8
Sway Students in the Foreign Language Classroom Christian Jan Faltis The University of Alabama ABSTRACTA sway student in theforeign language classroom is a student who is not only capable of displayinglinguistic knowledge, but also knows when and how to interact appropriately with the teacher. This study examines how six sway students affected the organizationof interaction and language develop- ment in a traditional high school Spanish class.* The data indicate that the teacher selectivelyorganized in- teraction around sway students at key points in the development of a lesson as well as when non-swaystu- dents made errors. Theoveralleffectof sway students was that they allowed the teacher toprogress effective- ly through the lesson, with the result of increased amounts of comprehensible inputf o r the entire class. Introduction A typical beginning-level high school foreign- languageclassroom contains one teacher and up to 25 students. Students are arranged in four or five rows, with the teacher usually positioned in the front of the class throughout most of the period. Each student has a textbook and often an accompanying workbook for use in classroom activities. The teacher’s responsibility is of course to help each and every one of the students develop proficiency in the foreign language. But how does one teacher accomplish such a feat? The position taken in this paper is that the answer may lie in class- room interactionalstrategiesorchestrated between the teacher and certain key students, sway students. A sway student in a foreign language classroom is a student who has learned how to interactverbally with the teacher in the foreign language. In this case, inter- actional competencerefers not only to the ability to use Christian Jan Faltis (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Assistant Pro- fessor of Second Language and Multicultural Education in the Col- lege of Education, University of Alabama, University, AL. the foreign language, but to an awareness of the struc- ture of verbal interaction as well. Because of their in- teractional competence,sway students may serve a role in classroom discourse not considered in previous work: that of swaying the teacher’s instructional strategies at crucial points during the developmentof large-group language learning exercises. In doing so, sway students may contribute to the overall develop- ment of the class because they increase the amount of meaningful foreign language input. While research has shown that studentsdo influence the teacher in a number of important ways [for exam- ple, when the teacher gears the teaching style in accord- ance with the students’ learning styles (6)], there is virtually no research on students who emerge as key participants in the interaction between the teacher and students. Lundgren (9) coined the term “steering group” to describe students between the loth and 25th percentiles in general ability who set the pace and supply norms for the teacher by determining the time spent by the whole class on specific lessons. In an early study on classroomlife, Smith and Geoffrey (14) allud- ed to student “court jesters:’ students with special in- teractional skill who influenced the teacher’s behavior in the class. They speculated that most classrooms have jesters, but did not explore the concept in any great detail. More recently, Seliger (13) studied the op- portunities for classroom language use that learners create for themselves. He posited two kinds of learners: High Input Generators and Low Input Generators. According to Seliger, “some students are good at creating these opportunities and do so in a consistent or patterned manner while other students *This study was funded by a grant from the University of Alabama Faculty Research Grants Committee. Foreign Lunguage Annals, 19, No. 3. 1986 195

Sway Students in the Foreign Language Classroom

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Page 1: Sway Students in the Foreign Language Classroom

Sway Students in the Foreign Language Classroom

Christian Jan Faltis The University of Alabama

ABSTRACTA sway student in the foreign language classroom is a student who is not only capable of displaying linguistic knowledge, but also knows when and how to interact appropriately with the teacher. This study examines how six sway students affected the organization of interaction and language develop- ment in a traditional high school Spanish class.* The data indicate that the teacher selectively organized in- teraction around sway students at key points in the development of a lesson as well as when non-swaystu- dents made errors. The overalleffect of sway students was that they allowed the teacher to progress effective- ly through the lesson, with the result of increased amounts of comprehensible input for the entire class.

Introduction A typical beginning-level high school foreign-

language classroom contains one teacher and up to 25 students. Students are arranged in four or five rows, with the teacher usually positioned in the front of the class throughout most of the period. Each student has a textbook and often an accompanying workbook for use in classroom activities. The teacher’s responsibility is of course to help each and every one of the students develop proficiency in the foreign language. But how does one teacher accomplish such a feat? The position taken in this paper is that the answer may lie in class- room interactional strategies orchestrated between the teacher and certain key students, sway students.

