师生互动中的交际问题

1. Introduction 介绍

 

当观察教师行为在课堂教学中，教师提问是一种已经在L1和L2教室由于其以及在数据收集和分析其可达性很有价值的教育学多年研究的主要问题。（Nunan 1995:192）。教师提问的功能可以在一个相对微观的角度来确定提问的具体目的。你（1999:16）设计了一系列可能的原因，教师提问（如提供模型的语言或思维'，'检查或测试的认识、知识或技能等）然而，在相关研究中，价值的质疑已经在课堂互动的大框架研究。提问行为作为四大区之一，体现了师生互动，这是促进语言学习的本质（Chaudron 1988:118）。因此，可以说，教师提问的方式可以在课堂上形成师生互动的方式。在交际语言课，老师要求采用交际教学法，师生之间的交往，而不是交际（就1996）的重要作用在师生互动提问，值得考察的提问行为，有助于交际的师生互动。假设是交际性的问题促进了师生互动。因此，本文探讨了交际问题的本质和交际问题的交际价值在整个交际模式中的交际问题。课堂数据已通过观察两活的ESL课程和ESL课堂录像的收集和分析，把老师和学生之间的言语交流。然后，讨论了影响交际价值的因素，其次讨论了问题类型和教师反馈的特点，探讨了影响交际价值的因素。最后，本文将讨论如果一个显示问题也具有通信价值。When observing teacher behavior in the classroom, teacher questioning is one of the main issues that has been researched for many years in both L1 and L2 classrooms due to its great value to pedagogy as well as its accessibility in data collection and analysis. (Nunan 1995:192). The function of teacher questions can be identified in a relatively micro perspective as to the specific purpose of questioning. Ur(1999:16) devises a list of possible reasons for teacher questioning (e.g. ‘to provide a model for language or thinking’, ‘to check or test understanding, knowledge or skill’ etc.) However, in the relevant researches, the value of questioning has been examined in a broad framework of classroom interaction. Questioning behavior is regarded as one of the four major areas that exemplify the nature of teacher-student interaction which is considered to facilitate language learning (Chaudron 1988:118). Thus, it can be argued that the way of teacher questioning can shape the way of teacher-student interaction in the classroom.  In the communicative language classes that teachers claim to adopt CLT approach, the interaction between teachers and students, however, is not communicative (Thornbury 1996) Given the important role of questioning in the teacher-student interaction, it is worth examine the questioning behavior that contributes to a communicative teacher-student interaction. The supposition is that communicative questions promote communicative teacher-student interaction. Thus, this article explores the nature of the communicative question and the communicative value of the communicative question in the context of the whole interaction pattern. Classroom data has been collected by observing two live ESL classes and one videotaped ESL class and analyzed by transcribing the speech exchanges between teacher and learner.  The article will firstly review the relevant literature about questioning in terms of communicative teacher-student interaction. Then it will discuss the factors that determine the communicative value of a communicative question followed by the discussion of the characteristics of the question type and teacher’s feedback that contribute to high communicative value. Finally, the essay will discuss if a display question also has a communication value. 

 

