Classroom Talk in EFL Classes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study sought to examine the patterns of talk and other
patterns that emerged in the classroom talk and aimed to investigate
the level of questions, the syntactic structure of questions, and the
initiated repairs used by teachers in classroom interaction. There
were 10 English teachers from 5 colleges who were randomly selected
as participants. The instrument used in the study was the recorded
teaching observation of the teachers. The verbatim transcriptions of
the video materials were used as the main instrument in examining
the teachers’ patterns of talk; their syntactic and cognitive level of
questions; and the other-initiation repairs used by them to resolve
the issues and to sustain the smooth flow of conversation. The study
made use of the qualitative and quantitative approaches and revealed
that teacher Initiation-Response-Feedback pattern was mostly used by
teachers which signify the restricted adherence of teachers in a one
cycle turn of asking questions by the teacher, providing response by
student and giving feedback by the teacher. Whereas on the emerging
patterns of talk, Initiation-Response pattern emerged which was
predominantly used by teachers. This shows that there are deviations
on the IRF pattern of eliciting verbal responses from the learners.
Teachers used low level type of questions both in the cognitive level
and syntactic structure of questions posted by teachers. This means
that questions used were not intended to develop students’ creativity.
Most teachers preferred to use the hearing repair which is the least
sensitive approach in resolving issues. This provided the teachers more
opportunities to address the problems in the course of the conversation.
The teachers have to accept the responsibility of providing solutions to
the identified problems instead of delegating the responsibility to the
students to solve the problem.