A sway student in a foreign language classroom is a student who has learned how to interact verbally with the teacher in the foreign language. In this case, inter- actional competence refers not only to the ability to use

Christian Jan Faltis (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Assistant Pro- fessor of Second Language and Multicultural Education in the Col- lege of Education, University of Alabama, University, AL.

the foreign language, but to an awareness of the struc- ture of verbal interaction as well. Because of their in- teractional competence, sway students may serve a role in classroom discourse not considered in previous work: that of swaying the teacher’s instructional strategies at crucial points during the development of large-group language learning exercises. In doing so, sway students may contribute to the overall develop- ment of the class because they increase the amount of meaningful foreign language input.

While research has shown that students do influence the teacher in a number of important ways [for exam- ple, when the teacher gears the teaching style in accord- ance with the students’ learning styles (6)], there is virtually no research on students who emerge as key participants in the interaction between the teacher and students. Lundgren (9) coined the term “steering group” to describe students between the loth and 25th percentiles in general ability who set the pace and supply norms for the teacher by determining the time spent by the whole class on specific lessons. In an early study on classroom life, Smith and Geoffrey (14) allud- ed to student “court jesters:’ students with special in- teractional skill who influenced the teacher’s behavior in the class. They speculated that most classrooms have jesters, but did not explore the concept in any great detail. More recently, Seliger (13) studied the op- portunities for classroom language use that learners create for themselves. He posited two kinds of learners: High Input Generators and Low Input Generators. According to Seliger, “some students are good at creating these opportunities and do so in a consistent or patterned manner while other students

*This study was funded by a grant from the University of Alabama Faculty Research Grants Committee.

Foreign Lunguage Annals, 19, No. 3. 1986 195

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS 196

play a relatively more passive role in the language class? (13, p. 251) The main thrust of his work was to determine whether HIGS achieved at a significantly higher level and better rate than LIGS; the organiza- tion of classroom interaction was not investigated. In fact, to date, no studies have examined how key stu- dents in foreign language classrooms exert influence on the teacher during the teaching of language content.

This article describes how six sway students in a traditional high school Spanish class of 24 students af- fected the teacher’s organization of interactional strategies. “Traditional” is defined here in terms of the preferred mode of instruction; namely, the predomi- nant use of questions to which the teacher already knows the answer (8). Underlying the use of known in- formation (“display”) questions is a pedagogically- based need on the part of the teacher to control the in- structional form and content for all students in the class (3).

In a traditional classroom, interaction between the teacher and students is organized around a basic three- part structure: inithtion-reply-evaluation (10). This basic structure is in turn composed of two adjacency pairs (12; 2). Two items form an adjacency pair when one item is conditionally dependent upon the other item. In this case, initiation-wply forms the first ad- jacency pair: a question by the teacher requires a response. Once the response is obtained, the newly formed pair becomes the first part of the second ad- jacency pair. An evaluation of the initiation-reply pair constitutes the second part of the second adjacency pair. Interaction is sustained to theextent that two ad- jacency pairs are repeated in succession. When the response to a solicitation does not immediately appear, the teacher may exercise one or more options until the desired response appears. As soon as the response is given, the teacher is free to evaluate the content of the reply and continue the interactional sequence.

There are, however, only certain times during a lesson when teachers engage students in interactional sequences. %idly, teachers present a lesson in three identifiable, but often overlapping phases: preview, view, and review (1). During the preview phase, the teacher may call upon several students to display an in- itial understanding of the concept just introduced. The greatest amount of interaction takes place during the view phase, when students practice the new concept through a number of structured activities. During the review phase, the teacher summarizes the lesson, call- ing upon students intermittently to emphasize impor- tant points.

In order to progress effectively from one phase to the next, the teacher must be able to select students

who will respond correctly to requests for information. A correct response is required before a sequence can be evaluated and thus consummated. In other words, the teacher cannot move forward in the exercise without obtaining a correct response. 7%k means that the teacher’s first interactional move is highly depen- dent on the perceived ability of the student. The teacher must learn which students are most likely to respond correctly, which ones will risk responding to unfamiliar material, and which ones prefer not to talk at all. This information becomes crucial for making instructional decisions about which students to engage in interaction during the development of a language learning lesson and may ultimately affect the overall development of the class.

