teacher talk as strategies in the classroomcau.ac.kr/~edusol/see/list/vol25-1/cake025-001-6.pdf ·...

Teacher Talk as Strategies in the

Classroom

Shim, Jae-Hwang*

《ABSTRACT》

The purpose of this study is to identify the interaction patterns between teacher and students

and teacher skills in the real classroom lesson. The data in this research identify the patterns of

teacher talk in eliciting, questions, and giving feedback to students during the class. The data

were collected from the middle school classrooms in Seoul. Two teachers, one female and one

male, led the 2nd grade middle school English classes for two weeks. The classroom interactions

between teacher and students in the two classrooms were recorded on cassette recording tapes

without any visual supports. The 16 class recordings for two weeks were transcribed by means

of transcription symbols and analyzed based on the taxonomy of foreign language interaction

analysis system. The results show that teacher utterances are quite dominant in every pattern of

tasks during the class, while student responses or other attributes are relatively low in volume in

a teacher-focused classroom. The analysis also shows that elicitation, response, and feedback are

used systematically by teacher, and students are part of the structure of classroom discourse

activities. The pattern, however, can be changed depending on the teacher intention or the periods

of lesson that students learn.

Key words: classroom interaction, teacher talk, teacher strategy

* 중앙대학교 사범대학 영어교육과 강사

한국교육문제연구

제25호 pp. 73-88

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한국교육문제연구 제25호

I. Introd u ction

This research focuses on the frequency and rate of teacher talk and students reactions

through the topics of ‘speaking a foreign language' or ‘teaching English through English

(TETE).' The researcher analyzes classroom interaction in EFL middle school classrooms.

The 2nd grade middle school classroom was chosen as a sample to get reliable data

because the teachers of the school thought that the students can react to the teachers

more actively than other grades in the real classroom context. The topics in this study

are the features that the researcher look for as meaningful consequences: attributes

dominant in EFL middle school English classrooms, patterns of teacher talk in each period

of class, and teacher strategies of feedback in order to elicit students reaction.

To find out the results on the topic, the researcher first present some literatures

related on teacher talk and strategies in the classroom. Second, the researcher explains

the research methods. The chapter covers the research method on data collection from

subjects or participants, and research process including the transcription of data, the way

of analysis. After analyzing the data based on the guideline of classification for categories,

the researcher treats the limitations of the research and the problems of EFL classroom

interaction, especially in a natural setting, and summarize the result of this research.

II. L iteratu re Rev iew

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) established an analytic framework to describe classroom

interactions. Their analysis covers interactions rather than the intent or goal of the

participants. One of their main roles is the use of language pattern in an English

classroom. That is, the pattern of language use, or the plan of class teaching create in

affirmative or negative effects on the students.

Studies of teacher talk can be divided into two types of language. One is the

investigation of language that teachers use in their language classrooms, and the other is

the investigation of language that they use in subject matter lessons. Gaise (1977, 1990)

found that teachers' utterances were simpler on a range of measures of syntactic

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Teacher Talk as Strategies in the Classroom

complexity when they addressed pupils than when they were talking among themselves.

Tudor (1993) emphasizes the teacher's role in the learner-centered classroom. He insists

that the teacher's role should be reconsidered in the recent trend of learner-centered

teaching and the basic issues in the classroom. Ellis (2003) makes a list of classroom

environments depending on the types of participants, and compares them with natural

setting. Fotos (1998) observes that the instruction pattern of a class shifts the focus from

form to form in the EFL classroom.

Cadorath and Harris (1998) observe classroom language in order to search for the

effect of consequences during a lesson. They make use of two transcripts from high

school and university classrooms in ESL, and analyze teacher students interaction. They

conclude that lesson planning and communicative activities have unintended results in the

teacher-centered classroom. The principle of triangulation(Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975;

Long, 1983; Allwright, 1983; Allwright,& Bailey, 2004) can simply mean the combination

of observation and introspection for a variety of observers: ask learners, and not just

teachers, for their recollections and interpretations of classroom events. With these

methods of data, a researcher can make three points of view so as to understand

classroom language learning.

