstrategies of their own. Thornbury (1996) referred to Nunan's (1987) and Kumaravadivelu's (1993;) studies of classroom discourse and how their studies revealed that even those CLT committed teachers sometimes fail to create opportunities for genuine communication in their classrooms. Then, he identified a number of strategies that teachers should use in order to replicate the communicative behaviour outside classroom in their classroom, such as: ...
... Teaching methods and practices absolutely play a crucial role in EFL learning since the classroom can be the only place where the concerned students learn and get exposure to English in their rural environment. It has been discussed in the second chapter of this thesis that EFL classroom teaching and learning should be as much communicative as possible to allow language acquisition to take place and this can be achieved through various communicative activities and tasks that engage students in communicative language use (Broughton et al., 1978;Canale, 1983;Ellis, 1994;Harmer, 1982;Harmer, 2001;Kumaravadivelu, 1993Kumaravadivelu, , 1994Littlewood, 1981Littlewood, , 1987Nunan, 1987;Prabhu, 1987;Oxford, 2006;Richards & Rodgers, 2014;Savignon, 2002;Skehan, 1998;Thornbury, 1996). Even where the students are beginners and they may lack linguistic knowledge, teachers should engage them in pre-communicative and communicative activities that help them to develop their linguistic system and use it for communication (Broughton et. ...
... al., 1978;Harmer, 2001). They should also exploit any opportunity for language use created by learners (Kumaravadivelu, 1993;Thornbury, 1996). They should also encourage English use in classroom leisure time and classroom discipline as such a language use is viewed to be a kind of genuine and purposeful communication similar to the communication existing outside classroom (Littlewood, 1981, p.45). ...
This study was designed to investigate the spoken communication difficulties encountered by the fourth-year EFL students of some rural faculties of Aden University and the factors that might negatively contribute to their poor acquisition of spoken communication proficiency during their learning of English in these faculties to reach some suggestions and solutions that may help in changing the current situation and enabling the concerned EFL programs produce proficient speakers of English. The data were collected through varied instruments, namely students’ questionnaire (n = 120), teachers’ questionnaire (n = 23), students’ interviews (n = 30), speaking skill teachers’ interviews (n = 4), students’ spoken communication proficiency assessment rubric (n = 42), classroom observations (n = 6), and an assessment of speaking skill syllabi. The collected data were analyzed by using the SPSS 21st version and manually. The results revealed that the majority of the students encounter fluency and automaticity related difficulties and lack of communication strategies. Moreover, some students also share one or more difficulties with these two major ones, such as phonological difficulties, comprehension difficulties, sociocultural difficulties, lack of discourse knowledge, affective difficulties, and lexical and grammatical difficulties, respectively. Though the majority of the students seem to have mastered a somehow sufficient level of grammar and vocabulary, many of them cannot put their lexical and grammatical knowledge into use orally. It has also been revealed that several factors are responsible for students’ poor acquisition of spoken communication proficiency. These factors can be categorized into five types, namely a. factors related to the students themselves, namely students’ lack of language learning strategies to develop spoken English and lack of integrative motivation, b. factors related to student’s past education, namely students’ poor English level when they joined the concerned faculties in addition to the traditional learning habits they brought from their pre-tertiary education, c. factors related to students’ environment, namely lack of exposure to spoken English provided by the environment, d. factors related to teaching methodology, such as lack of communicative activities, majority of the students are rarely engaged in spoken activities, mother tongue use in English classes, no language laboratory or ICTs, low qualifications of some teachers, i.e. a semi-traditional teaching setting is still dominant in most classes, and e. curriculum-related factors, namely lack of time devoted to teaching spoken communication skills and the overuse of non-English subjects. As per the results, this study has provided some suggestions and solutions that will help in changing the current situation and enabling the concerned EFL programs to produce proficient speakers of English.
((This is a summary of the thesis. If you want to get a soft copy of the thesis, inbox me or e-mail me to sabri-t2010@hotmail.com ))
... When the talk allows space for classroom interaction, it produces dialogic learning. This is because teacher-learner interactions are deemed one of the most important potential determinants of effective learning in the classroom (Scott 1998;Sinclair & Coulthard 1975;Thornbury 1996). Alexander (2010, p.1) defines dialogic teaching as follows: ...