A Study of Sway Students in a Foreign Language Classroom

The purpose of the study was to explore when and how teaching decisions concerning interaction were af- fected by sway students. One classroom was selected for observation over a three-month period. The obser- vation focused on interaction between the teacher and students as the teacher progressed through daily lessons. n o major questions guided the study:

1. Did the teacher organize interaction around sway students? 2. Did sway students increase the overall amount of comprehensible input in the foreign language?

The first question relates to the way opportunities for interaction were distributed in class. The two most important interactional opportunities considered were those occurring at the beginning of a topic change and those occurring immediately after an incorrect re- sponse. The second question addresses the role sway students may have had in contributing to the overall development of the class by providing a continued source of comprehensible input, a source in addition to the teacher’s input. Important considerations were the quality and timing of the output produced by the sway students.

i%extting. The study took place in a west Alabama 9th-lOth grade public high school. The class selected for systematic observation was a Spanish I1 class of 24 students who met five days a week for one hour a day. This class was selected from two other potential Spanish I1 classes in the area, primarily because the teacher was willing to allow the researcher and his assistant to enter and study the class for a full semester.

Three ethnic groups were represented in the class: Black, Anglo, and Hispanic. There were 12 Black stu-

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MAY 1986 197

dents, 11 Anglo students, and 1 Hispanic student; 16 of the 24 students were female, 8 were male.

Colorfully decorated with bullfight posters, stu- dent-made pifiatas, and a number of small pictures of the Spanish-speaking world, the classroom was organized into five rows of desks, with a maximum of six students per row. The front wall was fully covered with a chalkboard which was frequently used along with an overhead projector and screen to present language exercises. Figure 1 presents a bird‘s-eye view of the classroom seating arrangement.

Figure 1 Classroom Seating Chart

Front of the Classroom

Each time either the teacher or student initiated an in- teraction, the researcher coded three kinds of informa- tion: the language used, the purpose of the exchange, and the person to whom it was addressed. Three pur- poses for initiating an interaction were considered. These were “displag’ “meaningful:’ and “com- municative” directives/questions. Students were assigned a number corresponding to their row and position within the row. The perspective for number assignment was the rear of the classroom (see Figure 1). Student 42, for example, was the second student in the fourth row.

Three categories of responses were coded: correct responses; partially incorrect responses; and incorrect responses. For example, on one occasion the teacher asked Anita, ‘‘i,Cu&to tiempo hace que estudias espaiiol?” (How long have you been studying Spanish?) to which Anita responded (‘Yo estudio espaiiol todos 10s dias” (I study Spanish every day). In this case, an incorrect response was coded because the answer did not fit the question. However, if Anita had answered, “Hace seis meses estudio espaiiol:’ a par- tially incorrect response would have been coded.

Eacher responses to student initiations were cod-

Row1 Row2 Row3 Row4 Row5 0 X X X X X X X X X X X x X X

X 0 X X X 0 0 X X X 0 X X X 0

Rear of the Classroom Key: 0 = no student; X = student.

The teacher, Mrs. T, had been teaching secondary- level Spanish for 15 years, and held a master’s degree in Spanish. At the time of the study she was assessed by the researcher as having Advanced Level speaking proficiency through the ACTFL Oral Proficiency In- terview. Trained as a language teacher during the late 1960’s, Mrs. T used a mixture of audiolingual and cognitive-code language teaching techniques. During pattern practice exercises, Mrs. T used Spanish almost exclusively. More Spanish than English was used for instruction during pre-practice explanations and review. When English was used, it was primarily for non task-related exchanges (discipline, management, announcements, etc) and when students requested translations of difficult concepts and/or explanations. Mrs. T. did most of her teaching in the front of the class, only occasionally moving down the aisles to check student work.

Data Collection. Data for the study were collected through a categorical observation system which allowed the researcher to record the frequency and sequence of interactions as well as who was engaged in them and what language was being used. (See Appendix A.) Following the scheme of Mehan (lo), an interaction in- volved an initiation, a response, and an evaluation.

ed simply R if the teacher acknowledged the student verbally and I if the teacher ignored the student.

