Initiation-Response-Feedback Research Articles

The Discourse of Whole Class Teaching: A Comparative Study of Kenyan and Nigerian Primary English Lessons

This paper explores the discourse of whole class teaching in Kenyan and Nigerian primary school English lessons. Twenty lessons were analysed using a system of discourse analysis focusing on the teacher-led three-part exchange sequence of Initiation – Response – Feedback (IRF). The focus of the analysis was on the first and third part of the IRF sequence as it is here that research suggests teachers can enhance pupil learning through questions and follow-up which asks pupils to expand on their thinking, justify or clarify their opinions, or make connections to their own experiences. The findings suggest that teacher questions were mainly closed requiring recall of information and teacher follow-up, where it occurred, often consisting of a low level evaluation of a pupil response, thereby severely constraining opportunities for pupil participation in the classroom discourse and higher order thinking. The implications of the findings are considered in the light of their impact on classroom pedagogy and the professional development of Kenyan and Nigerian primary teachers.

Humanistics Language Teaching, Facilitation, and Classroom Conversation

Despite the fact that teachers of foreign languages often talk about ‘conversation classes’, the provision of conversation and instruction is often considered to be mutually exclusive (Seedhouse 1996). However, this paper proposes that humanistic language teaching (HLT) is one way of resolving this paradox. A language instructor has two sources of authority: institutional and linguistic. A facilitator, using humanistic teaching techniques, gives up institutional authority and so ‘frees up’ the classroom turn-taking system so that the strict initiation-response-feedback (IRF) pattern of most teaching is transformed into a conversational pattern where any participant is potentially a next speaker. Consequently, a conversation can take place in a class. On the other hand, linguistic authority is still exercised in the form of side-sequences which allow the facilitator to provide minimally invasive feedback without affecting the overall orientation to conversational rules of turn-taking. Keywords : facilitation, humanistic language teaching, identity, conversation, initiation-response-feedback

Agency and contingency in the language learning of refugees and asylum seekers

This paper analyses the contribution of student agency and teacher contingency in the construction of classroom discourse in adult English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes for refugees and asylum seekers, for whom the identity of student itself can constitute a stable point in a highly unstable and potentially threatening lifeworld. In contrast to accepted ideas of the prevalence of teacher-initiated initiation–response–feedback (IRF) sequences in whole group teacher-fronted activity, characteristic student-initiated moves for bringing the outside into classroom discourse are identified. These are discussed in terms of the student agency and teacher contingency involved, drawing on the Bakhtinian notion of “answerability.”: teacher and students are robustly claiming interactive space in classroom talk, bringing the outside into discussion. This data, drawn from narrative and classroom data in case studies of Adult ESOL classrooms, points to less docile more agentive and open-ended models of classroom discourse than have typically been evidenced in the literature.

Styles and sequences of cooperative interaction in fixed and reciprocal peer tutoring

The research presented here analyzes the process of interaction in pairs of students, organized into fixed and reciprocal tutoring, in an authentic written composition task. Analysis of the interactivity, or joint activity, highlights the emergence of two different patterns: the tutor's active pattern and the tutee's reactive pattern, as well as different styles of cooperative interactions, depending on the role (tutors tend to monopolize co-operation tutorials and the tutee tend to do so in collaborative sessions) and type of tutoring, reciprocal tutoring being that which best combines collaboration and tutorial. Finally, a sequential analysis allows for the identification of three types of sequences (collaborative, tutorial and the prototypical initiation–response–feedback sequence) that govern the exchanges in the tutorial situations analyzed and that locate cooperation as its central core.

The Dynamics of Classroom Small Talk

This paper illustrates how classroom small talk between a teacher and students constitutes a distinct interaction pattern which varies significantly from pedagogical discourse of an institutional nature such as the initiation/response/feedback (IRF) pattern described in previous literature (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975). By presenting a piece of extended small talk in an ESL secondary classroom in Hong Kong and contrasting it with a piece of typical teacher-orchestrated institutional classroom talk, I show how the teacher and students demonstrate more dynamic and less asymmetrical roles during small talk with clear evidence of active contributions to the exchange by the students in terms of topic setting, turn initiation, turn development, and negotiation of meaning. Features of the small talk resemble everyday social discourse. Implications of this kind of classroom talk on the learners’ L2 language development are explored.

Resistance and Creativity in English Reading Lessons in Hong Kong

In this paper, I analyse pupil-teacher dialogue, in a mixture of English and Cantonese, from a segment of a Form 2(Grade 8, 13-14yrs) English reading lesson. The lesson was video taped in a working-class school in Hong Kong, and the excerpt is taken from a larger corpus of similar lesson data videotaped in the class over three consecutive weeks. The analysis shows how these Cantonese children, with limited English, succeeded in subverting the reading lesson, which was based entirely on information extraction tasks.Instead, they negotiated their own preferred comic-style narratives by cleverly making use of the response slots of the IRF (Initiation-Response-Feedback) discourse format used in the lesson. Thus they achieved genuinely creative responses, in spite of the curriculum. The implications for teaching are discussed.

English Conversation, by Amy B.M. Tsui. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. xviii+298 pp.

English Amy B.M. Tsui. Conversation by Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. xviii+298 pp. Reviewed by Anna M. Guthrie University of California. Los Angeles While wOTk analyzing the structures of conversation has predominantly been methodology of Conversation Analysis (hereafter called CA), which seeks to explore the interactional accomplishment of the participants carried out under the in a particular context as it develops tum-by-tum, Tsui's approach to analyzing conversation in English Conversation is one which proposes a descriptive framework for the sequential patterning of ccxiversational utterances. Based on the Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) model in which interactional coherence is considered at the level of exchange structures, in particular the initiation- response-feedback (I-R-F) exchange, Tsui develops a taxonomy which both classifies utterances and predicts which classificatiwis of utterances can follow others based on and an utterance's structural location, prospective classification, (3) retrospective classification. it is Throughout the book, Tsui argues that her framework, because based on both the sequential patterns d valid and comprehensive than other conversation and linguistic features, is more ^proaches. In her Overview (Chapter Tsui discusses two different sets of units of conversational description and sequence, used in CA, and those which she favors act, move, and exchange, jH-oposed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). In her arguments both against the terms used in C A and in favor of the turn, pair, Sinclair and Coulthard terms, Tsui demonstrates some misunderstanding of both frameworks, as well as a lack of understanding that the two approaches to analyzing q)eech are seeking to answer very different questicHis. Tsui's adaptation and expansion of the Sinclair and Coulthard model confuses conversation with formalized institutional talk. The Sinclair/Coulthard model, with its terms act. move, and exchange, was devetoped to describe classroom interaction, specifically, that classroom interaction which is often referred to as traditional, in which the teacher [is] at the front of the class teaching', and therefwe likely to be exerting the maximum amount of control over the structure of the discourse (Sinclair overall structure of this type of discourse is Coulthard, 1975, p. 6). The vastly different from, and certainly Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 6 No. 2 1995 Regents of the University of California