You are on page 1of 9

Teacher talk and the

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

Until comparatively recently, teacher talk in the EFL classroom was


considered to be something of a danger area for language teachers, and
trainee teachers were warned to use it sparingly. Good teacher talk
meant little teacher talk, since it was thought that too much teacher
talking time (TTT) deprived students of opportunities to speak. Interest
in teacher talk within the profession has since shifted away from a
concern with quantity towards a concern with quality: while the question
of how much teachers talk is still important, more emphasis is given to
how effectively they are able to facilitate learning and promote
communicative interaction in their classroom through, for example,
the kind of questions they ask, the speech modifications they make when
talking to learners, or the way they react to student errors (see, for
example, Nunan 1989).
There are a number of good reasons for this shift in emphasis. Firstly,
teacher talk is now generally recognized as a potentially valuable source
of comprehensible input for the learner. Since this is essential for
language acquisition (Krashen 1981) getting teachers to reduce the
amount of their talk would not necessarily be in the interests of the
learner. Secondly, so far all attempts by trainers to root out the TIT
phenomenon have failed. This is particularly true in parts of the world
where the teachers role is traditionally one of transmitter of knowledge
and values, and where a preoccupation with reducing TIT would be
unrealistic, as well as culturally inappropriate. Thirdly, there is evidence
ELT Journal Volume 52/3 July 1998 Oxford University Press 1998

articles

179

welcome

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

180

Richard Cullen

articles

welcome

certain contexts outside the classroom could result in an inappropriate


and ultimately unattainable model for the majority of language teachers
to follow, similar to the earlier preoccupation with teacher talking time.
Communication

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

If we pursue the case for replicating communicative behaviour outside


the classroom, there are a number of characteristics of teacher talk
which we might identify as being communicative (see Thornbury 1996).
Some of these are:
1 The use of referential questions, where the teacher asks the class
something (e.g. What did you do at the weekend?) to which he or she
does not know the answer, and which therefore has a genuine
communicative purpose. This is in contrast to typical display questions
(e.g. comprehension questions on a reading text) to which the teacher
already has the answer, and only asks so that the class can display their
understanding or knowledge. Insights from analyses of discourse inside
and outside the classroom (e.g. Long and Sato 1983) have revealed very
marked differences between typical classroom talk and non-classroom
talk in this respect.
2 Content feedback by the teacher, where the teachers response to
student contributions focuses on the content of what the student
says-the message-rather
than on the form (e.g. the correctness of the
grammar or pronunciation).
Teacher talk in the classroom

181
articles

welcome

3 The use of speech modifications, hesitations, and rephrasing in the


teachers own talk, e.g. when explaining, asking questions, giving
instructions, etc.
4 Attempts to negotiate meaning with the students, e.g. through
requests for clarification and repetition, and giving opportunities for
the students to interrupt the teacher and do the same.
I shall refer to the features listed above as List A. Conversely, there are
a number of features of teacher talk which would be regarded as noncommunicative, in that they do not represent the way language is used in
many situations outside the classroom, and which I shall refer to as List
B. Examples of these features are:
1 Exclusive or excessive use of display questions.
2 Form-focused feedback, i.e. feedback by the teacher which only shows
interest in the correct formation of the students contributions (rather
than the content).
3 Echoing of students responses, when the teacher repeats what a
student has just said for the benefit of the whole class (something which
rarely happens in social intercourse).
4 Sequences of predictable IRF (initiation-response-feedback)
discourse chains (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) in which the teacher
initiates the chain (typically by asking a question), a student responds,
and the teacher then gives feedback to the student (e.g. good) before
initiating another chain with another question. The structure of spoken
discourse outside the classroom is usually more complex and flexible
than this (Hoey 1992).
The classroom

context

The problem with this analysis is that defining communicative teacher


talk purely in terms of the norms of communication
outside the
classroom ignores the context of the classroom itself, and what is
communicative within that context. It thus presents us with a onedimensional view of classroom talk, ignoring the fact that the
classroom is a unique social environment with its own human activities
and its own conventions governing these activities (Breen and Candlin
1980: 98).
In what way does this uniqueness affect the discourse of the classroom,
and teacher talk in particular? If we look at some of the characteristics of
teacher talk in List B above, it is not difficult to see how they may, in
fact, perform important communicative functions in the classroom
context. Take the phenomenon of echoing students responses. The
teacher may have perfectly valid communicative reasons for doing this,
such as making sure that everyone in the class has heard what Student A
has just said, so that a discussion can continue with everybody following
it. In a large class, echoing by the teacher may be the quickest and most
effective way of doing this. Equally important is the convention in many
classes throughout the world that the teachers repetition of a students
response acts as a signal confirming that the response is correct. The
students understand this convention, and the teachers failure to observe

182

Richard Cullen

articles

welcome

it may well result in puzzlement, insecurity, and hence a malfunction in


classroom communication.
In the same way, few (with some notable exceptions) would deny that
providing feedback on form has a place in language teaching. If this is the
case, there must be ways of providing it which are more or less effective,
and more or less communicative, in the sense of communicating clearly
and successfully to the students concerned. Rather than regard such
discourse as essentially uncommunicative, it would seem more productive
- and
more realistic in terms of our expectations of teachers - to
consider how to provide feedback in a way which is as communicative as
possible in the context of the classroom and which assists in the
attainment of the pedagogical purposes for which the students are there.
Teacher

talk in
action

The following fragment of a secondary school English lesson in Egypt,


transcribed from a video recording of the lesson, illustrates the point that
what appears to be non-communicative teacher talk is not necessarily so
in the classroom context. The context is a third-year class in a mixed
preparatory (lower secondary) school in Cairo. There are about 35
students in the classroom, seated at individual desks, facing the teacher
at the front of the class. The teacher is preparing the students for a
reading passage in their textbooks about the Egyptian writer Tahaa
Hussein. The classroom interaction recorded here is heavily teacher-led,
and thus very typical of the classroom discourse of large classes
throughout the world:
T:

S1
T:
S2:
S3:
T:

S4:
T:
S4:
T:

ss:
T:
ss:
T:

All right. Who can give me . . . er . . . a name of a great writer in


the English-speaking world? In the English-speaking world? The
name of a great writer. Right.
Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens. OK. What novel are we studying from Charles
Dickens this year?
[indistinct reply]
A Tale of Two Cities.
A Tale of Two Cities.