Evaluation of response was coded only for the teacher-initiated interactions. (Students did not overtly evaluate teacher responses.) The following kinds of feedback were coded positive verbal evaluation; no verbal evaluation; requests for repetition; teacher sup- plies answer; and teacher calls on another student.

In addition to recording interaction, the researcher noted major activity changes within a lesson and be- tween lessons.

&faana&sk. All of the data were analyzed descrip- tively, focusing on frequency counts and percentages. Only interactions in which students were clearly iden- tifiable were used in the analysis. Group-oriented, teacher-initiated interactions (e.g., questions directed to the whole class) were included only if one student responded. Accordingly, choral repetition drills in which the whole group participated were disregarded.

Before discussing the findings, it is important to note that Mrs. T was not aware of how she organized interaction during key points in the development of a lesson.

Finding Number 1: Sway Students and the Organization of Interaction

Bble 1 indicates the purpose and frequency of inter- actions initiated by Mrs. T and by students. As the

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198 FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS

Table 1 Purpose and Frequency of Interactions Initiated by the Teacher and the Students

Purpose Number/Total Percent

Teacher-initiated Interaction Display Meaningful Communicative

Student-initiated Interaction Display Meaningful Communicative

3121331 94 19/331 6 01333 0

0/98 94/98 5/98

0 95

5

table shows, Mrs. T used display directives/questions almost exclusively as the major purpose for initiating interaction with her students. In contrast, students in- itiated interaction with Mrs. T for meaningful and communicative purposes only. Additional analysis revealed that Mrs. T used Spanish 100 percent of the time, while the students used Spanish only 48 percent of the time. Mrs. T verbally acknowledged all of the student-initiated interactions, responding in Spanish 78 percent of the time No instances of student-to- student interaction were recorded.

A closer examination of the data revealed that six students were involved in 39 percent of the teacher- initiated interactions and that they were responsible for 48 percent of the student-initiated interactions. This finding led to the designation of these six students as sway students whose interaction with Mrs. T would be further scrutinized. The location of the six sway students is illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Sway Student Location

Within the Classroom Seating Chart

Front of the Classroom

Row1 Row2 Row3 Row4 Row5 0 X X X X X sway sway sway sway X X sway X X 0 X sway X X 0 0 X X X 0 X X X 0

Rear of the Classroom

Key: 0 = no student; X = student; sway = Sway Student

The first area of concern centered upon when sway students tended to be engaged in interaction. To begin, the observation sheets were examined to determine both the purpose and number of exercises. A count was made of the total number of interactions within each exercise and the purpose of the exercise was noted. The sequence of interactions was preserved in order to determine the extent and timing of sway stu- dent involvement at the beginning, middle, and end of the exercise. This analysis revealed that during the period of study, Mrs. T worked through 18 exercises covering four major topics: four dealing with vocabulary development, five on uses of the future, three concerning the conditional, and six reviews of vocabulary and grammatical concepts. The average number of interactions per exercise over the four topic areas was 19. ?kio kinds of exercises prevailed review practice drill and new topic practice drill.

Sway students were engaged more frequently at the beginning of an exercise than at the middle or end. The second most frequent involvement of sway students occurred at the end of an exercise. Sway students were engaged in both review work and new topic practice. Table 2 shows when and to what extent sway students were involved in the 18 exercises. Sway student par- ticipation was highest during the new topic practice and for two exercises involving reviews of vocabulary and grammatical concepts.

The second area of concern was how Mrs. T “repaired” broken interaction. She had several op- tions: a) ask the student to try again, b) call upon another student, or c) provide the answer herself. The implicit goal in each case was to achieve a correct response. Primary considerations were when and to what extent Mrs. T engaged sway students in repair work. Table 3 provides a breakdown of the options Mrs. T exercised when students responded incorrectly.

