Hall-Smotrova2013
Hall-Smotrova2013 | |
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BibType | ARTICLE |
Key | Hall-Smotrova2013 |
Author(s) | Joan Kelly Hall, Tetyana Smotrova |
Title | Teacher self-talk: Interactional resource for managing instruction and eliciting empathy |
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Tag(s) | EMCA, Education, Instructions |
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Year | 2013 |
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Journal | Journal of Pragmatics |
Volume | 47 |
Number | 1 |
Pages | 75–92 |
URL | Link |
DOI | 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.017 |
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Abstract
This study reveals the significant role of teacher self-talk in managing classroom interaction during unplanned moments of instruction and in building affective teacher–student relationships. We examined 24 hours of video-recordings collected from nine university level courses: three upper level ESL courses; one undergraduate linguistics course; a split-level undergraduate/graduate course and four graduate courses, all broadly related to the topic of applied linguistics. Drawing on conversation analytic methods, we present a detailed analysis of five examples of teacher self-talk. Findings suggest that the practice of teacher self-talk, accomplished via specific prosodic cues, eye gaze direction, and body positioning, plays a significant role in managing the moments when aspects of the pedagogical task need to be monitored or adjusted. By making the students aware of the teacher's predicament, self-talk helps to maintain the instructional space while trouble is being resolved by keeping students’ focus on the instructional task. Moreover, teacher self-talk acts as an affordance for eliciting self-initiated empathetic responses from students. The findings confirm the importance of examining how unplanned classroom moments are accomplished in talk-in-interaction, and reveal how practices like self-talk, which may appear on the surface be slight or unimportant, in fact make significant contributions to teaching.
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