Филологические науки / 1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы

К.филол.н. Андрейко Л.В.

ДВНЗ «Украинская академия банковского дела НБУ»

Classroom Interaction In Teaching English

The ultimate goal of learning a new language is to use it in communication in its spoken or written forms. Interaction as the heart of communication plays an important role in an ESL learner’s development of language proficiency.

There are different types of classroom interaction teacher can use to vary his or her lesson plan. Teacher-centered activity is when the teacher controls the group. This can consist of lecturing, explaining a new grammar concept on the board, having a whole-class discussion, choral drilling or asking individual students questions. However, as L. Jones notes [1, p.25], students can’t be “taught” – they can only be helped to learn. So teacher’s role is to help and encourage students to develop their skills, but without relinquishing a more traditional role as a source of information, advice, and knowledge.

Teacher-Student interaction can be mostly found in traditional ESL classrooms in which the teacher posts a question and then the students answer it. The teacher’s role is the controller who dominates the entire process of teaching and learning.

The arguments for this approach grow from the idea that teacher knows more of the target language and that by listening to him or her, the learner is somehow absorbing a correct picture of the language; that by interacting with the teacher, the learner is learning to interact with a competent user of the language; that this is far more useful than talking to a poor user. This is OK as far as it goes, but there are a number of challenges to the statements. Most of the time the effectiveness of such interaction is largely reduced since the teacher occupies the major proportion of a class hour thus each student’s chance for communicating or interacting is very limited. Jim Scrivener sums it up, “An essential lesson that every new teacher needs to learn is that “talking at” the lesson does not necessarily mean that learning is taking place; in many cases, TTT (Teacher Talking Time) is actually time when the learners are not doing very much and are not very involved” [2, p.59].

The teacher and students should be a team working together. At different times in a lesson, teacher’s role may change as the lesson moves from teacher-led to student-centered and back again. Teachers are responsible for helping students work independently, monitoring them while they’re working together, and giving them feedback afterward. In a whole-class activity, students and the teacher interact, and students accept the authority of the teacher as their manager. When working together, students will be responsible for their own behavior and learning while the teacher walks around the classroom monitoring. At first, some students may be too dependent on their teacher and expect to be helped, corrected, and encouraged all the time. In this case, teacher can put them into groups with less teacher-dependent students, and not pair them up with equally diffident students. It may take some time before they become more independent. Thus, instead of two minutes' speaking time in a whole lesson, they all get a lot of speaking practice within a short space of time. Teacher could use this time effectively by discreetly monitoring what the students are saying and using the information collected as a source of material for future feedback or other work.

However, there are still some advantages for teacher-student interaction in the classroom. The students could immediately get feedback from the teacher when he/she answers the teacher’s question. It is a more straightforward way than other kinds of interactions. It is especially useful for lower level ESL students since it require teachers talk more and the students talk less.

Let’s have a closer look at the second kind of in-classroom interaction − student-student interaction. The most common type of this kind of interaction relies in group work or peer work. In this form of interaction, the teacher plays a role as a monitor and the students are the main participants of those interactional activities. The students will feel less stressful when they group with their classmates for discussing. As the teacher plays a less dominant role in group work or pair work, the students are the dominant part in their own interaction process. They may feel less stressed and nervous when they interact with their peers. The students have an intention to help the other students when they make errors, moreover, they will develop self-correcting ability as they learn to avoid making the same mistakes that others have made before. Through the interaction of group or pair work, ESL students can help others find their error pattern as well as avoiding errors they see others make.

However, in the class divided into small groups, it is harder for the teacher to know what is exactly going on in each group. In view of this, the teacher should provide clear guidance and directions before they ask the students to practice interactional activities in their respective groups.

There is another interesting question: when should students work in pairs and when should they be in groups or work together as a whole class? L. Jones has such recommendations:

- Put talkative students in groups of three and less talkative students in groups of four or five.

- Stimulate a better exchange of ideas by putting shy students in groups of three rather than in pairs.

- Sometimes have two students talk while a third listens and takes notes, then have the third provide feedback at the end of the conversation [1, p.8].

Jim Scrivener gives some ideas for maximizing student interaction in class:

- Encourage a friendly, relaxed learning environment. If there is a trusting,

positive, supportive rapport amongst the learners and be between learners and

the teacher, then there is a much better chance of useful interaction happening.

- Ask questions rather than giving explanations.

- Allow time for students to listen, think, process their answer and speak.

- Really listen to what they s ay. Let what they say really affect what you do next.

- Work on listening to the person and the meaning, as well as to the language and the mistakes.

- Allow thinking time without talking over it. Allow silence.

- Increase opportunities for STT (Student Talking Time).

- Use gestures to replace unnecessary teacher talk.

- Allow students to finish their own sentences.

- Make use of pairs and small groups to maximize opportunities for students to speak. Do this even in the middle of longer whole-class stages, for example ask students to break off for 30 seconds and talk in pairs about their reactions to what you've just been discussing and also allow them to check answers to tasks before conducting feedback.

- If possible, arrange seating so that students can all see each other and talk to each other (i.e. circles, squares and horseshoes rather than parallel rows).

- Remember that you don't always need to be at the front of the class. Try out

seating arrangements that allow the whole class to be the focus (e.g. you take one

seat in a circle).

- If a student is speaking too quietly for you to hear, walk further away, rather

than closer to them (This sounds illogical, but if you can't hear them, then it's

likely that the other students can't either. Encourage the quiet speaker to speak

louder so that the others can hear.)

- Encourage interaction between students rather than only between student and you, and you and student. Get students ask questions, give explanations, etc. to each other, rather than always to you. Use gestures and facial expressions to encourage them to speak and listen to each other [2, p.60].

With this in mind it would be fair to note that students should not work in pairs or groups all the time. As students become more confident, they will do more and more student-centered work, but teachers must strike a balance between leading the students and letting them have control of their learning.

References:

1. Jones, L. The Student-centered Classroom / Leo Jones.─ Cambridge University Press, 2007. ─ 41p.

2. Scrivener, J. Learning Teaching: 3^rd Edition / Jim Scrivener. ─ Mcmillan Books for Teachers, 2011. ─ 430p.