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MAY 1986 199

Table 2 Sway Student Involvement in Classroom Interaction

Exercise No. Greatest Percent Kind of Exercise Focus of Exercise Invovlement

1 2 3 4 5 6 I 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Beginning Beginning End Beginning Beginning Begin/End End Begin/End Beginning Begin/Mid Begin/Mid Middle Middle Beginning Beginning End Middle End

41 26 25 33 40 46 81 65 22 38 30 30 64 28 26 16 30 55

Review drill Review drill New topic drill New topic drill Review drill New topic drill New topic drill New topic drill Review drill Review drill Review drill Review drill Review drill Review drill New topic drill Review drill New topic drill New topic drill

Grammar/Vocabulary Vocabulary Future Future Vocabulary Future/Irregular Future/Probability Future/Prob/Irreg Fu ture/Irregular Future/Prob/Irreg Vocabulary Por/Para Future Vocabulary Conditional Vocabulary Conditional Conditional

Table 3 Teacher Responses to Incorrect Replies by Sway (N=6) and Non-Sway (N= 18) Students

Requests Repeat Calls on Other Student Gives Answer

SW N-SW SW N-SW SW N-SW

Incorrect Partial

Incorrect Whole

Totals

6 12 11 24 5 16

3 4 4 6 - -

9 16 15 30 5 16

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200 FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS

For both sway and non-sway students, the most fre- quent action taken in response to an incorrect reply was to call upon another student. A reexamination of the data to find out whom Mrs. T called upon re- vealed the following results: 12 out of 15 students Mrs. T called upon when a sway student made an error were sway students; when non-sway students made an er- ror, Mrs. T called upon sway students 12 out of 30 times. A closer analysis of the data also showed that on three occasions Mrs. T called upon a sway student to give the correct response after two correction at- tempts by non-sway students had failed.

The second most frequent option was to provide the student an opportunity to self-correct. This option was distributed relatively equally between the two kinds of students. The least frequently employed option was to supply the correct answer. This option was exercised considerably more with non-sway students than with sway students.

To summarize, six students were involved in nearly 40 percent of the teacher-initiated interaction and almost half of the student-initiated interaction. These six students, labeled sway students, were most active at the beginning and end of lessons; their greatest par- ticipation occurred during new topic practice and vocabulary and grammar review. They were also great- ly engaged when other sway students made response errors and intermittently engaged when non-sway students made errors.

Finding Number 2: Sway Students and Foreign Language Development

In Mrs. T’s class, foreign language development was defined in terms of how well a student performed over a semester on a total of four discrete-point tests. Each test covered the grammatical and vocabulary items covered during a six-week period. The average of the four test scores was used to determine the student’s final course grade. Mrs. T did not systematically evaluate speaking proficiency, nor did classroom par- ticipation figure into the student’s final grade. Home- work was assigned and checked, but it did not count toward the final grade either.

To determine how well sway students achieved over the semester, the final average scores of all 24 students were rank ordered. Four of the six sway students had final average scores high enough to place them in the top ten rankings. Of these four students, three were within the top six rankings; the other ranked eighth. The two sway students placing below the top ten rank- ings were ranked 20th and 21st. The rankings indicate that four of the six sway students developed the skills needed to perform well on pencil-and-paper tests, the single means used for grade determination.

How students performed on written tests was not necessarily associated with their ability to com- municate in the foreign language. A number of students in Mrs. T’s class developed the ability to re- spond correctly and appropriately in Spanish when they were addressed in Spanish, in spite of the fact that they performed poorly on written tests. Moreover, some of the students rarely engaged in any interaction in Spanish and yet had consistently high test grades. Thus, in addition to test performance, it is important to consider interaction performance as an indicator of foreign language development. Sway students were engaged in nearly 40 percent of teacher-initiated in- teraction and were responsible for almost 50 percent of the student-initiated interaction. Nearly 80 percent of their responses to teacher-initiated interactions were accepted by the teacher as correct. These findings, when coupled with the above test results, indicate that sway students not only learned about the foreign language, but learned how to use it for classroom com- munication as well.

Discussion This study introduced a new term to characterize

students who, because of their perceived ability to communicate effectively in the foreign language, af- fect teaching decisions concerning interaction. These students were labeled “sway students!’ The purpose of the study was to explore how six sway students in- fluenced teaching as well as learning in one high school Spanish classroom.

