Professional Documents
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classroom context
Richard Cullen
In the era of communicative
language teaching, analyses of teacher talk
typically focus on the characteristics
that make, or fail to make such talk
communicative.
In most cases, the criteria for communicativeness
are
taken from what is felt to constitute communicative
behaviour in the world
outside the classroom.
Thus, communicative
classrooms are held to be
those in which features of genuine communication
are evident, and, by
exclusion, classes where they are not present are considered
to be uncommunicative.
In the case of teacher talk, similar criteria might be used to
assess such aspects of classroom language use as the kind of questions
teachers ask their students, or the way they respond to student contributions. In this article, I argue that this analysis of teacher talk is oversimplistic,
and ultimately
unhelpful
to teachers since its attempt
to
characterize communicativeness
only in terms of features of authentic
communication
which pertain outside the classroom ignores the reality of
the classroom context and the features which make for effective communication within that context,
Teacher talk:
quantity and
quality
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from classroom research that aspects of teacher talk, such as the kind of
questions teachers ask, can significantly affect the quantity and quality of
student interaction in the lesson (Brock 1986), and are also amenable to
the effects of training (Long and Sato 1983).
The notion of
communicative
teacher talk
Recent studies (e.g. Thombury 1996) have tended to focus on the extent
to which teacher talk supports a communicative environment in the
classroom, and specifically on how authentic it is - judged by how far it
shares features of so-called authentic communication outside the
classroom. Thus Nunan (1987) attempted to evaluate whether classes
which purported to be communicative really were so by determining the
extent to which genuine communication was evident in them. He
suggested that
genuine communication is characterized by uneven distribution of
information, the negotiation of meaning (through, for example,
clarification requests and confirmation checks), topic nomination and
negotiation of more than one speaker, and the right of interlocutors to
decide whether to contribute to an interaction or not . . . In genuine
communication, decisions about who says what to whom are up for
grabs. (Nunan 1987: 137)
Using characteristics such as these as criteria of communicativeness,
Nunans conclusion from his own investigations into classroom practice
was that there is growing evidence that, in communicative classes,
interactions may, in fact, not be very communicative at all (ibid.: 144). A
similar conclusion is reached by Kumaravadivelu (1993: 12-13):
In theory, a communicative classroom seeks to promote interpretation, expression and negotiation of meaning . . . [Learners] should be
encouraged to ask for information, seek clarification, express an
opinion, agree and/or disagree with peers and teachers . . . In reality,
however, such a communicative classroom seems to be a rarity.
Research studies show that even teachers who are committed to
communicative language teaching can fail to create opportunities for
genuine interaction in their classrooms.
In these arguments, the criteria for assessing the communicativeness of
classroom discourse and, by extension, of teacher talk, are taken from
what is perceived to constitute communicative behaviour in the world
outside the classroom. The fact that genuine communication appears to
comprise characteristics such as negotiation of meaning and topic
nomination by more than one speaker becomes de facto a reason for
incorporating them into classroom discourse, and for judging the
communicativeness or otherwise of classrooms according to whether
or not these features are present. The argument I wish to develop in this
article is that attempts to define communicative talk in the classroom
must be based primarily on what is or is not communicative in the
context of the classroom itself, rather than on what may or may not be
communicative in other contexts; and that the application of criteria of
communicativeness solely on the basis of social behaviour which exists in
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and
context
One might, to start with, take issue with the description of authentic
communication on which the argument is based. Would it be true to say,
for example, that in genuine communication, decisions about who says
what to whom are up for grabs? It might be generally true of informal
gatherings of groups of friends, but certainly not of more formal
gatherings, such as staff or board-room meetings. Communication at
such events tends to follow a very different pattern, determined by their
own rules and conventions, but that does not make it any less genuine
or authentic. Similarly, the classroom, typically a large, formal gathering
which comes together for pedagogical rather than social reasons, will
also have its own rules and conventions of communication, understood
by all those present; these established patterns are likely to be very
different from the norms of turn-taking and communicative interaction
which operate in small, informal, social gatherings outside. Any analysis
of the characteristics of the communicative classroom needs to take
these differences into account.
This is not to deny the importance of analyses of the properties of
spoken discourse found in contexts outside the classroom (e.g. Hoey
1992) in shedding light on what our wider teaching goals should be, and
to that extent suggesting ways in which the discourse of the classroom
could be moderated, in order that these goals might be more successfully
achieved. But that is a rather different matter from suggesting that
classrooms only need to replicate communicative behaviour outside the
classroom in order to become communicative.
