Discourse Pattern in the Major Subjects of English Language Learners during Synchronous Meetings

Abstract

Students’ participation is one of the forefront responsibilities of every teacher. Through a well-designed discursive move, students take responsibility in their learning and take ownership of the development of the lesson. Since classroom talk is highly recognized, this study was conducted to examine the discourse patterns in the major subjects of English Language Learners during synchronous meetings. This qualitative study considered Literature and Language Major Subjects during the second semester of school year 2019-2020. The recorded synchronous meetings were analyzed to determine the prevailing discourse patterns. The result revealed that three discourse patterns were identified namely: Initiation – Response – Feedback (IRF), Initiation – Response – Evaluation (IRE), and student – initiated: Initiation – Response (IR) /Initiation – Response – Follow-up (IRF) exchange. In the IRF pattern, teachers intentionally used non-evaluative follow-up to encourage and elicit more talk from students and the use of non-evaluative feedback to maintained students’ engagement throughout the class time. In the IRE pattern, the teacher provided evaluative feedback when the desired answer was rightly provided by the students. However, the teacher would initiate another interaction when the right answer was not provided without explicitly stating the incorrectness of the answer to further students’ participation until the expected answer is given. In the inverted IRF, students initiate interaction in the class and it is a vivid picture that students are not apprehensive and hesitant to share their thought about the lesson being developed in their major classes.