English Language Teaching in its Social Context - Focusing on Analysis of Classroom Discourse from a Migrant English Class

Abstract

This paper analyzed classroom discourse with three videos extracted from one English class for migrants who are from non-English speaking countries in Australia. Eight adult migrants want to learn English for survival in Australia and their residence period in Australia is less than one month. The analysis results are as follows: 1) The teacher gives instructions about the activity in a structured and systematic way. 2) For low-level students, there is more I-R-I-R-F format than I-R-F, and the teacher talks more in initiation than feedback. 3) All questions are closed for low-level students and the teacher does not give answer directly so that students can find an answer by themselves through repetition and reformulating questions. 4) There are more display questions and positive feedback than referential questions and negative feedback for low-level students. 5) Group activities and role plays can give students opportunities to utilize what they have learned. This paper is meaningful in that the findings can be applied to English classes focusing on improving communicative ability in Korea.