... Every teacher exchange involves at least an initiation that is followed by either response or feedback. When initiation is followed by response, this is then followed by feedback (Willis 1981(Willis , 2013 Even though IRF has been criticised by researchers (Nunan 1987;Thornbury 1996, cited in Cullen 2002, it remains a commonly used sequence, especially in the situation where the teacher's role is mainly that of a transmitter of knowledge (Gibbons 2015). The pattern of IRF is very familiar to teachers and students in traditional classrooms (Gibbons 2002, Liu & Zhu 2012, and Yanfen & Yuqin 2010. ...
... Through TT, students are given enough language input to help them to improve, modify and extend their dialogic output in the target language. TT, however, has a double-sided impact; it can be positive when TT is consciously managed for educational purposes via communicative conversation or discussion, active engagement of learners, and meaning-or content-driven interaction (Thornbury 1996). TT can also have a negative impact when teachers dominate the talking time, produce arbitrary or sporadic language output, and fail to initiate learner interaction (student talk). ...
This study investigated the nature of teacher talk in Saudi EFL secondary school classrooms. The study explores how teacher talk assisted or hindered the development of the students’ dialogic skills. By analysing aspects of teacher talk (TT), in particular the role of the F-move in the IRF (initiation, response, feedback) interaction sequence, it investigated how TT was affected by certain cultural, educational and teaching practices in learning of the target language.
This is a qualitative research, in which data were collected from naturalistic settings through classroom observations, audio recordings of classroom interactions and interviews with 18 EFL teachers teaching in six different secondary schools within Hafr Al-Batin province (a region in Saudi Arabia).
The findings showed that the F-moves of repetition and evaluation were commonly used in Saudi EFL classrooms, whereas the F-moves of elaboration and reformulation were less dominant in teacher talk. The former are less likely to promote discussion and dialogue; they restrict learners’ engagement with meaning-making in classroom talk because both F-moves function as indirect corrective feedback which impedes students’ output and uptake and encourage low order thinking. Students were not provided with appropriate learning opportunities but were merely exposed to teachers’ subject matter knowledge, specifically, grammatical knowledge. The brief nature of the exchanges was insufficient to stimulate learning.
The study also found that some teachers failed to utilise macro-teaching strategies that encourage productive teacher talk, especially in the areas of negotiated interaction facilitation, promoting learner autonomy, raising cultural awareness and maximising learning opportunities. Instead, the teacher’s role did not promote dialogic talk but merely reinforced teacher authority. Some teachers spent considerable time on managing students’ behaviour; as a result, they paid little attention to building positive relationships in the classroom.
The findings also showed that there is a strong interconnection between pedagogy and culture. In other words, dialogic teaching is not independent of the sociocultural setting of the classroom, institution and community in Saudi Arabia. Accordingly, classroom talk cannot be transformed into dialogic talk without cultural modifications in EFL teaching, such as providing freedom of speech and space for dialogue and debate. It is therefore. recommended that professional development programs include material related to dialogic talk/teaching in order to increase teachers’ awareness and understanding of the role of TT in managing classroom talk and to enhance their ability to help students achieve their full potential in language learning and development.
... Providing students with more chances to engage in conversation and increasing students' time of talk in the classroom foster learning (Seedhouse, 1996). In this respect, Thornbury (1996) similarly underscores that negotiating meaning while interacting is vital, so students are supposed to ask questions. The negotiation of meaning is the core of interaction since students engage in interaction actively during the verbal exchanges between themselves and the teacher, so students should be encouraged to exchange meaning in the classroom (Al-Zahrani & Al-Bargi, 2017). ...
... The negotiation of meaning is the core of interaction since students engage in interaction actively during the verbal exchanges between themselves and the teacher, so students should be encouraged to exchange meaning in the classroom (Al-Zahrani & Al-Bargi, 2017). Thornbury (1996) expresses that the discourse started by the students is essential since it displays equal partnership in discourse in the classroom. When the low average of student-initiated conversation and lack of interaction between the students in the present study are considered, the online education might be thought as a hindrance of fostering student-student interaction in the classes. ...
This present study explores the nature and extent of classroom interaction in online English as a foreign language (EFL) classes at the university level. Based on an exploratory research design, the study involved the analysis of recordings of seven visits to online EFL classes given by different instructors with approximately 30 language learners in each class. The data were analyzed by using the Communicative Oriented Language Teaching (COLT) observation sheets. Findings provided an understanding of the interaction patterns in the online classes, by showing that there was more teacher-student interaction in online classes compared to student-student interaction, and the classes involved more sustained teacher speech, whereas the students’ speech mostly encompassed ultra-minimal utterance patterns. Also, the findings showed that group work activities fell behind individual activities in online classes. In addition, the online classes observed in the present study were found to be instruction-focused, and discipline issues reflected on the language used by the teachers were found to be at a minimum level. Besides, the study presented a detailed analysis of teacher and student verbal interaction by unveiling that rather than form-related incorporations, message-related incorporations were common in the observed classes and the teachers commented on the students’ utterances and expanded what they said mostly. The study brings some implications for teachers, curriculum planners, and administrators by providing insights regarding classroom interaction in online EFL classes.