Recently Korean researchers have carried out research on teacher talk as a classroom

interaction. The researches are largely based on various EFL classroom settings, which

can reflect on the real classroom teaching through teacher talk and students reaction. Lee

et al. (1999) and Ryu and Sung (2005) analyze of teacher talk in a college EFL

classroom. Three articles treat the teacher concern on EFL classroom setting and the

quality of teacher in Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) practice. Choi (2000) is

interested in teachers' beliefs about communicative language teaching and their classroom

teaching practices. The study argues that other researches have been little conducted

from the empirical aspect such as what language teachers actually believe about CLT.

Pae (2002) requires the conditions of teaching English through English (TETE) and the

roles of teachers in Korea.

Studies on authentic classroom interaction are conducted by the researchers who are

mostly concern with teacher talk and students response in the real context. First, Kim

and Suh (2004) study teacher talk in Korean English classroom. They analyze recorded

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data from six middle school teachers in Busan. The result shows that the teachers

account for about 60% of the classroom talk on average and talked about 17 times a

minute, which is 4.5 times more than the student talk. The findings also show that the

teacher talks in the teacher-fronted class more than those using the student-centered

group work. Second, Park (2005) analyzes teacher talk in primary EFL classrooms. He

concludes that most of teachers' talks are display questions, direction and evaluative

feedback. Lee (2005) compares teacher talks from three different primary school teachers

(one native speaker of English and two Korean teachers). The results show that many

existing differences between teachers depending on their proficiency levels in English.

III. Method

1 . P articip ants and Materials

The participants in this study consisted of two middle school English teachers

teaching the 2nd grade middle school students in Seoul. The school uses Middle School

English II, published by Doosan Publishing Company(Chang, et al., 2005). The scope of

studying contents treated by the teachers was due to one chapter in lesson 4 and lesson

5 for two weeks as their normal course of the first semester. They have four periods of

English class each week: three hours are compulsory and one is optional, but most middle

schools have four periods of English class in order to improve the students' competence

in English.

The teachers utilized a potable cassette recorder but avoided using other technical

instruments such as an MP3 or a stereo phone because they did not catch the response

of students sitting in the back. Any extra instruments to aid for catching sound such as

a microphone or a speaker set might be hindrance factors in a natural classroom setting.

Other methods to process data collection from the classroom are the following four

elements: visual recording, audio recording, field notes, and interview with participants in

the classroom. Some studies show results from the four methods of analysis data, and

others make use of three without visual recording. The researcher thinks that the method

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of using four elements is somewhat unnatural in the interaction of a real classroom

setting. Interview technique may not give any reliable information, for the middle school

students in a teacher-centered classroom are usually not active in front of a teacher or

an interviewer. Furthermore, they do not have enough confidence to express their ideas

orally.

<Table 1> Recording Time of Classes

2. Transcription Symbols

In addition to a number of ways of classroom discourse, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975)

have coding system. Their transcription systems largely have their own strengths and

weaknesses in cording the scripts. Most systems, however, focus on the ESL setting that

generally has a long turn of transcript. The EFL middle classroom setting demonstrates a

relatively slow interaction between teacher and students. In a teacher-centered classroom,

a teacher usually spends most of time trying to elicit students response. Therefore, a

teacher can speak many tasks in his/her turn of talk. In this research, some examples

similar to EFL setting were considered in order to meet the simple and short turn of

utterance. The transcription notation symbols are from Studies in Language Testing 14:

A qualitative approach to the validation of oral language tests by Lazaraton (2002, pp.

203-204). Though the system is for the candidates of speaking test in ESL and EFL, it is

rather simple to note for the middle school classroom interaction.

