Analysis of elementary school students’ utterance patterns in a teaching English in English classroom

Abstract

This study aims to explore the ways in which elementary school students get involved with classroom discourse in terms of voluntariness and the types of their utterances as a means of communication. To pursue the goal, this study investigates an English classroom with the following research questions: (a) how often the students attempted to initiate communication in classroom discourse, (b) what types of utterances were produced in teacher-initiated discourse and student-initiated discourse. To answer these research questions, the class of twelve 4 th graders taught by their English teacher was regularly observed and recorded by the researchers on their parents’ consent. The data were analyzed on the basis of Ratner’s (2002) meaning unit. Findings include (a) only 38% of their English speaking was initiated voluntarily, (b) their voluntary speaking, however, showed a much wider range of communicative functions than their speaking created for the teacher-initiated discourse, and (c) the voluntarily initiated discourse helped them to actively get involved in and manage their academic and social events as well as express their feelings. Such voluntary speaking, however, was not fully appreciated as the teacher did not provide enough feedback on both form and meaning. Consequently, their voluntary speaking was not developed into an expanded discussion.