2. Relevant Literature 相关文献
 

2.1 Referential and display questions 

Thornbury (1996:281) states that one of the important features of communicative classroom talk is that the teachers ask more referential questions than display questions. Referential questions and display questions is a set of concepts. Referential questions are those to which the teacher does not know the answer while display questions are those to which the asker knows the answer (Nunan 1995:194).Referential questions are thought to be genuine questions because the teacher genuinely does not know the answer to the question and s/he therefore tries to find out the answer from the learner. Thus, it is considered as a communicative question indicating real communication between teacher and learner. On the other hand, when the teachers display a question, the purpose of asking the question is not for real communication but merely to ‘prompt the learners to display their comprehension and/or command of accurate English’ (Thompson 1997:101). Thus, display questions are considered to be non-communicative.  However, it is pointed out by Thompson (1997) that some referential questions can be non-communicative neither. One typical example given by him is that a student was asked by the teacher ‘What does your farther do?’ and the student answered ‘My father dead.’ The teacher then responded ‘Good.’ This feedback is rather embarrassing which fully indicates that the teacher was completely not paying attention to the content of the student’s answer although s/he asked a referential question to which he did not know the answer. Thus, It is argued by Thompson (1997) that whether a question is communicative or not does not simply depend on whether the teacher knows the answer or not, but should also takes into account the feedback given by the teacher. He describes some features of the teachers’ feedback which suggest if the teacher is asking a communicative question or not. One issue is about the use of ‘Good’ in the feedback. ‘If the teacher says simply ‘Good’, this is a clear sign that he or she is only listening to whether the learner’s answer is grammatically correct, regardless of the content of the question. It also typically signals that the exchange is over, and that it is time for another learner’s grammar to be checked’ (Thompson 1997: 103). On the other hand, the teachers’ response which is acknowledging the content of the students’ answer suggests that the teacher aims to gain more information from the student. If the student does not volunteer more information, the teacher will typically either ask the follow-up question or to provide information of his or her own. Thus, the interaction between student and teacher is expanded beyond the initial question and answer (Thompson 1997: 104). Thus, it can be understood that why Thompson (1997) proposes the concept  

of ‘communicative question’ versus ‘display question’ rather than ‘referential question’ versus ‘display question’ because referential questions are not definitely communicative.  However, in terms of communicative questions, there remains a question as to how communicative a communicative question is. For example, the questions in the following two discourses between teacher and student are the same communicative questions, but the communicative value of them cannot be equal. A) T: Do you like cats? S: No, I don’t likes cats. T: Oh? Why not? S: Because I’m afraid of their paws. It can hurt me. B) T: Do you like cats? S: No, I don’t likes cats. T: Oh, what a pity. Cats are so cute. Thus, in order to create a more communicative teacher-student interaction, research should go further. Teachers should not only be able to distinguish communicative questions from non-communicative questions but should also be aware how communicative a communicative question is. It can be argued that the more communicative value a question possesses, the more communicative an interaction is.  

 

2.2 Negotiation of meaning Another factor in terms of questioning that contributes to a communicative teacher-student interaction is asking certain types of questions that initiate the negotiation of meaning between teacher and student, which is considered by theory to facilitate language acquisition. These types of questions are ‘comprehension checks’, ‘confirmation checks’, and ‘clarification requests’. ‘A comprehension check elicits assurance from the listener that a message has been received correctly, whereas confirmation checks and clarification requests allow the speaker to correctly interpret reactions by the listener’ (Chaudron 1988: 131). The confirmation checks and clarification request give learners an opportunity to confirm and clarify their answers and also provide them with an opportunity to initiate a question to the teacher which is called student-initiated question which is another feature considered by Thornbury (1996) to be the feature of a communicative classroom talk. ‘A high proportion of student-initiated questions would suggest a healthy distribution of the ‘ownership’ of classroom discourse, which in turn would tend to promote more ‘investment’ on the part of the learner’ (Thornbury 1996:  

282). Thus, it can be hypothesized that the discourse between teacher and student that contains these types of questions, especially the confirmation checks and clarification requests, should be considered to possess a communicative feature.  

 

3. Results and analysis 结果于分析

 

3.1 non-communicative referential questions 

The criterion I use to distinguish whether a referential question is communicative or not is according to Thompson’s (1997) argument that this should be determined by the feedback given by the teacher as to whether is content-based or form-based. If the teacher’s feedback to the answer is form-based, the referential question is still considered to be non-communicative. By applying this criterion, I identify several non-communicative referential questions in one of the class I observed. For example: T: Can you give us a ‘fact’? S: Last year Ronaldo C is the best player in the world. T: I’m gonna add ‘was voted’, was voted the best player in the world. But you don’t have to. In this example, the instruction-like question asked by teacher can be seen as a referential question because the teacher does not know the answer. The teacher’s feedback to the student’s answer does not relate to the content of the answer but suggests the learner a better form of the sentence. Thus it is considered to be non-communicative. However, during the classroom data analysis, two situations are found to fall out of the expected situations, which are worthwhile being discussed. 1) No student response Two cases are found to have the same feature: after the teacher initiates a question, s/he does not intend to seek the student’s response, instead the teacher takes the turn of speaking immediately after s/he proposes the question. For example: (A)T: Do we agree with [student name] T: They should ride bicycle because at the moment they don’t. (B)T: Can you see that [student name]? T: [teacher’s explanation] In these two examples, the question asked by the teacher seems communicative; However, no time is given to the student to answer. Thus, it is doubtful if any communicative value exists in this situation. 2) No teacher feedback There are some cases in which the teacher does not offer the feedback to student’s response,  #p#分页标题#e#