Features
teacher
of
talk
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context
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talk in
action
S1
T:
S2:
S3:
T:
S4:
T:
S4:
T:
ss:
T:
ss:
T:
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ss:
Ss:
T:
Yes.
Er no. I dont agree with you. Shakespeare used to write plays. He
used to write . . . ?
Plays.
Can you remember some of his plays?
S5:
T:
S6:
T:
S7:
T:
Hamlet.
Hamlet.
As You Like It.
As You Like It. Fine.
The Tempest.
The Tempest, fine. We say Shakespeare
T:
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popular. He tries to find out what the students know before telling
them himself, and in the process responds on the spot to an unexpected
student response (Shakespeare), and makes a small teaching episode
out of it. The feedback he gives the students is clear and unambiguous,
and it is equally clear from the video recording of the lesson that he has
their undivided attention. One could argue, too, that his use of echoing
helps to ensure that this attention is not lost as he moves the class
towards the vocabulary items he wishes to focus on. The teaching, in
short, is effective, and the teachers talk - his use of questions and his
feedback moves - is supportive of learning.
Within the context of the classroom therefore, and the norms of
communication that operate there, it is surely meaningless and unhelpful
to classify this, and other similar examples of pedagogically effective
classroom discourse, as uncommunicative, simply because they fail to
exhibit features of communication which are found in contexts outside
the classroom. Communicative language teaching means communicative
teaching as well as communicative use of language, and defining the
notion of communicative in relation to teacher talk must therefore take
account of the teachers dual role as instructor as well as interlocutor.
I do not wish to imply from this that there is no place in the classroom
for the kind of features of genuine communication described in List A,
or that teachers will not benefit from an awareness of different ways of
operating in the classroom involving, for example, the increased use of
referential questions, and responding to the content as well as the form
of what students say in class. The inclusion of such features might well
enhance this particular teachers effectiveness by stimulating more
productive and varied use of English by his students. To that extent, the
study of discourses outside the classroom can serve to enrich the
interaction and the pedagogical effectiveness of what goes on inside the
classroom. But we should not conclude from this that the absence of
features of communication characteristic of discourses in the world
outside the classroom automatically renders classroom discourse
uncommunicative, since to do so is to ignore the peculiar nature and
purpose of the classroom encounter.
Categorising
teacher talk: a
way forward
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- questioning/eliciting
- responding
to students contributions
- presenting/explaining
- organizing/giving
instructions
- evaluatingicorrecting
- sociating/establishing and maintaining classroom rapport.
In order to determine how communicative a teachers use of a particular
category, such as questioning, is in a particular lesson, one would take
into account not only the extent to which particular questions engaged
the students in meaningful, communicative use of language, but also the
pedagogical purpose of the questions asked, and the teachers success in
communicating this purpose clearly to the learners. In the same way, a
teachers classroom instructions might be assessed as being more or less
communicative according to how clearly they were understood and
followed, whether they were sufficient or even superfluous, and whether
the teacher allowed opportunities for the students to seek clarification
and to negotiate meaning.
There are three important advantages, as I see it, in this approach to
describing and evaluating teacher talk. Firstly, the categories of verbal
behaviour are rooted firmly in the reality of the classroom and on what
typically goes on there. Secondly, the criteria for assessing communicative use of classroom language in each of these categories are
likewise based on what it takes to be communicative in the context of
the classroom itself, rather than in some outside context. The model of
communicative teacher talk emerging from such an approach should
thus reflect the primary function of teacher talk, which is to support and
enhance learning. Providing a model of the way language is used for
communication in the real world may be an important part of that
function, but it is not the only way in which teacher talk supports
language learning: it is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
Thirdly, a model of communicative language teaching which recognizes
the importance of the pedagogical function of teacher talk within the
classroom context, and what it means to be communicative within that
context, is likely to be a more realistic and attainable model for teachers
to aspire to than one which insists on the replication of features of
genuine communication as the only measure of genuine communicative
teaching.
Received July 1997
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References
Applied
Linguistics and English
Language
Teaching: Review of ELT 2/1. London: Macmil-
lan.
Krashen, S. 1981. Second
and Second Language
Language Acquisition
Learning. Oxford: Perga-
mon.
Kumaravadivelu, B. 1993. Maximizing learning
potential in the communicative classroom. ELT
Journal 47/1: 12-21.
Long, M. and C. Sato. 1983. Classroom foreigner
talk discourse: forms and functions of teachers
questions in H. Seliger and M. Long (eds.).
Classroom-oriented
guage Acquisition.
House.
Research
in Second
Rowley,
Mass:
Lan-
Newbury
The author
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