ADRESSING IRAQI EFL TEACHER/ LEARNER DISCOURSE INTERACTIONS IN TASK BASED CLASSROOMS

ADRESSING IRAQI EFL TEACHER/ LEARNER DISCOURSE INTERACTIONS IN TASK BASED CLASSROOMS

By yenny Bautista Pinzón

Based on the text it can be understood that classroom discourse is a kind of discourse that is realized in the classroom, it differs from the other sorts of discourse because the specific roles the participants play and the king of activities to which they are exposed. Conversations framed in institutional setting are somehow regulated by the rules and the conceptions of the institutions.

            Through classroom discourse, it can be observed different aspects like power relationships, turn taking, and issues of interaction among others, at the beginning it sounds not really valuable to analyze classroom discourse, but it can be helpful at the moment of understanding what is really happening around the classroom interaction and if the goal of communication have been really achieved.

The kind of language use in the classroom is pedagogical discourse, it implies teachers and students moving around institutional constructions where the teachers provides some information and controls the class and the students receive it an produce something depending on the different content given to them. According to Kramsch (1985) discourse in the classroom is an ongoing process moving from pedagogic to natural discourse. On the other hand, McTear (1975) asserts that it is the result of instruction and mechanical sorts of language in use. Through observation this author could stablished four types of language use in an EFL classroom: mechanical. Meaningful, pseudo communication and real communication.

Based on the text it can be said that discourse in the classroom follows certain structures: IRF, Instruction, Probing questions, AND argumentation. The IRF is a sequence where teacher initiate interaction mostly by asking questions, students response and then comes feedback. In instruction students understand directions an commands said by the teacher but there is not a spoken response instead there is a physical response. In probing questions, teacher addressed interaction by asking referential questions where students are thought to answer those using their thinking abilities. Finally argumentation where through the use of referential questions, teachers involve students into processes like argumentation clarification, stablish a position given support to their ideas.

It is said that teachers are always questioning students to create classroom interaction, teachers use questions to make learners to talk about the diverse topics set during lessons. Display and referential  are two types of questions; being the former those  where the teacher already knows the answer and can be responded shortly, and referential questions which according to the research studies promote more interaction more over there are other types of questions like convergent questions and divergent questions.   

By observing different teacher it can be said that: inside the classroom teachers use more display questions so there was not much interaction compare to the outside discourse. Experienced teachers, compared to unexperienced ones, permit more interaction; there is more negotiation in the classroom. In addition, teachers who were trained to use referential questions, they were using those in the classroom instead of display questions, having the contrary situation with the ones that were not train.

Having in mind this study about interaction in task based classroom and based on the conclusion given by the authors I can say that understanding our classroom should be a matter of interest of me as teacher, I can never forget the real purpose of my English classes that is letting students to communicate.  How to achieve that if I do not know my classroom, classroom are more that spaces to provide comprehensible input and students producing something, the question here is, what is it that they are producing? What do I want them to produce answer and behave?  What really matters is the ongoing in the classroom because of constructing and interacting naturally.

If it is well known that teachers are always using questions in their classrooms as a way to promote speaking and interaction, we have to reflect about the kind of questions that we are using and the environment that we set to promote the answers. So making they feel comfortable to speak and motivated to do so, can be a good strategy. The majority of the time we overwhelm students with questions without a clear and meaningful purposes, a result they do not feel motivated to speak or answer. Therefore, at the end teaching English appears to be like a challenge for teachers, the way they address their classes can be a crucial aspect when it comes to getting students close to real interaction.