Two major questions guided the study:

1. Did the teacher organize interaction around sway students? 2. Did sway students increase the overall amount of comprehensible input in the foreign language?

Regarding the first question, the results suggest that the teacher, Mrs. T, did indeed organize interaction around sway students. Mrs. T. appeared to engage sway students selectively at key points in the development of a lesson. For example, she tended to call upon sway students at the beginning and end of lessons more than in the middle of lessons. At the beginning of a lesson, Mrs. T typically modeled the desired responses to be followed during practice drills. Toward the end of a lesson, Mrs. T would review the major points covered in the lesson and then engage a small number of students in interaction to test the efficacy of the lesson. It was at these two times that Mrs. T needed to engage students who would most likely provide the correct response. In Mrs. T‘s class, a correct response was re- quired to achieve closure and hence move on to the

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MAY 1986 201

next interaction set. This requirement is assumed to stem from the behavioristic orientation under which Mrs. T appeared to be operating. During the middle phase of a lesson, where a correct response was less crucial, Mrs. T called upon a wider range of students, allowing more students to practice the topic of the lesson.

The tendency toward selective interaction was also evident in the way Mrs. T handled error correction. When a sway student made an error, Mrs. T tended to call upon a fellow sway student, particularly during the preview and review phases of a lesson. When non-sway students were unable to provide correct responses, Mrs. T engaged both sway and non-sway students according to the demands of the interaction. In several cases, sway students were called upon when attempts by non-sway students had failed. Finally, Mrs. T rarely saw a need to answer for sway students, choosing instead to either request a repetition or call upon another student.

In summary, Mrs. T organized lessons around students who were not only capable of displaying linguistic knowledge, but who also knew when and how to display their knowledge in ways that were in- teractionally appropriate. This result attests to the im- portance of sway students in foreign language teaching. In addition, it may relate to the role sway students play in foreign language learning, and thus help answer the second question posed for this study.

Clearly, the goal of Mrs. T’s class was to produce well-formed language output. And clearly, she was concerned about obtaining it at certain points in a lesson more than she was at others. Sway students helped her achieve this goal and in doing so may also have been contributing to the overall amount of com- prehensible input available in class. That is, the sway students’ output during the preview and review phases of a lesson served as comprehensible input to the class in general, and to non-sway students in particular. The comprehensible input derived from sway students thus augmented that produced by Mrs. T throughout the three phases of a lesson.

Unfortunately, in this study, foreign-language development was assessed only in terms of explicit learning; how well students were able to communicate in Spanish remains an empirical matter. Nevertheless, from the interaction data and students’ test score averages, it is evident that some students knew both when and how to communicate with the teacher, while others remained relatively low in both skills.

There are some other important limitations in the study, the most noticeable of which is the sample size. However, as Gage (5, p. 83) has pointed out, “a single occurrence of a phenomenon ... is sufficient enough to prove that the phenomenon is possible (emphasis in

original)!’ Another problem is that the system used to code classroom interaction suffered from a deficien- cy found in all observational systems: the number and operational definitions of the categories were essen- tially arbitrary. Moreover, no reliability check was con- ducted to increase the trustworthiness of the research- er’s coding skill. Finally, since the focus of the study was on the organization of interaction between teacher and the students, choral repetition drills involving the whole group were not considered. This may have had an effect on the overall interaction pattern by giving the appearance of continued interaction between the teacher and students when, in fact, such interaction was interspersed with choral group-oriented drill work.

This study has raised anumber of important ques- tions for further research. First, it would be interesting to know more about sway students’ perceptions of learning a foreign language. Are sway students aware of the influence they have on teachers? In what ways are sway students similar to Seliger’s “high input generators?” (13) A second area for further study might involve the use of video-taping to analyze more carefully the amounts of time sway students spend engaged in interaction with the teacher. This would help solve the question of how sway student influence relates to quantity and quality of interaction. Third, it would be interesting to include the development of speaking proficiency of sway students as compared to non-sway students. The ACTFL Oral Proficiency In- terview could be used for this purpose. Finally, the most critical question of all is whether the sway stu- dent interaction phenomenon described in this study is associated with effective foreign language teaching. Do only effective teachers use sway students? If so, a possible focus for preservice and inservice training might involve ways to identify and selectively work with sway students to improve overall student achievement.

