Patterns of Interaction

This article presents you how the communication takes place in language classroom setting, and the patterns of interaction.

The lesson I observed for this task was mostly a speaking lesson. Teacher entered the classroom with a suitcase and some holiday items in it. Teacher tried to present the target language using these materials first of all, She asked some questions about herself. For instance; What am I doing? What is this ? Where am I going? What am I going to do? (These were open questiones.)Students answered the questions one by one. Then teacher asked students to explain their holidays this lesson was held up just after return of a holidayThey talked about their holidays.After three students’ speech, teacher wanted the other students to ask questiones to the one who is talking. Teacher gave microphone to the speaker and one another to the others who wants to ask questiones.While the speaker was talking, also some students made comments about the speech except from asking questions . These are the examples of prompted response from students. I had the opportunity different patterns of interaction. Prompted or unprompted response and questions as I stated before. For example; while the speaker was talking suddenly she said that they went to Uludağ.The student asked a question ,she asked “Did you do snowboard?” Then , some of the class started to talk about snowboard. This shows the interaction undirected by the teacher. In these speeches, genuine communication took place in the lesson. Students talked, asked and answered about their own lives. They didn’t make speech, they just chat about the topic. Afterwards, teacher asked waht she has in her suitcase, which season they belong to and wanted them to make groups and make a prediction list. There was great noise in the class , but all of the students were speaking in Enlish and dealing with the subject. This was prompted by the learning context. There were different instances of genuine communication, One student asked me to write my hobbies and my holiday place, etc.

They are eager to talk about daily life but they have limited knowledge to do this. They can partly express themselves. Therefore, such speeches don’t last long.

The subject was about daily life. That’s why the students didn’t have difficulties especially they weren’t shy to express themselves on the contrary, they were eager to tell about their holidays.

In my classes, communication and patterns of interaction take place in the same way . It changes according to the activities. I confirm this type of communication and interaction patterns, because the students Express themselves without any hesitation. So, natural speeches, communications follow these steps. This is what I aim.

I think this lesson succeeded its aims, especially in groupwork. Groupwork is one of the most important interaction pattern which enables much more practice , increases self-confidence especially for the shy students as Hubert Skrzynski stated in his article: “ The first and foremost benefit of both pairwork and groupwork is that they increase the amount of student practice. (Skrzynski, Hubert http://www.edukator.org.pl/2005a/work/work.html , 2009 )

Groupwork and pairwork are also a good opportunity for weaker students, too. In this class, while grouping, teacher tried to make mixed groups of weak and strong students. In groups, they learn to cooperate, they improve their listening, speaking and comprehension skills.

The biggest problem arouse in this class as it is expected. While students were working in groups, there was a great noise in the class and some of the students used L1. The some problem is stated in the article of Hubert Skrzynski: “ one of the problems is that students often speak in their native language. This is difficult to eliminate………………………………….The teacher can not listen to all pairs or groups.” (Skrzynski, Hubert http://www.edukator.org.pl/2005a/work/work.html , 2009 )

On the other hand, there were lots of incorrect sentences that I heard , but , because of the noise teacher couldn’t hear it.

As far a I experienced and learned from the article or boks , despite all the drawbacks, its worth to benefit from pairwork and groupwork . It really works.

REFERENCE:

Skrzynski, Hubert http://www.edukator.org.pl/2005a/work/work.html , 2009