Analyzing Patterns of Classroom Interaction in

EFL Classrooms in IranThe goals of this research were the following:

• 1. to identify the interaction patterns between teachers and students

• 2. to investigate the effect of the gender of the teachers and the students on their interaction patterns.

• 3. to find out whether the interaction was teacher-dominated or student-dominated.

The results of the analysis• the interaction patterns between the participants vary with the

participants making use of a variety of discourse acts.

• Considering gender effect, it was shown that more similarities than differences existed between male and female teachers.

• The teachers dominated a high portion of classroom talk, the students did initiate exchanges with their teachers.

Vygotsky’s insights into the importance of social interaction in

learning (1962, 1978),

He states that the interaction between the participants, namely teacher and students, in that context are very important in education due to the pedagogic value of interaction patterns between students and teachers in the language classroom, since learning a language in the classroom is a consequence of the exposure of the learner to the linguistic environment. (second language classroom interaction.)

Discourse Analysis and Classroom InteractionClassroom discourse is used to measure, analyze

and describe the behavior of participants in classrooms each of which has its own tenets.

• Discourse Analysis is the study of the examination of language use by members of a speech community. It involves looking at both language form and language functions and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts.

Shokoohi's (2010) study showed that the conversations in classroom textbooks were artificial.

• The results of the study have revealed that lack of proper context and guidance for teachers and students are the significant deficiencies of the dialogs in the above mentioned textbooks.

Theoretical Framework of the Study

Has an objective descriptive tool that is necessary so that remarks made on the data will not be impressionistic or arbitrary . This Follows the analysis of conversational data, and establishes in the process new insights into the of patterns of interaction.

the basic organizational unit of conversation is a potentially three -part exchange

Initiation Response Follow –up

OBJECTIVE AND RESEARCH QUESTIOS

1. What are the predominant patterns of classroom interaction between teachers and students in EFL classrooms in Iran?

Requestives/ Directives/Elicitations/ Informatives 2. Are the interactions teacher-dominated or student-dominated? Teacher being the authority in the classroom. Student dominated.3. How are such patterns affected by genders (that of teachers and students)?‘Self-repair’ and ‘Peer-repair’ were placed under ‘RespondingActs’.

Occurring at follow-up moves in a better way.• While analyzing the interaction between the teachers and the students, some

utterances were run into which were not analyzable using the framework proposed by Tsui (1994).

For example:T: [writes the words ‘life’, ‘living’ and ‘lively’ on the board] What is thefirst word? Is it a ‘verb’, a ‘noun’, or an ‘adjective’?S1: It is an adjective.T: No. For example, ‘life is beautiful’.S2: It is a noun.T: Good.

The teacher providing a repair• When students have grammatical mistakes the teacher provides

her/him a repair.For example, consider the following utterance:• T: What would you have done in this situation?• S: I wouldn’t have done nothing.• T: I wouldn’t have done anything.• S: I wouldn’t have done anything.The student has a grammatical mistake (using nothing instead of anything) to which the teacher provides a repair in the third move.

Teacher and student talk• In this strategy the teachers help the students by giving them CLUES

(The student corrects the mistake) and Other-Initiated Repair (i.e., Teacher (repair) or other students (peer-repair) correct the mistake). For example: A student says: she want eat a apple. The teacher says : No . For example, She wants to eat an…….. The another student says: I think it is : She want to eat an apple , and finally, the student says: She wants to eat an apple because he trusts most of the teacher knowledge.

The Results of the Effect of Gender of the Teachers and the Students on their Interaction

PatternsThe Differences between Male and Female Teachers Manifested in

Teacher-Student Talk

Gender did not play an important role in determining the patterns of interaction between the teachers and the students. Anyway, Comparing the evaluation given by male and female teachers, it is shown that female teachers were more encouraging than male teachers, providing more positive evaluation to the students as feedback.

The Differences between Male and Female Students Manifested in

Student-Teacher Talk

• Both male and female students made use of the same discourse acts in their interaction with their teachers. Nevertheless, there are some important points to be mentioned regarding the amount of interaction. A large proportion of both male and female students’ talk was allocated to providing a response to teachers’ questions or instructions.

The Differences between Male and Female Students Manifested in Student-

Student Talk

There were some discourse acts which were absent in male Student-Student Talk, whereas they were present in female Student-Student Talk. They are: ‘Assessing’, ‘Self-denigration’, and ‘Acknowledgement’. Also, the act’ Elicit: clarify’ was present in male Student-Student Talk but absent in female Student-Student Talk.It can be said that the interaction patterns between the students, both male and female, were dominated by an ‘Elicit: inform’/ ‘Positive Response’ sequence

DISCUSSION

Analysis of the interactionit is revealed that the interaction patterns

between the participants in all three types of talk showed variation

it is shown that the teachers/pupils interaction was rather dominated by the teachers in both male and female classrooms

it was found that there is not much difference between male and female teachers.

Contrast to the findings

• Tsouroufli (2002), Drudy and Chathain (2002), Duffy et al. (2001), and Canada and Pringle (1995), who found that gender had a role to play in the interaction patterns between teachers and students.

conclusion

• In conclusion, it can be said that in order to avoid a teacher-dominated classroom, it is necessary for the teachers to reorganize the activities which can foster more interaction in the classroom, such as brainstorming and problem-solving, role play, simulations, and discussion. Using such activities in the classroom, teachers will be able to motivate students to learn in a more involving way.

IMPLICATION

• to move away from a teacher-dominated mode of teaching by adopting a more student-dominated mode of teaching. So, teachers should incorporate more real life like activities into their teaching practice such as ‘problem solving’, ‘information-gap tasks’ and the like. Furthermore, material writers and textbook developers should incorporate activities and tasks in the books which would provoke more ‘genuine communication’ between teachers and students.