Excerpt (Tape 04 A)

Period 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Class A 24':06" 24':34" 23':25" 28':09" 22':31" 25':32" 19':50" 23':26"

Class B 33':21" 32':14" 32':07" 30':03" 25':58" 32':18" 32':12" 33':00"

Line Scripts Classif ication

102 T: Do you mind if, or is it okay? 5

103 Okay, very good. 3

104 If you want to do something you can use expressions. 8

105 Uh, so, if you want to open the window, 8

106 How can you say? 11

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In the excerpt above, a turn spoken by the teacher can be divided into some tasks

though she takes only one turn after a student utterance. Line 102 tells ‘confirming' on

student reaction in the course of explaining new information to students. Line 103 means

‘praising' as an affirmative feedback to students. Lines 104 and 105 can be divided into

two lines, for the teacher takes a long unit of time with a full stop between the

sentences. The teacher has a kind of ‘display question' in line 106 to check students

attention on the contents that the teacher tries to initiate.

IV. A naly sis and D iscu ssion

1 . F req u ency of Interaction

Three parts can be observed in the English classroom activities: teacher talk, student

talk, and tape listening. Tape listening means the native speaker's speaking recorded on

the textbook contents, which is an essential classroom aid during the lesson.

Mean time of tape listening(12.06%) is the second in each class, which is a little more

than the amount of student talk that the researcher has expected before experiment. The

result indicates that students strongly rely on the role of teacher tasks during the class.

<Table 2> Talk Time in Recording

Teacher talk consists of two languages in the classroom. Though teachers try to

speak English in order to meet the requirement of their English class, they have

sometimes decide to speak Korean so that students may understand the context. English

spoken by teacher has two types of teacher task: reading English lines in the textbook

and speaking in English to interact with students. L2 spoken by the teacher should be

Teacher Student Tape Listening

Class A 81.40% 7.11% 1.49%

Class B 86.08% 9.27% 12.64%

Total (Mean) 83.74% 08.19% 12.06%

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included in English language though the teacher reads English words or sentences of the

textbook, and L1 spoken by teacher be included in Korean language. A turn dominant in

L2 is also classified into English language.

<Table 3> Teacher Talk in Languages

2 . Teacher U tterances

Brown (2001) introduces the guidelines that help look into teacher and students roles

as initiators of interaction in the classroom. The introduction of list is from the work of

Moskowiz (1971, 1976) known as the FLINT(Foreign Language Interaction) model, which

gives us some categories in the classroom observation. The list is a little revised to meet

the EFL middle classroom context. For example, category 26 is added to explain the task

of teacher lecturing, and student talk is also revised according to the reaction to teacher

talk in the classroom.

<Table 4> Patterns of Classroom Interaction

Adapted Foreign Language Interaction Analysis (FLINT) system from Moskowiz (1971, 1976)

Korean English Total

Teacher A 16.6% 83.4% 100%

Teacher B 18.4% 81.6% 100%

Teacher Talk Student Reaction

No Tasks No Tasks No Tasks

1 accepting 14 correct mistakes 27 accepting

2 discussing 15 order 28 affirmative answer

3 praising 16 request 29 negative answer

4 encouraging 17 giving direction 30 question

5 conforming 18 directing drills 31 request

6 joking 19 criticizing 32 rejection

7 making fun 20 rejection 33 surprising

8 explaining 21 anger 34 laughter

9 clarifying 22 smile 35 noise

10 repeating words 23 silence 36 silence

11 display question 24 monolog

12 giving information 25 borrowing

13 referential question 26 translation in L1

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3 . Ty p es of Teacher Talk

1 ) F req u ency o f Teacher Talk

Teacher tasks mean the content of lesson that each teacher treats during each period

of the class. Each teacher has his/her own methods of teaching style though they teach

the same content of a textbook. Major types of teacher talks can be selected from the 26

tasks of teacher talk type according to the frequency of utterance during classes. Table 5

indicates the rank of teacher talk selected from 26 categories.

Class A (teacher A) speaks explaining (type 8) more frequently than other task of

teacher talk. She speaks display question (type 11) second time and she frequently

explains the topics in L1 translating (type 26) in order to make students understood

easily.

<Table 5> Major Five Types of Teacher Talk

In question types, teacher A asks students ‘display question' or ‘request,' whereas

teacher B usually prefers to ask students in request first and then employs two types of

questions: display and referential question. To analyze the difference between the classes,

the explanation on the main teacher task should be required: elicitation, questions, and

feedback.

