Understanding how teacher and student talk with each other: An exploration of how `repair' displays the co-management of talk-in-interaction

Abstract

The essence of my argument is that Practitioner Research can be pursued not only by observing whole classes, but also by observing what happens when a teacher talks to a student outside of the classroom setting. What this setting offers to practitioner-researchers is a unique opportunity to understand what both the teacher and the student do to keep the conversation going. There are implications for reflecting on how teachers actually talk to students and whether what we do helps or hinders them from expressing themselves. Also, such an analytical approach that draws attention to the spoken details of the interaction can show us how to help students take advantage of their turns in an extended talk. Teachers can `recipient-design' what they say and do in order to give students in the next turn `easy' opportunities to use the language they know. In order to demonstrate how this particular discourse genre (informal teacher—student talk) is co-accomplished, features of `repair' as they occur in a sequence of turns will be described and analyzed. They reveal that once the purpose of the talk moves beyond controlled production of correct language forms, the interlocutors' roles and relationship shift from expert and novice to co-participants in managing the talk. Exploration in pursuit of understanding how social interactions are performed can take various forms. This paper offers one example of how it can be done through close observation of the organization of turn-taking.