IATEFL 2007 conference presentation - teacher-student blogs: interaction and effectiveness

8/14/2019 IATEFL 2007 conference presentation - teacher-student blogs: interaction and effectiveness

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Teacher-student blogs: interaction and effectiveness

Rachel Wicaksono, York St John University, York, UK

Background

In June and July 2006 an Italian university student, Antonio Tanzola, and I kept a blog for the

BBC Learning English website. Antonio wrote a daily account of his activities and Iresponded with advice on writing skills, grammar and vocabulary. In addition, readers posted

their comments and questions.

Interaction in the blog: Self-evaluation of teacher taIk (SETT)

To explore patterns of teacher-student interaction in the blog I used a framework developed by

Walsh (2006), known as SETT. The framework provides teachers with a way of describing

their talk and linking it to lesson aims. It assumes that lessons are made up of a series of

episodes or modes, each with different aims and interactional features:

managerial (organising learners, starting/stopping activities, giving/checking

instructions);

materials (using materials to elicit, check, clarify and extend learners contributions and

provide practice);

skills and systems (focussing on accuracy, helping learners produce correct forms and

correcting mistakes);

classroom context (focussing on fluency, establishing contexts in which learners can

communicate at length).

Managerial mode

My posts included very little teacher talk in managerial mode. This may be because the

format of the blog (one student writes, one teacher responds) was decided in advance and

needed no further organisation or explanation. Furthermore, writing can convey meaning

more concisely than speaking and can be re-read, therefore achieving managerial-type

interaction more efficiently than in a real classroom.

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Materials mode

Interaction that focussed on materials was difficult to identify, perhaps because of

differences between the blog and a real classroom. Walshs examples of materials include a

gap-fill exercise, reviewing a unit from the course book and watching a video clip. Hecategorises all these episodes as materials mode because, turn-taking, turn sequence and

topic management all flow from the material [my italics]. In the blog, allof the turn-taking,

turn sequence and topic management flowed from the written text we co-created.

Skills and systems mode

In this mode (which made up about half of my teacher talk), I usually wanted Antonio to pay

attention to specific features of his English. For example, describing how he forgot to eat

dinner during a football on television, he said, I realised that I wasnt been eating anything

for 20 hours. I corrected his sentence to, I realised I hadnt eaten anything and wrote

about the Past Perfect. In his next entry, Antonio provided evidence of translating, analysing

contrastively, and transferring,

In the last post I wanted to write, I hadnt been eating but I used be instead of

have. When I dont pay enough attention I often make this error because of thedifferent Italian auxiliary verb. Anyway, I would like to ask you if the Past Perfect

Continuous can be used in that situation instead of the Past Perfect?

The skills and systems mode pushed Antonio to extend and clarify his output. For

example, he wrote, The most important [place] has surely been Certosa di Padula, which

Im going to shortly talk about. I asked whether he intended to say that he was going to talk

about the place soon (shortly) or in a few words (briefly). In his next post Antonio described

the monastery and then wrote, Ive just briefly talked about Certosa di Padula! Hecontinued,

In the sentence [] Im going to shortly talk about, which I wrote in my last post, I

meant not in detail and so I incorrectly used shortly instead of briefly. Its a

funny mistake, Rachel, isnt it? The sentence meaning in fact changes completely but

doesnt become unrealistic.

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Classroom context mode

I usually began with some comments about my activities or some questions for Antonio, the

classroom context mode. This was most commonly followed with a section on skills and

systems and then rounded off with another classroom context section. In using this sequenceI was attempting to establish rapport with Antonio; providing a platform for the suggestions

and corrections that were sandwiched in the middle.

Was the blog useful?

Antonio used the interaction to notice and re-structure, two processes believed to assist with

language acquisition. In addition, he thought about his learning strategies and asked

questions about English that were relevant to his own needs. He mentioned the convenience

of being able to learn anywhere, at any time of day. Whether the blog was more efficient for

the readers is more difficult to assess, and would provide an interesting focus for future

research.

Walsh, S. 2006.Investigating Classroom Discourse. Oxford: Routledge.

[email protected]

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IATEFL 2007 conference presentation - teacher-student blogs: interaction and effectiveness