Teacher A Teacher B

Rank Talk type Turns Talk type Turns

1 explaining 879 explaining 1383

2 display question 365 request 669

3 translating in L1 327 display question 330

4 request 213 referential question 233

5 conforming 183 conforming 156

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explaining50%

request20%

display question15%

conforming8%

referential question7%

[Figure 1] Frequency of Teacher Talk

2 ) The F req u ency of Qu estions

Long and Sato (1983) compared the number of ‘display questions' (questions that

teachers know the answer to and which are designed to elicit or display particular

structures) and ‘referential questions' (questions that teachers do not know the answers

to) in naturalistic and classroom discourse. They found that in naturalistic discourse,

referential questions are more frequent than display questions, whereas display questions

are much more frequent in whole-class teaching in ESL classrooms.

Display questions are usually dominant, which is similar to the results of other

researchers. Though teacher B (class B) tries to ask referential question in his classes,

the rate of frequency is less than the display question. The display question in class A

(365 turns: 35%) is the first feature more dominant than any other section.

<Table 6> Question in Periods

Teacher A Teacher B

Display Referential Display Referential

1 st 34 47 72 5

2 nd 41 12 26 23

3 rd 51 17 16 32

4 th 32 7 32 29

5 th 43 2 21 34

6 th 50 7 50 76

7 th 44 2 109 8

8 th 70 5 4 26

Total 365 99 330 233

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4 . The IRE P attern

1 ) Ty p es of Initiation

( 1 ) Req u est and G iv ing D irection

The data indicate the teacher initiation as a request and giving direction in

each period of class. The rate of giving direction is 4.7% in class A, and 3.5%

in class B, which is somewhat similar rate in frequency. The rate of request,

however, differs from each class. Teacher B employs request type twice times

more than teacher A. The rates make it possible to infer that teacher A

focuses on giving information directly to students in order to make them

understand the teacher intention, while teacher B prefers to lead the

communicative environment with students so as to react teacher initiation.

<Table 7> Request and Giving Direction

( 2 ) Conf irmation and O rd er

Teachers speak ‘confirmation' task more frequently than ‘order,'as minor

task. Teachers stress ‘confirmation' in order to make sure the text content or

their ideas, while they hardly speak to the students as an order type. The two

kinds of task are implied in questions as an initiation.

<Table 8> Confirmation and Order

5 . Teacher F eed b ack

1 ) Ty p es of F eed b ack

Teacher A Teacher B

Request Giving direction Request Giving direction

Total 8.5% 4.7% 19.7% 3.5%

Teacher A Teacher B

Confirmation Order Confirmation Order

Total 7.2% 0.2% 4.6% 0.2%

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Lyster and Ranta (1997) analyze the different feedback types in the

content-based French immersion classes. They say that all teachers employed

recasts more than any other type of feedback. The different feedback types are

presented in order from highest to lowest frequency. They demonstrate that

recasts accounted for more than half of the total feedback provided in the four

classes. Repetition was the least frequent feedback type provided compared

with other types of corrective feedback. They say that some of feedback types

occur in combination with each other. The order of feedback in their

experiment is from ‘recast' through ‘repetition': recasts→elicitation→

clarification requests→ metalinguistic feedback→ explicit correction→ repetition

2 ) Rep etition and Mother Tongu e

Lynch (1996) has a different idea on the feature of repetition that the

teacher uses in the classroom. He introduces some results on repetition

experimented by other researchers. Different from other studies by Cullen

(1998), Lynch (1996), and Chaudron (1983), this research shows that teachers

usually do not exploit repetition feature as their classroom feedback. The

teachers in the EFL middle school classroom give repetition to students only

0.02% each: teacher A uses it with 52 turns of 2513, while teacher B speaks

only his 76 turns as repetition. They hardly give the feature of correct

mistakes, which can be ignored due to its almost zero percent. In the EFL

school setting, the feature of translating in L1 may be a special attribute

spoken by a teacher to reduce the students' burden or anxiety during the

class.

