Teacher Talk on Expanding ESL Primary Classroom Discourse (A Case Study in an International School in Bandung)  

Oleh:

Aisah, Eneng Elis ; Hidayat, Deden Rahmat

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: 57th TEFLIN International Conference: Revitaziling professionalis in ELT as a response to the globlazed world, Bandung, 1-3 November 2010
Topik: Classroom Practices; teacher talk; extended classroom discourse; expansion system
Fulltext: Eneng Elis Aisah & Deden Rahmat Hidayat.pdf (108.95KB)

Isi artikel

This study aims to uncover teacher talk on expanding English as Second Language (ESL) classroom discourse in lower primary level. This is to investigate discourse strategies a teacher apply to extend the classroom discourse and the impact of the teacher’s discourse strategies on expanding classroom discourse. The study was conducted in a newly-established international school which English is used as its instruction language in almost all subjects and has a need to improve its students’ English speaking skills in everyday life. This study is designed in qualitative framework employing characteristics of a case study. Data are video-record transcriptions of a 1st grade teacher’s English class involving 18 students, in which English is regarded to be their second language. The data are analyzed in the frame of discourse analysis that is examining the language produced spontaneously, focused on the interaction between and among speakers rather than on monologic talk (Lazaraton 2009) and by means of extended classroom discourse principles and characteristics proposed by Gibbons (2002; 2009) and expansion concept in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1994). It is revealed that the teacher employed some strategies proposed by Gibbons (2002; 2009), Mercer & Wegerif, (1999); Mercer (2004) and Hanrahan (2005). The teacher established warm and challenging environment by having discussion-based activity and good rapport supported by the use of many referential questions and rising-intonation feedback probe students’ responses. The teacher directly corrected students’ pronunciation error, but ignored grammatical error to maintain the flow of students speaking and thinking. Extended wait time was provided to give opportunity for students to speak, though less effective on expanding the discourse. The strategies employed by the teacher most likely expand the discourse indicated by the number of expanded exchanges reflecting students’ comfort to open the conversation with questions or statements. It also can be seen from the use of conjunction comprising elaborating, extending and enhancing the discourse. Most of the conjunctions used by students were implicit indicating that the students were able to construct clause complex by exemplifying, adding information, giving detail conditions and reasons of the topic in elliptical form. Hence, the teacher talk in the study has created good environment by which the teacher can improve students’ thinking ability and cognitive capacity that in turn develop their English proficiency in social interaction.

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