This study was an attempt to focus on teaching in a way that took into account the effect that learners have on the teaching process. As Politzer (11) has pointed out, research in language teaching must take the learner into account. Researchers can no longer assume that achievement is simply a matter of fre- quency of teaching behavior. The results of this study indicate that teaching is an interactive process in which the teacher and students mutually engage in learning. The teacher in this study selectively interacted with sway students, ostensively to increase the amount of language output, which in turn served as an additional source of comprehensible input. A core assumption in current thinking is that both output and input are essential for language development (7; 15).

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Initiation Initiation

Response Response

Evaluation Evaluation

Initiation Initiation

Response Response

Evaluation Evaluation

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS

Initiation

Response

Evaluation

Initiation

Response

Evaluation

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

REFERENCES Chastain, Kenneth. Developing Second-Language Skilk Theory to Pmctice. (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally College Publishing, 1976. Couthard, Malcolm. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London, England: Longman Press, 1977. Ebel, Carol W. “Choice of Language Used by the Speaker: The Real Issue of Which Method I Use in My ESL Classroom!’ TESOL Newsletter 19, iii (1985): 7-8. Educational Testing Service. ETS Oral Proficiency Manual. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1982. Gage, Nathaniel. The Scientific Basis of the Art of Teaching. New York, Ny: Teachers College Press, 1978. Hunt, David. Teachers’ Adaptation to Students: Im- plicit and Explicit Matching. Stanford, C A Stanford Center for Research and Development in Teaching, R&D Memorandum No. 139, 1975. Krashen, Stephen. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. New York, Ny: Pergamon Press, 1982. Long, Michael and Charlene Sato. “Classroom Foreigner Talk Discourse: Forms and Functions of Teachers’ Questions:’ 268-85 in Herbert Seliger and Michael Long, eds., Classroom Oriented Research in SecondLanguage Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983. Lundgren, U.P. Model Analysis of Pedagogical Pro-

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

cess. Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholm Institute of Education, Department of Educational Research, MAP, 1977. Mehan, Hugh. ‘‘ ‘What time is it, Denise?’ Asking Known Information Questions in Classroom Discourse? Theory into Practice 18, iv (1981): 285-94. Politzer, Robert. “Effective Language Teaching: Insights from Research:’ in James Alatis, Howard Altman and Penelope Alatis, eds., The Second Language Classroom: Directions for the 1980’s. New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1981. Sacks, Harvey, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jeffer- son. “A Simplist Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking in Conversation!’ Language 50 (1974):

Seliger, Herbert. “Learner Interaction in the Classroom and Its Effects on Language Acquisition:’ 246-66 in Herbert Seliger and Michael Long, eds., Classroom Oriented Research in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, M A Newbury House, 1983. Smith, L. and W. Geoffrey. The Complexities of the Ur- ban Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. Swain, Merrill. “Communicative Competence: Some Roles of Comprehensible Input and Comprehensible Output in its Development:’ in Susan Gass and Carolyn Madden, eds., Input in Secondhnguage Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1985.

696-735.

APPENDIX A Sample Observation Worksheet for Observing Classroom Interaction

Codes: Initiation (G = general solicit; number = individual student; number + T = student to teacher) Response (1 = correct; 2 = incorrect whole; 3 = incorrect partial; R = teacher acknowledges

student; I = teacher ignores student) Evaluation (1 = positive verbal evaluation; 2 = no verbal evaluation; 3 = request for repetition;

4 = teacher supplies answer; 5 = teacher calls on another student) Interaction Purposes (D = display questions/directives; M = meaningful questions/directives;

C = communicative questions/directives) Language Used (S = Spanish; E = English)

Observer Date Time

Topics and Topic changes are to be clearly indicated on the worksheet. Other comments may be made on the back of the worksheet.

Initiation Initiation

Response Response

Evaluation Evaluation

Initiation Initiation

Response Response

Evaluation Evaluation