Page 130 - Beyond Methods

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Facilitating negotiated interaction
31 S2:
32 T:
33 S6:
34 T:
35 S6:
36 T:
xxx.
S6, do people get divorced in China? No . . . ? (S6 turns to another student and asks something) . . . you know what di- vorce means?
No.
It means ... no more marriage ... people are married ... if they are married . . . then they are divorced (gestures sep- aration) . . . they are not married any more. So . . . that does- n’t happen in China?
(nods her head)
Yes, sometimes . . . OK.
(Data source: Kumaravadivelu, 1992, p. 44)
Reflective task 5.5
Reread the interactional data given in episodes 5.2 and 5.3. What similari- ties and differences do you see in the way the two teachers manage class- room talk? Focus on, among other points, display questions and referential questions. Which style of talk management do you generally prefer and why? Are there specific learning and teaching situations where both (or nei- ther) of them will be appropriate?
The contrast between episodes 5.2 and 5.3 is striking. What we have in episode 5.3 are elements of negotiated interaction in the sense that the teacher and the learners were jointly engaged in gen- erating meaningful classroom talk. The teacher’s questions were aimed at eliciting the learner’s own opinions and interpretations on divorce, rather than at getting linguistic samples that could be me- chanically lifted from the textbook or recalled from memory. The teacher even tried to involve a shy Chinese student whose behavior indicated that she did not fully understand what divorce means. Notice that it is only at this juncture, in turn 34, that the teacher, for the first time, explained the meaning of divorce in his words.
The teacher’s management of classroom talk facilitated negoti- ated interaction by providing linguistic as well as paralinguistic cues that helped the low proficiency learners try to struggle with their