... Students' involvement in classroom activities is a primary condition for developing their speaking proficiency as classroom can be the only place where FL learners can get exposure to their target language. For this reason, the EFL classroom teaching and learning classroom should be as much communicative as possible to allow language acquisition to take place and this can be achieved through various communicative activities and tasks that engage students in communicative language use (Broughton et al., 1978;Canale, 1983;Ellis, 1994;Harmer, 1982;Harmer, 2001;Kumaravadivelu, 1993;Littlewood, 1981;Nunan, 1987;Prabhu, 1987;Oxford, 2006;Richards & Rodgers, 2014;Savignon, 2002;Thornbury, 1996). Even in contexts where EFL learners are beginners and they may lack linguistic knowledge, teachers should engage them in pre-communicative and communicative activities that help them to develop their linguistic system and use it for communication simultaneously (Broughton et al., 1978;Harmer, 2001). ...
... Even in contexts where EFL learners are beginners and they may lack linguistic knowledge, teachers should engage them in pre-communicative and communicative activities that help them to develop their linguistic system and use it for communication simultaneously (Broughton et al., 1978;Harmer, 2001). They should exploit any opportunity for language use created by learners and work hard in motivating students to interact in English (Kumaravadivelu, 1993;Thornbury, 1996). They should also encourage English use in classroom leisure time and classroom discipline as such a language use is viewed to be a kind of genuine and purposeful communication similar to the communication existing outside classroom (Littlewood, 1981). ...
This study investigated Yemeni EFL learners’ involvement in classroom oral activities and its
correlation to their speaking proficiency development with a reference to three rural faculties of education
affiliated to Aden University. The data was collected through a questionnaire which targeted 120 fourth-year
EFL learners. The results revealed that the students’ involvement in classroom activities is pretty low. It has been
unveiled that pair work and group work activities are not implemented in a regular basis and it is limited to a few
students. The findings also showed a significant correlation between learners’ involvement in classroom oral
activities and their speaking proficiency (p. value < 0.05%). As per these findings, this study recommends the
concerned faculties to implement communicative language teaching in their EFL programs to ensure students’
engagement in classroom activities and promote their oral proficiency.
... Pedagogical knowledge is acquired during teacher initial education, and they practice the methodological knowledge in their practicum which is the main function of the pre-service training. Kumaravadivelu (1994), Nunan (1987) and Thornbury (1996) found that teachers do not pursue the basic principles of these methods, which therefore makes us wonder whether or not all the language teaching methods taught in language education programs are worth the time and attention given to them. Grammar-Translation method, for example, is taught like the other methodologies to supply the necessary foundation for the pedagogical knowledge of the pre-service teachers. ...
Teaching a foreign language is shaped extensively by the impacts of technological advances in the 21 st century. English teachers are always required to enhance their theoretical and practical knowledge on how to use technology in their classes. TPACK (Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge) framework was introduced to understand the teacher knowledge required for effective technology integration. This study displays the TPACK training programme for 24 in-service English Language teachers (teaching young learners aged 8-12). During this programme, each skill was taken separately to enhance the teacher pedagogical knowledge. But in this paper, we focus on writing and grammar skills which are diagnosed to be the more problematic ones. The researchers used the TPACK scale developed by Schmidt (2009) as pre-test and post-test to see the impact of the training on the usge of digital tools for the improvement of these two skills. Immediate and Delayed Workshop Evaluations were conducted just after the training. Both tests showed an increase in the knowledge and skill of integrating technology into their English classes within the model of TPACK. The results of this study also revealed improvement on knowledge of ICT tools.
... Oral input and interaction strategies by classroom teachers are examined through a cycle of lesson observations in order to identify the characteristics of classroom interaction that can best support secondlanguage acquisition by preschool pupils. To this end, the specific communicative interventions and scaffolding necessary to render teachers' language input comprehensible are identified in qualitative and quantitative terms (Thornbury 1996;von Raffler-Engel and Hutcheson 1975;Walsh 2006), using a customized observation sheet to guide teachers towards greater language awareness through self-monitoring, peer observation and reflection. ...
