Paper - 12 Classroom Interaction

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Prepared by : Komal Shahedapuri

Roll No : 14

Paper -12 : English Language Teaching -1

M.A (English) : Sem -3

Enrollment No: 2069108420170027

Batch : 2016-18

Email  ID : komaltara1311@gmail.com

Submitted to : Smt .S. B Gardi , Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University. 

Topic: Classroom Interaction

                                                                                                                               By B.M Tsui

Preface

                  In order to acquire any (English) language, some practical things should be practiced in language classroom. First thing in classroom should be happen that meaningful Interaction between teachers and learners and among the learners in the language classroom. Earlier studies of second language classroom interaction focused on language used by the teacher and learners the interaction generated, and their effect on L2 learning. Classroom interaction stimulates the learner’s involvement in the classroom. It fuels student’s motivation and help learners to see the relevance of teacher’s topic. It increases participation of learners in classroom discussion. They are given the chance to air their opinions in the class.

         

        Allwright (1984) proposed that interaction is the fundamental fact of classroom pedagogy because everything that happens in the classroom happens through a process of live person-to- person interaction. This perspective has led researchers to observe and describe the international events that take place in a classroom in order to understand how learning opportunities are created and also to examine how different kinds of classroom interaction lead to learning. (Dehsheikhi)

The nature of second language classroom discourse 

Classroom discourse mediates between pedagogic decision-making & outcomes of language instruction. Classroom discourse:

• is not planned in advance

• is co-produced with the learners

• will reflect the pedagogic decisions that have been taken

• evolves as part of the process of accomplishing the lesson

• has been found to manifest distinct and fairly predictable characteristics (Dehsheikhi)

Definition

‘Classroom Interaction is a practice that enhances the development of the two very important language skills which are speaking and listening among the learners.’ This device helps the learner to be competent enough to think critically and share their views among peers.

Van Lier (1988) identified the following basic rules governing classroom turn-taking:

1. In L2 classrooms, whenever centralized attention is required: a. One speaker speaks at any one time; b. Many can speak at once if they say (roughly) the same thing, or at least if ( a proportion of ) the simultaneous talk remains intelligible.

2. If not (a) or (b), repair work will be undertaken. He also states that classroom turn-taking is different from other verbal interactions in that it is regulated by means of some form of centralized control to ensure intelligibility. (Dehsheikhi)

There are major two interactions

 Between Teacher & Learners

• Teacher’s talk is usually in a form of a questions, it teaches learners to interact with teacher.
• Emotional Support: Positive relationships among teachers and students
• Classroom Organization: Well-managed classrooms that provide students with frequent, engaging    learning activities
• Instructional Support: Interactions that teach students to think, provide ongoing feedback and    support, and facilitate language development 

                                          

Among Learners 

          Leaner’s talk is usually a straight answer to the question posed by the teacher. This one is allow the learner to learn and understand how to work with partners. It develops and improves the skills of team work and peer relationship. It emphasizes the communicative and cooperative work. They develop their cooperative learning by supporting each-other It avoids a boring, repetitive, and isolating learning environment, build activities and assignments that ignite classroom discussion. (Robayo)
                                         

Types of Classroom Interaction

                                           

These are the different methods of classroom interaction through which effective and successful interaction can be created in classroom.

Conversation with Learners. 

Conversation is most important part of learning process of any language, it should be happen between teacher and learners and among learners. It can help learners to improve the two important skills of language learning that is speaking and listening.

Collaborative learning

Collaboration of different learners whose native language is different and belong to different places. By work together, all learners can know about each other’s culture, places etc, which make them one group to achieve one goal that is learn target language.

Interactive Session

In classroom, there should be interactive sessions with teacher and native speakers of target language. Learners can take part in this interaction and can improve more language skills.

Discussion and Debate

In classroom, some events like discussion on various topics and debate on particular topic should be dose, so that learners critical as well as creative thinking can expand. By taking part in this events, learners can learn how to argue with others on various topics and can express personal views in it.

Role Play

Role playing is whereby the students take on given role and act out on screen with other. This allows students to demonstrate creativity and knowledge and help them t outside the constraints of classroom. (Tsui)

Loud Reading 

Reading aloud includes a situation where one person read aloud while others are listening which improve again speaking and listening skills.

Story- telling 

Learners can tell different stories which can improve speaking skill and imaginative skill of learners in target language.

