Abstract:
Adopting the ecological view of research amalgamated with a combination of Conversation Analysis (CA), Cluster Analysis (CL), and a dynamic and variable approach in analyzing classroom talk, this study investigated the interactional architecture of two discoursaly occluded interactional moves of EFL classrooms: the opening and the closing. To do so, 60 EFL classrooms at different proficiency levels were selected. Each classroom recording lasted 1.5 hours, totally comprising a 100-hour classroom corpus. From each class, the two phases of the beginning and the end of the session were targeted and the talks of teachers were analyzed. The results revealed that teachers had several interactional microactions which were counted as the submoves of starting a class and terminating moves. To start a class, teachers were observed to have several interactional strategies such as (a) greeting, (b) name calling, (c) asking reason for absences, and (d) checking the assigned homework and for the terminating a class have other interactional moves such as (a) giving assignment, (b) briefing of the next session plan, (c) stating attitude about the session, and (d) saying only farewell. In closing the class move, seven combinations of submoves were discovered as well. It can be concluded that, despite the gap in the literature on classroom discourse vis-à-vis these discoursal moves, the results indicate that both opening and closing the class moves have complex interactional architecture when they are investigated through microanalytic perspectives like CA, CL, and dynamic and variable approach.
Machine summary:
Discoursal Structure of Class Opening and Closing in EFL Teachers' Talk: A Conversational Analytic Perspective 1 Zia Tajeddin Professor of Applied Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba’i University Hessamaldin Ghanbar PhD Candidate in TEFL, Allameh Tabataba’i University Abstract Adopting the ecological view of research amalgamated with a combination of Conversation Analysis (CA), Cluster Analysis (CL), and a dynamic and variable approach in analyzing classroom talk, this study investigated the interactional architecture of two discoursaly occluded interactional moves of EFL classrooms: the opening and the closing.
Despite the analytical rigor of CA, most of the studies (Cazden, 2001; Hall, 1995; Nassaji & Wells, 2000; Nystrand, 1997; Waring, 2009) which used this framework analyzed classroom talk in terms of only one pattern which is called Initiation-Response-Feedback or IRF (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975; Waring, 2009) and sometimes referred to as Initiation-Response- Evaluation or IRE (Donato & Brooks, 2004; Thoms, 2012).
In sum, using a combined approach in classroom discourse analysis, teachers' interactional strategies were explored to fathom out how they set out and terminate a session of language teaching.
Table 1 The submoves of opening the class move in the EFL classroom Submove Frequency Greeting Constant Name calling Constant Asking reason for the absences 37 Checking the assigned homework 24 Checking last session topics + Reviewing 47 Giving brief explanations about the current session plan 27 / Figure 1.