<Table 9> Repetition and Mother Tongue

Teacher A Teacher B

Turns / Total turns Turns / Total turns

repeating words 0.02% 0.02%

correct mistakes 0.00% 0.00%

translating in L1 0.13% 0.01%

Total 0.15% /100% 0.03%) /100%

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V. Conclu sion and Imp lications

This study has examined the classroom interaction as it occurred in two

classroom activities between teacher and students in EFL middle school

classroom. The classes targeted in this research are the 2nd grade middle

school students in Seoul. The analysis shows that teacher talk is a lot more

dominant than student reaction in the teacher-fronted with a big size class

setting.

The analysis also shows that elicitation, response, and feedback are used

systematically by teacher, and students are part of the structure of classroom

discourse activities. The pattern, however, can be changed depending on the

teacher intention or the periods of lesson that students learn. While the pattern

of teacher talk can be related to the student reaction, the researcher thinks

that there are some problems or limitation in this research.

First, due to the classroom size, the analysis can not give any information

concerning each student reaction during the classes. A teacher as an instructor

and controller speaks his/her own talk without being interrupted, while all

students as participants can not give their responses at the same time.

Second, the classrooms are only two at the same 2nd grade middle school

students. The students participated in the class are 67 (class A: 32, class B:

35). The students number means that the data may not be generalized, but it

can be made up for as a setting that represents typical selection in mid-level

middle school students in Seoul.

Finally, there seems to be a problem in collecting data as it emerged during

the lesson. Generally, the way of monitoring the aspect of classroom

interaction is to audiotape or videotape the setting, allow a friend or a

colleague to observe the classroom, and note down the real interaction. The

methods, videotape or field note, might result in the side-effect for the

students who strive to provide appropriate responses to earn the approval of

the teacher, and the methods can inhibit the development of students own

internal motivation or otherwise their attempts at using the target language.

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요약

어교실에서의 교사말 략

심재황

이 연구의 목 은 실제학습이 이루어지고 있는 교실에서 교사와 학습자사이의

의사소통형태와 교사말에 한 학습자의 반응을 살펴보는 것이다. 연구조사에 있어서

연구자는 서울에 소재하고 있는 학교를 상으로 하여 실험자료를 수집하 다. 남성과

여성 각 두 명의 담당교사가 2005년 6월 순부터 2주 동안 어수업을 진행하 다. 두 명의

교사에 의한 각 학 의 수업내용은 시각 인 자료 없이 카세트테이 에 녹음되었다. 이것은

단순히 수업진행 상황만을 녹음하 음을 의미하며 시각 인 비디오테이 나 면담 등의

방식은 활용하지 않았음을 의미한다. 한 교사나 학습자들의 불안감이나 부담감을 배제한

자연스런 교실학습상황을 그 로 자료화 하려는 의도이다. 연구자료의 분류 결과로서

교사 심 인 학습환경에서 교사의 발화는 모든 의사소통의 방식에서 상당히 두드러진 반면

학습자의 반응이나 그 속성은 체로 매우 조했다. 이 결과를 근거로 하여 연구자는

교사발화를 더욱 세분화하여 연구하여 교사말이 학습진행 에 학습자의 학습이해

외국어이해도에 향을 미치는 것을 살펴보았다. Brown(2001)은 교사발화가 학습자에게 직

간 으로 향을 주고 있음을 밝히고 있는데, 이러한 이론을 바탕으로 하여 교실에서의

교사말이 좀더 자세히 연구할 필요가 있다. 즉 학습내용이나 교사의 학습방식에 상 없이

학습자들은 극 으로 반응하기가 기 되고 있으나 교실에서 어로 의사교류를 하는 것에

한 효과는 다소 부정 이다. 교사말에 한 학생들의 학습참여도, 즉 학습자 반응은

소극 이며 EFL 학습상황에서의 다른 변이요소도 이러한 결과를 래하고 있다. 그

결과로서 학습자들의 극 인 반응을 유도하고 효과 인 외국어 학습의 동기를 부여하기

하여 교사의 학습 략이 요구된다.

주제어: 교실 어, 교사말, 어로 말하기 수업, 교사학습 략

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