Teacher Talk: The Structure of Vocabulary and Grammar Explanations

Abstract

Current research addresses the relationship between the language available to learners in language classrooms and its affect on language acquisition. Different types of classroom activities can be expected to affect the classroom discourse. For example, the interaction between teacher and students when doing a language drill is expected to be different from the interaction that takes place when the teacher is giving a lecture or assisting students with homework. Based on Long's (1981) findings that the degree of adjustment made in foreigner talk (FT) is related to the nature of the task performed, task type was considered an important factor in the analysis of classroom discourse. The work presented here provides a description and characterization of teacher talk (TT) in two different classroom activities: grammar and vocabulary explanations. Vocabulary and grammar explanations both involve the expression and explanation of information to facilitate comprehension by the students. These were selected for analysis because they are believed to be typical of a commonly occurring type of teacher talk.