A STUDY ON EXTENDED STUDENT TALK IN AN EFL CLASSROOM

This classroom research study explored the factors which facilitate extended student talk in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom and investigated the frequency of occurrences and the length of student utterances... [ view full abstract ]

This classroom research study explored the factors which facilitate extended student talk in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom and investigated the frequency of occurrences and the length of student utterances with respect to each factor. Given the fact that teachers dominate the classroom speech, and therefore student talk is a rare phenomenon even in language courses, it is of quite importance to investigate extended student talk in a detailed way. In doing so, the naturally occurring data were collected from a freshman EFL class at a private university in Turkey. A pre-intermediate level Listening and Speaking course was audio-recorded for nine classroom hours. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. The study revealed that tasks and questions were the main facilitators of extended student talk. During the implementation of tasks, use of strategies like allowing planning time, extending its scope by further questions and successfully managing ‘claims of insufficient knowledge’ (Sert, 2011) increased the length of student utterances. Both referential and display questions emerged more frequently than tasks in the data as an extended student talk facilitator. However, the study indicated that referential questions gave way to longer extended student talk than display questions. In this respect, the findings have suggestions for the teachers who would like to promote extended student talk in their language classes.
References: Sert, O. (2011). A micro-analytic investigation of claims of insufficient knowledge in EAL classrooms. PhD diss., Newcastle University, UK

This case study presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of extended student talk in a freshman English language class. Naturally-occurring data revealed that teachers’ successfully formulated questions and using... [ view full abstract ]

This case study presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of extended student talk in a freshman English language class. Naturally-occurring data revealed that teachers’ successfully formulated questions and using strategies like allowing planning time in task implementation enabled extended student talk. The findings guide teachers to self-question their own classroom practices.