Hall-Smotrova2013

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Hall-Smotrova2013
BibType ARTICLE
Key Hall-Smotrova2013
Author(s) Joan Kelly Hall, Tetyana Smotrova
Title Teacher self-talk: Interactional resource for managing instruction and eliciting empathy
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Education, Instructions
Publisher
Year 2013
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 47
Number 1
Pages 75–92
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.017
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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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.

Notes