Classroom interaction in student presentations and follow-up discussions in a university EFL course
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This paper presents selected outcomes of a qualitative analysis of classroom interaction during student presentations and follow-up discussions in an English as a foreign language (EFL) course conducted in a Bachelor’s programme at a Czech university. Student presentations and subsequent discussions appear interesting both interactionally (e.g. collaborative aspects of “improvisation” during the presentation, the shift of control from the presenters towards the teacher after the presentation) and educationally, as these represent a student-centered activity, whose dynamics and organization remain relatively underresearched. The data (video-recordings of 11 90-minute lessons, 987 minutes) were collected as a case study of an intermediate EFL course for future teachers within a research project (GA ČR 15-08857S). To study the interactional dynamics, I used conversation analysis to analyze 12 presentations given by individuals or pairs. In this paper I will present the outcomes in the areas of the organization of repair during the presentations and the organization of turn-taking during the discussions. In presentations given by pairs, the presenters dealt with troubles (typically attempting to pronounce unknown words, problems with transitions) interactively using self-initiated peer-repair sequences, while individual students generally had to rely on self-repair. During the discussion phase, the participants always transitioned from turn-type pre-allocation (the students finished their presentation and typically asked for questions) to mediated turn-allocation (the teacher became a moderator and, finally, self-selected to ask several questions). At the end, I will compare the findings with relevant literature and evaluate the organization of presentations and discussions pedagogically. |
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