All right. We say that Dickens is a writer.


Who can give me another name for the word writer - a more
specialized term for the word writer?
Shakespeare. [indistinct reply]
Er . . Um. . . Thats not what I want. Shakespeare also is a great
writer, but I want . . . Yes?
Novelist?
A novelist. Thats what I want, Mazin. So I want the word
novelist. So we have the word novel. [writes on blackboard] We
say that A Tale of Two Cities is a
...?
Novel.
A novel. And the writer of A Tale of Two Cities is a . . . ?
Novelist.
A novelist. [writes on blackboard] Is a novelist. OK. He said - was
it you, Mazin, who said Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare also a
novelist? Is Shakespeare a novelist?

Teacher talk in the classroom

183

articles

welcome

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:

was a play . . . wright.


[writes on BB] A playwright. Remember this is not write, W-R-IT-E, This is playwright, W-R-I-G-H-T. A playwright. He was a
writer of plays. Now about our great writer Tahaa Hussein, Tahaa
Hussein. Who can give me one word to describe Tahaa Hussein?
As many words as you can. Everybody knew him or nobody knew
him or few people knew him? Who can give me a word to describe
him?
SS: Blindness.
T:
Er... blindness. Er . , . do we say Tahaa Hussein was blindness or
Tahaa Hussein was . . . ?
S9: Blind.
Blind. OK. Tahaa Hussein was blind. Im looking for a word to
T:
describe his fame. A word to describe his fame. So we say that he
was a . . . ?
Ss: Popular.
Popular. He was . . . ?
T:
Ss: Popular.
Tahaa Hussein was popular. Popular. All right, can you give me
T:
the name of a popular actor in Egypt? Popular actor in Egypt.
Popular actor.
If we use the descriptors of communicative and uncommunicative
teacher talk outlined in the foregoing discussion, this would probably be
classified as an essentially uncommunicative fragment of classroom
discourse. There would appear to be few, if any, List A characteristics
and plenty of List B ones. The teachers questions are all display
questions, since their purpose is to find out what the students know
about the writers he introduces, thus enabling them to display their
knowledge. Feedback from the teacher to the students responses is
either an acknowledgement
that the answer is acceptable (e.g. by
echoing, or by a comment such as fine) or an indication that it needs
correcting (Er . . . blindness. Er . . . do we say Tahaa Hussein was
blindness . . . ?). The extract also contains a good deal of echoing, and
the structure of the discourse follows a very distinctive IRF pattern.
In the context of the classroom, however, one could argue that many
communicative aspects of the discourse are illustrated here. The teacher
is following a carefully structured sequence of questions leading to clear
pedagogical goals - the teaching of the vocabulary items novelist and

184

Richard Cullen

articles

welcome

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

With regard to defining the notion of communicative teacher talk, I


would suggest that rather than comparing the way teachers talk in the
classroom with the way people talk outside it, a more productive
approach would be to identify categories of teachers verbal behaviour
in the classroom, and attempt to determine what it means to be
communicative in each one, and what might constitute a communicative
balance of behaviours for different teaching and learning purposes. The
following six categories are adapted from a list of categories of
classroom verbal behaviour in Bowers (1980), cited in Malamah-Thomas
(1987), identified through a process of classroom observation and
analysis of lesson transcripts:

Teacher talk in the classroom

185

articles

welcome

- 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

186

Richard Cullen

articles

welcome

References

Breen, M. and C. Candlin. 1980. The essentials of


a communicative curriculum in language teaching. Applied Linguistics 1/2: 89-112.
Brock, C. 1986. The effects of referential questions in ESL classroom discourse. TESOL
Quarterly 20/1: 47-59.

Bowers, R. 1980. Verbal behaviour


in the
language
teaching
classroom.
Unpublished
PhD thesis, Reading University.
Hoey, M. 1992. Some properties
of spoken
discourse in R. Bowers and C. Brumfit (eds.).

Malamah-Thomas, A. 1987. Classroom Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Nunan, D. 1987. Communicative language teaching: making it work. ELT Journal 41/2: 136-45.
Nunan, D. 1989. Understanding Language Classrooms. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.
Sinclair, J. and R. Coulthard. 1975. Towards an
Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thornbury, S. 1996. Teachers research teacher
talk. ELT Journal 50/4: 279-89.

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

Richard Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in the


Department
of Language Studies at Canterbury
Christ Church College. He has worked for the
British Council as an English Language Teaching
Officer in teacher education
on development
projects in Egypt, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. He
has also taught and trained teachers in Nepal and
Greece. His professional interests include teacher
and trainer-training,
classroom discourse, phonology, and the teaching and learning of grammar.
E-mail: <r.m.cullen@cant.ac.uk>

Teacher talk in the classroom

187
articles

welcome

You might also like