Maintenance of communication in primary classrooms : some evidence for the role of elicitation and code-switching in English medium schools in Kenya, with implications for teaching

This is a study of specific aspects of classroom interaction primary school level in Kenya. The study entailed the identification of the sources of particular communication problems during the change-over period from Kiswahili to English medium teaching in two primary schools. There was subsequently an examination of the language resources which were employed by teachers to maintain pupil participation in communication in the light of the occurrence of possibility of occurrence of specific communication problems. The language resources which were found to be significant in this regard concerned firstly the use of different elicitation types by teachers to stimulate pupils into giving responses and secondly teachers' recourse to code-switching from English to Kiswahili and vice-versa. It was also found in this study that although the use of English as the medium of instruction in the classrooms which were observed resulted in certain communication problems, some of these problems need not have arisen if teachers had been more careful in their use of language. The consideration of this finding, after taking into account the role of different elicitation types and code-switching as interpretable from data samples had certain implications which are specified in the study for teaching in Kenyan primary schools. The corpus for the study consisted of audio-recordings of English, Science and Number-Work lessons which were later transcribed. Relevant data samples were subsequently extracted from transcripts for analysis. Many of the samples have examples of cases of communication breakdowns, but they also illustrate how teachers maintained interaction with pupils who had yet to acquire an operational mastery of English. This study thus differs from most studies on classroom interaction because of its basic concern with the examination of the resources available to teachers for overcoming the problem areas of classroom communication.

Classrooms as complex adaptive systems:a relational model

In this article, we describe and model the language classroom as a complex adaptive system (see Logan & Schumann, 2005). We argue that linear, categorical descriptions of classroom processes and interactions do not sufficiently explain the complex nature of classrooms, and cannot account for how classroom change occurs (or does not occur), over time. A relational model of classrooms is proposed which focuses on the relations between different elements (physical, environmental, cognitive, social) in the classroom and on how their interaction is crucial in understanding and describing classroom action.

Trainer talk:structures of interaction in teacher training classrooms

The subject of this research is interaction and language use in an institutional context, the teacher training classroom. Trainer talk is an interactional accomplishment and the research question is: what structures of talk-in-interaction characterise trainer talk in this institutional setting? While there has been research into other kinds of classroom and into other kinds of institutional talk, this study is the first on trainer discourse. The study takes a Conversation Analysis approach to studying institutional interaction and aims to identify the main structures of sequential organization that characterize teacher trainer talk as well as the tasks and identities that are accomplished in it. The research identifies three main interactional contexts in which trainer talk is done: expository, exploratory and experiential. It describes the main characteristics of each and how they relate to each other. Expository sequences are the predominant interactional contexts for trainer talk. But the research findings show that these contexts are flexible and open to the embedding of the other two contexts. All three contexts contribute to the main institutional goal of teaching teachers how to teach. Trainer identity is related to the different sequential contexts. Three main forms of identity in interaction are evidenced in the interactional contexts: the trainer as trainer, the trainer as teacher and the trainer as colleague. Each of them play an important role in teacher trainer pedagogy. The main features of trainer talk as a form of institutional talk are characterised by the following interactional properties: 1. Professional discourse is both the vehicle and object of instruction - the articulation of reflection on experience. 2. There is a reflexive relationship between pedagogy and interaction. 3. The professional discourse that is produced by trainees is not evaluated by trainers but, rather, reformulated to give it relevant precision in terms of accuracy and appropriacy.

Integrating grammar in adult TESOL classrooms

This paper examines the beliefs and practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching reported by 176 English language teachers from 18 countries. Teachers completed a questionnaire which elicited beliefs about grammar teaching generally as well as specific beliefs and reported practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching. Teachers expressed strong beliefs in the need to avoid teaching grammar in isolation and reported high levels of integration of grammar in their practices. This study also examines how teachers conceptualize integration and the sources of evidence they draw on in assessing the effectiveness of their instructional practices in teaching grammar. The major findings for this paper stem from an analysis of these two issues. A range of ways in which teachers understood integration are identified and classified into two broad orientations which we label temporal and contextual. An analysis of the evidence which teachers cited in making judgements about the effectiveness of their grammar teaching practices showed that it was overwhelmingly practical and experiential and did not refer in any explicit way to second language acquisition theory. Given the volume of available theory about L2 grammar teaching generally and integration specifically, the lack of direct reference to such evidence in teachers’ accounts is noteworthy.

Exploration of metaphors used by Indonesian legislators and political elites in the Indonesian sociopolitical domain

This thesis examines the ways Indonesian politicians exploit the rhetorical power of metaphors in the Indonesian political discourse. The research applies the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Metaphorical Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis to textual and oral data. The corpus comprises: 150 political news articles from two newspapers (Harian Kompas and Harian Waspada, 2010-2011 edition), 30 recordings of two television news and talk-show programmes (TV-One and Metro-TV), and 20 interviews with four legislators, two educated persons and two laymen. For this study, a corpus of written bahasa Indonesia was also compiled, which comprises 150 texts of approximately 439,472 tokens. The data analysis shows the potential power of metaphors in relation to how politicians communicate the results of their thinking, reasoning and meaning-making through language and discourse and its social consequences. The data analysis firstly revealed 1155 metaphors. These metaphors were then classified into the categories of conventional metaphor, cognitive function of metaphor, metaphorical mapping and metaphor variation. The degree of conventionality of metaphors is established based on the sum of expressions in each group of metaphors. Secondly, the analysis revealed that metaphor variation is influenced by the broader Indonesian cultural context and the natural and physical environment, such as the social dimension, the regional, style and the individual. The mapping system of metaphor is unidirectionality. Thirdly, the data show that metaphoric thought pervades political discourse in relation to its uses as: (1) a felicitous tool for the rhetoric of political leaders, (2) part of meaning-making that keeps the discourse contexts alive and active, and (3) the degree to which metaphor and discourse shape the conceptual structures of politicians‟ rhetoric. Fourthly, the analysis of data revealed that the Indonesian political discourse attempts to create both distance and solidarity towards general and specific social categories accomplished via metaphorical and frame references to the conceptualisations of us/them. The result of the analysis shows that metaphor and frame are excellent indicators of the us/them categories which work dialectically in the discourse. The acts of categorisation via metaphors and frames at both textual and conceptual level activate asymmetrical concepts and contribute to social and political hierarchical constructs, i.e. WEAKNESS vs.POWER, STUDENT vs. TEACHER, GHOST vs. CHOSEN WARRIOR, and so on. This analysis underscores the dynamic nature of categories by documenting metaphorical transfers between, i.e. ENEMY, DISEASE, BUSINESS, MYSTERIOUS OBJECT and CORRUPTION, LAW, POLITICS and CASE. The metaphorical transfers showed that politicians try to dictate how they categorise each other in order to mobilise audiences to act on behalf of their ideologies and to create distance and solidarity.