Purpose: Attempts to cultivate a multilingual mindset in education in South Tyrol find an obstacle in educational norms, structures and policies that divide students into linguistically distinct schools based on their self-identified main language. Education in the region is administered through three separate educational authorities – German-speaking, Italian-speaking, Ladin-speaking – and teachers are prepared for service in one of these based on their own declared linguistic identification. Plural identities and translingual interaction do not flourish in this context where language separation is the norm. This paper begins with an overview of the educational policy of language separation in South Tyrol and its impact on the language achievement of its students. It then addresses how the Free University of Bolzano has responded to the need for improved language competences through teacher training for multilingual schools in the Province of Bolzano.Design: The paper presents the preliminary results of a small-scale study with in-service preschool teachers through an action research cycle in which classroom observations and a language input observation scheme are used to quantitively measure the quality of teachers' language input in second-language instruction in German and English, and provide formative feedback for improvement in teaching practice.Findings and Value: The expected outcomes of the study are threefold: (1) improving input and corrective feedback strategies of language teachers; (2) raising language awareness among teachers participating in peer observation; (3) empowering the emergence of language rich episodes through effective planning of interactive lessons in second/foreign language teaching. The study contributes to an understanding of what makes teachers' corrective feedback strategies in preschool settings effective in rendering input comprehensible for young learners, thus assisting language appropriation processes.
... Teachers' question strategies can then be discussed using terms such as closed display question (i.e., teacher is aware of the answer and there is only one answer acceptable, for example, What is the past tense of to play?); open display question (i.e., teacher test the pupils' knowledge and there are a number of accepted answers, Who can make a sentence with the verb play?); open referential question (i.e., teacher is Long and Sato's (1983) findings suggest that teachers predominantly draw on display questions in foreign language teaching -a finding that has sparked much debate concerning the absence of genuine communication in communicative language classrooms (e.g., Brock, 1986;Cullen, 1998;Lynch, 1991;Nunan, 1990;Seedhouse 1996;Thornbury, 1996). The debate is driven by the assumption that open referential questions more effectively generate linguistic output (e.g., Brock, 1986;Cullen, 1998;Nunan, 1987;cf. ...
Strategies for successful classroom management have been readily available to practitioners for at least half a century. However, despite the vast body of knowledge available, there appears to be a great deal of scope for further research in terms of developing a more detailed understanding of the interactional details of classroom management practices. Drawing on a corpus of 58 hours of video and audio recordings in English as a Foreign Language classrooms in Germany, the book provides a micro-analytical perspective of foreign language classroom management. It contributes to the body of current research by focusing on how foreign language teachers respond to pupils’ classroom norm violations using interrogative constructions (i.e. interrogative reproaches). Through a Conversation Analytic investigation of these social actions, the paper provides valuable insights into the details of the in-situ production of classroom management strategies and their underlying interactional mechanisms.
Cette thèse s’inscrit dans un cadre interdisciplinaire, au croisement de la linguistique appliquée – plus précisément, de la linguistique de corpus – et de la didactique de l'enseignement des langues étrangères. Au cœur de ce travail se situent les considérations concernant la création et l’analyse de corpus dans le cadre pédagogique. Notre premier but est de démontrer une interconnexion étroite entre lexique et grammaire dans le cas des langues morphologiquement complexes d’une part et le potentiel d’une approche lexico-grammaticale pour l’enseignement de ces langues de l’autre. Les démonstrations seront effectuées en utilisant le hongrois comme exemple. Nous argumenterons également que pour parvenir aux besoins des apprenants (avant tout aux niveaux de compétences linguistiques inférieurs), il est nécessaire de créer de nouveaux corpus pédagogiques selon des principes particuliers.La thèse se divise en trois parties. La Partie I est dédiée au recensement de la littérature sur les avancées de la linguistique de corpus. Elle présente les méthodes de ce domaine et ses résultats pertinents ainsi que les principes de base de création de corpus et d’ouvrages pédagogiques se fondant sur une « approche corpus ». La Partie II traite de l’exploration des corpus non pédagogiques au service de l’enseignement du hongrois. À cette fin, deux aspects lexicaux et deux aspects grammaticaux sont analysés en détail. La Partie III concerne la création et l’utilisation des corpus pédagogiques pour l’observation et la pratique langagières. Nous explorerons leur potentiel et leurs limites à travers l’exemple concret des corpus compilés pour la série de manuels « MagyarOK ». Les considérations autour de l’équilibre entre authenticité et accessibilité seront également abordées.