instead they either change the topic or nominate the new student to answer the same question. For example: (A) T:We’ve got some statements. One is smoking should be banned in all restaurants. Tim, what do you think? S: I agree. (B) T: How many smokers here? Jane?  S: No  T:Zanna?  S:No. In this example, it can be seen that there is no feedback given by the teacher to the student’s answer ‘I agree’ and ‘No’. The teacher initiates a new topic in the first case and nominates another student for the answer in the second case. Again, the communicative value of the question is in question because it seems that the teacher does not concern what answer is given by the student.  

 

3.2 The communicative value of communicative questions 

Although there are certain amount of communicative questions asked in both the two classes I observed (the first class is a grammar and the second class is an academic speaking class), it is found that the communicative value of these two classes is significantly unequal. Like observing whether a referential question is communicative or not, observing the communicative value of a communicative question should be in the context of the whole interaction between teachers and students rather than solely observe the question itself. Several characteristics have been found to suggest the different communicative values when comparing the communicative questions in the two classes. 1) Turns of speaking When observing the whole speech exchange between the teacher and student which is initiated by a question, it is found that there is a larger number of turns of speaking under the original question in the academic speaking class than that in the grammar class. In other words, the length of the discourse initiated by a question is much longer in the speaking class than that in the grammar class. In the following example, the second exchange has 9 turns of speaking totally, which is more than the total turns of speaking in the first one(only 3 turns)： (A) T: What’s the Chinese of ‘drizzle’? S: [say the Chinese] T: Ok.  

(B) T: all right. Tell me about your thoughts. How do you feel about body freezing? S: …useless T: useless? Why? S3: because… T: oh. So you won’t like to be brought back to life? S3: not possible. T: But what if it was possible. If it was possible, would you like to live longer? Or you just start thinking… S: … T: ok. What’s more, the student’s turns of speaking increases largely as the discourse expands, which means the student has more opportunity to speak and this is thought to facilitate language learning. The numbers of students’ turn-taking can be seen as a significant indicator of the communicative value of a communicative question. 2) Student-initiated talk In the speaking class, it is observed that the interaction pattern between teacher and student does not always follow the traditional IRF pattern (teacher initiates—student responses—teacher follows up/gives feedback). There is certain amount of cases in which the students initiate a talk without teacher asking any questions to them. As has been mentioned, the student-initiated talk is considered by Thornbury (1996) a significant feature of communicative classroom talk and Van Lier is quoted by Thornbury ‘A significant source of motivation and attention is lost when turn-taking is predetermined rather than interactionally managed by the participants’(1996:282). Thus, it can be argued that the original question that raises more student-initiated talk should be considered more communicative. 3) Negotiation of meaning Negotiation of meaning between teacher and student is another remarkable feature of communicative teacher-student interaction. Three types of questions (comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification checks) are used for this purpose. However, it is interesting to find that there are many examples in the speaking class in which the form that serves the function of confirmation checks and clarification checks is not the question-like form. The teacher uses the affirmative sentences such as the following exchange: S: Maybe we can clone some endangered animals.  

T: Ok. So it’s Ok to experiment animals. S: I mean… T: En, Ok. In this exchange, teacher’s response ‘So it’s Ok to experiment animals’ has the underlying meaning ‘so do you mean it’s Ok to experiment animals?’ despite of the fact that it is in an affirmative way.  