Teacher’s role

            The role of the teacher during these sessions is passive yet very crucial. It is the responsibility of the teacher to create learning culture or atmosphere inside the classroom. It is through these interactive sessions teacher can extract responses from learners and motivate them to come out with new ideas related to the topic. Teacher is an observer who helps learners to construct an innovative learning product through group discussion, debate, and many more. Teacher can plan out the best modules of interaction that would be effective to invite the learners in classroom interaction through which the learners will be able to get themselves involved with the concept, ideas and various other devices and products for language and culture learning. There was the time when the traditional approach of teaching was adapted by most of the teachers, where the learner used to be dependent on the lecture delivered by the teacher. They were not exposed enough to practice of speaking on their own and hence the interaction among the learner in the classroom almost absent. But as the education system changed and technology developed with time. So, now with tools of technology and teacher, more of learner’s interaction is in demand rather than just listening to the instructor. Classroom interaction is very important and essential in today’s education system. (Ibrahimova)

           
            Teacher can make eye contact with each students by scanning the entire classroom as teacher speak by moving in all sections of the class. Encourage those students who rarely participate in conversation or interaction in the classroom. Improving classroom interaction involves continually assessing teacher’s teaching, students’ learning and teacher’s relations with students. The students have relation with the teacher, with each-other and with the materials. It’s important to get feedback about all the three of these relationships. Teachers should make their teaching transparent, ask students if they understand that why they are doing all these activities. Teacher can also use workbook titled “Creating a Feedback Questionnaire” which help teacher to come up with additional methods for generating feedback from students. Teacher’s Role is to provide the materials, adequate environment, Feedback on students and create the opportunity where students can interact. (Robayo)

The teacher’s contribution to classroom discourse L2 TEACHER TALK can be viewed as a special register, analogous to foreigner talk.

Fillmore (1985) identified a number of features of teacher talk that she claimed were facilitative of acquisition:

•  Avoidance of translation
•  An emphasis on communication and
•  comprehension by ensuring message redundancy The avoidance of ungrammatical teacher talk
•  The frequent use of patterns and routines
•  Repetitiveness
•  Tailoring questions to suit the learners’ level of
• proficiency General richness of language

Student’s role Interact in classes

•  Create feedback to teacher
•  Ask for correction and help
•  Cooperate with other students
•  Use the target language in learning process (Robayo)

Objectives

For students:· 

• To help the learners to identify their own learning methods.
• To guide the learners to communicate with their peers easily. 
• To help the learner to come face to face with the various types of interaction.
• To aim at meaningful communication among the students in their target language.

For teachers:

• To know the students´ needs
• To create an adequate communication 
• To aim at probing into the learner’s prior learning ability and his way of conceptualizing facts and ideas.
• To help the teacher to have a detailed study of the nature and the frequency of student interaction inside the classroom (Dowsakul)

          These are the main objectives of classroom interaction which help learner to know about themselves that in which skill they are good and what is their real talent or strength. They can easily identify that how they can learn or which methods are appropriate for themselves to learn anything. It can guide them that how to talk with their peers in a proper way about various topics. It provide the chance to the learners for face to face conversation with peers and teacher in the classroom, with the development of the technology the online virtual classroom created that is Google Classroom which is very wonderful platform where the learners can attend classes from different places wherever they want. It can very useful to he learners who are living in a different cities or states or countries. It can help learners to interact with others in a target language.

Characteristics

1.  In contrast, more student-centered classes provide adequate time during activities for students to think about concepts, receive feedback, and/or participate in discussions that may guide the direction of the lesson. 
2.  Some activities may allow students freedom to engage in their own learning (e.g., online search for relevant information) and/or may involve the students using the instructor as a resource to provide information as needed. This "guide-on-the-side" model is indicative of highly reformed, student-centered classrooms. 

          Here, the focus is on the learners that how their learn and improve after achieving feedback from the teacher and participation is more important for them. Activities should be done in classroom which provides freedom to the learners to engage in their own learning, for example when teacher is teaching something but it is bit difficult for students to understand than students can search meanings in dictionaries and read online about it which can give clear understanding of the topic that is taught by the teacher in the classroom to the students.