Main aim of the study was focused on the non native English speakers and the difficulties they face while learning English as a second language (ESL) and the part of teachers. It is generally felt that English language plays a vital role in the job market so it is mandatory to learn the language. when the students enroll for the courses to develop the language most of the time they do not succeed because of various reasons like in-effecting teaching, lack of motivation, lack of practice sessions, poor training modules etc. Here we conducted a semi-structured interview in the process of collecting data from more than 158 degree pursuing students. The result indicates that the teaching methodology of the teachers is more important to develop the English language of the students.
When teachers talk about teaching and learning they perhaps reveal more than they realize about their beliefs and values. It is these beliefs and values, often embodied in personally significant images, that provide valuable insights for teacher educators. This article reviews current thinking on the uses of metaphor, and suggests ways in which awareness of, and experimentation with, teachers' metaphors for teaching might usefully be incorporated into training programmes.
The post-seventies era has seen a growing interest in the study of classroom learning processes which are believed to influence second language development. What seems to be conspicuously missing, however, are relevant research techniques capable of examining the on-going interactive processes which characterize classroom language learning.This paper reports some of the results obtained through the implementation of an innovative technique designed to investigate the relationship between classroom interaction and learning outcomes. The paper illustrates that the detailed study of classroom interaction can explain “uptake” — what learners claim to have learned at the end of the lesson. Topicalization by the learners (i.e. who initiates the topics of interaction) is shown to be influential in accounting for learners' claims about uptake in one instructional setting.
If, as research reveals, even those teachers who are committed to communicative language teaching (CLT) fail to create genuine communication in their classrooms, it is partly because teacher educators have not given them the necessary tools to achieve their desired goals. This paper proposes that a framework of five macrostrategies offers a possible tool to make the communicative classroom genuinely communicative. The paper presents a classroom observational study to assess whether the macrostrategies framework will help CLT teachers maximize learning potential in the classroom. An analysis of two classroom episodes taught by two committed CLT teachers featuring the same group of learners revealed that one episode was evidently more communicative than the other. The relative success in maximizing learning potential witnessed in one episode and the relative failure witnessed in another is attributed to the use and non-use of the macrostrategies framework. The study shows that given appropriate tools CLT teachers will succeed in making their classes genuinely ycommunicative.
This (the first of two articles) examines some of the more theoretical ideas underlying the 'Communicative Approach'. These include the belief that we should teach 'use' as well as 'meaning', and some attitudes regarding the teaching of 'skills' and 'strategies'. A second article will deal with more pedagogical aspects of the approach, especially the idea of a 'semantic syllabus' and the question of 'authenticity' in materials and methodology. In both articles, it is argued that there is serious confusion in the communicative view of these matters. In particular, the Communicative Approach fails to take account of the knowledge and skills which language students bring with them from their mother tongue and their experience of the world.
While a great deal has been written on the theory and practice of communicative language teaching, there have been comparatively few studies of actual communicative language practices. A classroom-based study of communicative language practice revealed the persistence of non-communicative patterns of interaction. A follow-up study demonstrated that it is possible for teachers to foster more communicative language use. These studies demonstrate the importance of validating theory against what actually happens in the classroom.
This article outlines a possible methodology for integrating theory and practice in teacher training. Rejecting the theoretical-input model found in most teacher-training programmes, the author argues that we need to encourage teachers to theorize and conceptualize their own practice, as a basis for articulating, examining, and revising their assumptions. The article tries to show how classroom data in the form of a live or video-taped lesson, an audio-recording or a lesson transcript, are the ideal resource for initiating and sustaining the process of theorizing.1 The article seeks to show how the intuitive and subjective responses of teachers to classroom data can be used to raise theoretical questions, which can be then linked to current conceptual issues. These questions will suggest the areas that need to be read up or investigated for clarity and deeper understanding. Such an approach to theory, which is rooted in teachers' own intuitions and which encourages them to move from the specific to the general, is seen as being more meaningful than one which is based on theoretical inputs from trainers. A teachers' workshop, in which the methodology was tried out is described, end the implications for teacher training are considered
Preface Acknowledgements 1. The modern language classroom - the case of the outmoded paradigm 2. Theme-centred interaction in the L2 classroom 3. From "Humanism" into the classroom - critical criteria 4. Building bricks - communicative learning tasks 5. Learning in projects - overview 6. Issues in project learning 7. Learner education 8. Teacher education Bibliography Index