 

3.3 The characteristics of question and feedback After addressing these three remarkable features that can be used to measure the communicative value of a communicative question, it is worth exploring the nature of the question and feedback which promote a high communicative value. 1) Question type It is found that those communicative referential questions which are open-ended have the higher communicative value. The open-ended questions are those questions which’ leave open the nature (and length) of the expected response’ (Chaudron 1988: 127). It is contrast to the closed questions which’ expect a particular (usually brief), closed set of responses’ (Chaudron 1988: 127). For example, in the speaking class, the teacher asks a large number of open-ended questions such as ‘What about…’, ‘Why not?’, ‘Tell me your thoughts’, and ‘What if…’ etc. In the grammar class, however, the referential questions asked by the teacher are generally closed questions like ‘Do you know Ronaldo. C?’, ‘Do you smoke?’ It is observed that it is the former that elicits more language output from the learners and more student-initiated talk. This is because students tend to have stronger desire to express their thoughts about the open-ended question and more to say about the topic. As Chaudron (1988: 127) states, the supposition is that open-ended questions would facilitate greater learner productivity.  2) Teacher’s feedback Teacher’s feedback is a significant aspect when observing the questioning behavior. Questions as to its communicative value cannot be examined without taking into account the teacher’s feedback to student’s answer. To a large extent, the way in which the teacher gives the feedback affects the whole interaction as to how communicative it is. It is found that in the longer teacher-student exchange, the teacher usually asks a follow-up question based on the student’s answer to the original question as the feedback. In the speaking class, this kind of teacher’s feedback makes the  

interaction between teacher and student more like a debate rather than a teacher-controlled classroom talk. What’s more, it is observed that in these more communicative interactions, the teacher tends to give much longer feedback than in the less communicative interactions. This suggests that the teacher’s feedback is highly content-based and the teacher has a strong desire to express s/he owe idea to the students. However, there is an interesting finding about teacher’s use of ‘Ok…’ and’ En…’ in the feedback. Contrary to my supposition, this kind of simple acknowledgement to student’s answer does not terminate the teacher-student exchange, on the contrary, it promotes student to go on their talking. It can be supposed that the simple feedback like this can suggest that the teacher is thinking about student’s answer carefully and perhaps has some doubt, which potentially promotes students to clarify their opinion further more. These findings agree with Thompson’s (1997) opinion that under a communicative question, teachers usually response in a way that volunteer more information from the learners; if s/he doesn’t gain that information, s/he will either ask the follow-up questions or give the information of his or her own.  

 

3.4 The communicative value of display questions The final issue to discuss is the communicative value of display questions. Display questions, as opposed to the communicative questions devised by Thompson (1997), are considered to be non-communicative. However, in observing the display questions in the grammar class, those features of communicative interaction such as the negotiation of meaning and student-initiated talk are found in display question initiated teacher-student interaction. This shows a clear contrast to another videotaped ESL class I observed. In that class, nearly all the questions asked are display questions and there are no negotiations between teacher and student as well as student-initiated talk. The feedback given by teacher is always simple ‘Good’ whereas it is found that teacher’s feedback in the grammar class is always either the rephrasing of student’s answer or the confirmation checks and clarification checks. Thus it can be argued that the display questions can also possess the communicative value as long as the whole interaction pattern is considered to be communicative.  

 

Conclusion 总结

 

In the light of CLT approach, the communicative teacher-student interaction does not depend on whether a question is referential question or not, but should depend on whether a question is communicative or not, because a referential question can be non-communicative while a display question can also possess the communicative feature to some extent. The communicative value of a question can be decided by three factors: the number of turn-taking, student-initiated talk and negotiation of meaning. Thus, it should be the aim of teacher asking the communicative questions. The more these features a teacher-student discourse possesses, the more communicative a question is. In order to achieve this aim, the nature of the question and the kind of feedback following the answer play an important role, of which teachers should raise the awareness.                            #p#分页标题#e#

 

References: 文献

 

Chaudron, C. 1988. Second Language Classrooms:Research on Teaching and Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunan, D. 1995. Language Teaching Methodology:A textbook for Teachers. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall Europe. Thompson, J. 1997. ‘Training teachers to ask questions’. ELT Journal, Vol.51 No.2, pp.99-105. Thornbury, S. 1996. ‘Teachers research teacher talk’. ELT Journal, Vol 50 No. 4, pp.279-289. Ur, P. 1999. A Course in Language Teaching:Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.