Structuring of Classroom Interaction·

•  Contains activities where the instructor can receive student feedback to determine if there is a need to adapt the direction of the lesson.· 
•  Have multiple opportunities for interaction between the instructor, individual students, small student groups, and the whole class.· 
•  Capitalizes on the diversity of student experiences to generate alternative solutions to (open-ended) problems and to explore student ideas within the context of the lesson.· 
•  Includes sufficient time to have meaningful discussions around student activities and arrive at fully realized responses. 

 Teacher should arrange such an activities where students can totally engage themselves and teacher can get feedback of them that what is their experience of learning through different methods. There is diversities in various experience of the students which can explores the new ideas in their mind. Teacher should provide sufficient time for discussion, it’s like open ended discussion.

Importance of classroom talk 

• Studies conducted on classroom interaction have shown that student talk accounts for an average of less than 30 percent of talk in ‘teacher-fronted’ classrooms.
• Yet studies on language and learning have shown that children not only learn to talk but they also talk to learn. This can be seen from the fact that children are persistent questioners; it is by asking questions that they explore and learn about the world around them.
• However, studies have shown that the number of questions asked by children drops significantly as soon as they enter school. (Wilkinson) 

          Through the classroom interaction, students can learn to speak in a target language with peers and teacher in classroom as well as the outside the classroom. They speak to learn some new things form others. Students should ask different questions which can enhance their imaginative power and critical thinking.

Goals of classroom interaction

• promote meaningful communication in the target language .
• provide a metalanguage for talking about language and culture .
• engage learners with texts and resources that reflect language and culture in context.
• engage learners in tasks that deepen their experience and understanding of the target language and culture
• promote reflection on language and culture learning and use . 

             Main goals of classroom interaction are that to provide the wonderful platform to the learners where they can practice all things practically. Language used in the classroom, two language should be there first is target or English language and second is native language which can provide basis for deeper cognitive engagement in classroom. Metalanguage (Vocabulary) should be provide to the learners as support to speak in the English language about the culture and language. Engagement of the learners in the tasks which can deepen their experiences and understanding of the language and culture and develop their major four skills of language learning LSRW through the activities like debate, role play , screening of English movies without subtitle, listening and talking with the native speakers of English language.

What Shapes Interaction in a Language Classroom?

•  pedagogic goals (what is to be taught).
•  methodological goals (how is it going to be taught).
•  social goals (what kind of social relationship is to encourage).
•  classroom settings and teacher action zone.
•  Type of task being used.
• students’ willingness to communicate.

         Aspects of the Language pedagogy Standard specifically addressed in the module are (to) create a culture of learning …which fosters interest in languages and cultures and encourage learners to accept responsibility for their own learning, (use)… a range of methodologies for languages and cultures teaching and in their practice select from these in a principled way, taking into consideration the learners, the learning context, curriculum goals, and the aspect of language being taught. (Wilkinson) What is there which shapes the interaction in language classroom that is what is to be taught? How it taught in which method? Which types of social relationships are built by it? Classroom settings or atmosphere is also affects the interaction. Which types of tasks can be given to the learners which help them to improve language skills is very important. Major thing that is matter here is the learner’s willingness to communicate which matters a lot if it is not present all above things are fail for successful classroom interaction.

Conclusion 

           This idea is to reinforce the technique in successive class. Interaction is what people do most in their daily lives. If the person is accustomed to interacting then surely we as teachers must try to get learner to carry on interacting in conversation in the class. So, while we the teachers can’t show students how to exercise their vocal codes, we can remind them to use normal conversation tactics. It makes classroom dynamic and L2 learners can do appropriate tasks that is given by teacher to them which here means “Interaction”. (Dowsakul) 

                                  "Telling is not teaching;

                                    listening is not learning.

                                    Teaching is listening,

                                    learning is talking"

Works Cited

Dehsheikhi. Slideshare. <https://www.slideshare.net/dehsheikhi/classroom-interaction-and-second-language-acquisition>.

Dowsakul, Mrs.Yaowarin. Slideshare. <https://www.slideshare.net/yaowarinsriuttaman/classroom-interaction-32085345>.

Ibrahimova, Aybeniz. "slideshare." <https://www.slideshare.net/aybeniztahirova/classroom-interaction-38493123>.

Robayo, Vanessa Pérez. Slideshare. <https://www.slideshare.net/vanessaperez731135/classroom-interactions>.

Tsui, B. M. "Classroom Interaction." 6.

Wilkinson, Tina. Slideshare. <https://www.slideshare.net/tina_wilkinson/classroom-interaction>.