چکیده:
Teacher questions are claimed to be constitutive of classroom interaction because of their crucial role both in the construction of knowledge and the organization of classroom proceedings (Dalton Puffer, 2007). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering different question types believed to be helpful in creating the opportunities for learners’ interactions. Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL teachers manage understanding-check questions in their talk-in-interaction. For this purpose, six EFL teachers’ discursive classroom practices were observed, video-recorded, and transcribed line-by-line in its entirety. Through the microanalysis of the transcribed data, our findings suggest that EFL teachers vary in their management of understanding-check questions and the teachers’ understanding-check questions tend to serve different functions in the different micro-contexts identified. Three major sequential environments emerged to feature understanding-check questions in this study: Activity-boundary environment, post-instruction environment and within-activity environment. The findings of the study indicate that understanding-check questions at activity boundary environment are designed to accomplish dual functions, however those launched in post-instruction and within-activity environments maintain a singular focus on ensuring absolute understanding of the just-given explanation or instruction.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning No. 12, 2013 A Conversation Analytic Study on the Teachers’ Management of Understanding-Check Question Sequences in EFL Classrooms Baqer Yaqubi* Associate Professor, University of Mazandaran Sedigheh Karimpour M.
Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL teachers manage understanding-check questions in their talk-in-interaction.
The findings of the study indicate that understanding-check questions at activity boundary environment are designed to accomplish dual functions, however those launched in post- instruction and within-activity environments maintain a singular focus on ensuring absolute understanding of the just-given explanation or instruction.
Thus, this study takes conversation analysis approach, through paying close attention to teacher’s use of understanding- checks and the functions which they may serve in classroom discourse.
Data Collection Since the aim of this study is to provide a rich descriptive data about teachers’ management of understanding-check questions in naturally occurring interaction, this study used conversation analysis (CA) framework (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Psathas, 1995).
In the remainder of this paper, we aim to show how teacher participants of this study manage understanding-check questions in different ways: in the activity-boundary cases, the understanding- check questions are in part produced as a possible activity-closing sequence prior to transitioning to the next lesson segment, where no problem responses are welcomed and taken as a basis for sequence closing.
However, the findings in this study occurred in activity-boundary occasion show that teachers use yes/no questions following their understanding-checks to convey their expectancy for no problem response from the learners in order to move on to the next activity.