How can teacher talk support learning?

Abstract

The dialogic nature of discourse which stems from the work of [Bakhtin, M. (1994). Speech genres and other late essays. In P. Morris (Ed.), The dialogic imagination (pp. 81–87). London: Edward Arnold. (Original work published 1986)] provides important understandings in an investigation into the nature of classroom discourse. Using analytical tools informed by Systemic Functional Linguistic theory it is possible to articulate a variety of teacher talk strategies which enable the teacher to apprentice his students into the discipline of History. By examining in detail excerpts from two History lessons that occurred at the beginning of the first year of high school in an independent Australian boys’ school, some of the teacher talk strategies that lead to students’ developing the skills and content relevant to a particular subject area have been identified. These are repeating, recasting and recontextualising language to develop technical language; cued elicitation; modifying questioning to extend or reformulate student's reasoning and recycling ideas through busy clusters of words.