Teacher talk and the classroom context By Richard Cullen.pdf

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eacher 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 un-

communicative. 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 contribu-

tions. In this article I argue that this analysis of teacher talk is over-

simplistic 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 commu-

nication within that context

Teacher talk Until comparatively recently, teacher talk in the EFL classroom was

quant i ty and

considered to be something of a danger area for language teachers, and

qual i ty 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 Vol ume 52/3 July 1998 O xford Uni versit y Press 1998 179

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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 not ion of

Recent studies e.g. Thombury 1996) have tended to focus on the extent

communicat ive

to which teacher talk supports a communicative environment in the

teacher talk

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 interpreta-

tion, 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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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.

One might, to start with, take issue with the description of authentic

context 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 of

If we pursue the case for replicating communicative behaviour outside

teacher t lk 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 t alk n t he classroom

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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 non-

communicative, 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) dis-

course 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

The problem with this analysis is that defining communicative teacher

context 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 one-

dimensional 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

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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

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

act ion

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

o

Two Cities.

A Tale

o

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

o

wo Cities is a ...

Novel.

A novel. And the writer of A Tale

o

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 t alk n the classroom

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184

ss

Yes.

T:

Er no. I dont agree with you. Shakespeare used to write plays. He

used to write . . . ?

Ss: Plays.

T:

Can you remember some of his plays?

S5: Hamlet.

T: Hamlet.

S6: As You Li ke I t .

T:

As You Li ke It . Fine.

S7: The Tempest .

T:

The Tempest fine. We say Shakespeare was a play . . . wright.

[writes on BB] A playwright. Remember this is not write, W-R-I-

T-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.

T:

Blind. OK. Tahaa Hussein was blind. Im looking for a word to

describe his fame. A word to describe his fame. So we say that he

was a . . . ?

Ss: Popular.

T: Popular. He was . . . ?

Ss: Popular.

T:

Tahaa Hussein was popular. Popular. All right, can you give me

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

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

teacher talk a

would suggest that rather than comparing the way teachers talk in the

way forward

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:


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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 commu-

nicative 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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ing University.

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Oxford: Perga-

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in the communicative classroom.

ELT

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ing: making it work. ELT Journal 41/2: 136-45.

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Sinclair, J. and R. Coulthard.

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ELT Journa l 50/4: 279-89.

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, phonol-

ogy, and the teaching and learning of grammar.

E-mail:


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