Classroom Discourse Analysis: A Case of ESL Reading Class

More than the recognition, perception, and interpretation of written materials, reading has been dubbed as our bridge to other skills that are necessary for academic success. Subsequently, one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of output of the students is through Classroom discourse analysis, which is an aspect of classroom process research (Jiang, 2012). This paper, therefore, aimed to determine teacher’s questioning vis-à-vis students’ reading strategies in the case of an ESL reading class in one of the private schools in Zamboanga City, Philipenese through classroom discourse analysis. As a qualitative endeavor, it made use of classroom observations with the aid of an audio recorder to enable the analysis. A total of 131 exchanges were generated in a 45-minute discussion, with roughly 25 minutes allotted to the said discourse, and the rest for other activities. Teacher-Pupil-Teacher (TPT) captured as Teacher-Student-Teacher (TST) in the case of this paper, is the recurring sequence during the whole duration of the discourse. Discourse analysis that was done to an audio recording transcript of a reading class observation revealed patterns that are primarily present in some, if not most, discourse analysis (DA) research literature. Interestingly, it, however, uncovered the following: for teacher’s way of questioning (in this case, echoice and epistemic), epistemic questions (mostly, rhetorical for this matter), were made reference(s) by the students in answering questions. Consequently, the lesson or activity became, to some extent, communicative, because of the above mentioned points.

Humor in the classroom

The chapter considers research on the effectiveness of humor to improve classroom performance. Humor is found to improve the perception of the teaching experience but not the actual performance of the students (learning, retention). Classroom discourse analysis is also examined, in particular the amount and distribution of humor in lectures and classroom activities.

THE LEVEL OF TEACHER'S FEEDBACK IN ENGLISH TEACHING: AN EFL CLASSROOM DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

The objectives of this research are to know the level of feedback applied by the EFL teacher at a junior high school in speaking class and to know the most frequent level of feedback employed by the EFL teacher. Moreover, this research conducts a qualitative research where the data of this research are the English teacher’s utterances when the teacher taught speaking for VII grade students at one of state junior high school at Sentani, Papua. Meanwhile, the data was gathered through observing and transcribing the video of English teaching and learning process. The analysis of the transcript revealed that: (1) there arethree levels of feedbacks employed by the teacher: feedback of task (6.25%), feedback of process (37.5%), and feedback of self as a person (56.25%) and (2) the most frequent level of feedback employed by the teacher is the feedback of self as a person since it gathered 56.25% during the teaching and learning activity. Based on the result of this study, it can be concluded that teacher’s feedback is an important tool to facilitate the learning process become more active. Therefore, It is suggested the teacher may use more collaboration of feedback toward students’ response or performance in the learning process.

Impacts of Positioning, Power, and Resistance on EFL Learners’ Identity Construction through Classroom Interaction: A Perspective from Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis

In this study, we explored how positioning, power, and resistance might have possible impacts on learners’ identity construction. We conducted this study in a 6-month language and culture program from August 2018 to January 2019 involving one teacher and 24 English major undergraduate students at a public university in Thailand. Using Kumaravadivelu’s (1999) Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis (CCDA) as an analytical framework and Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis approach to analysing data , we found three themes that illustrate how participants demonstrated positioning, power, and resistance: (a) learners’ choice of code as passive resistance, (b) circulating power in interaction and struggles of power, and (c) multiple positioning in classroom interactions. The findings suggest classroom context serves as a learning space to shape the contours of learners’ identity positioning and dynamics of power negotiation. This study contributes to the growing research on language learners’ identity in classroom interactions from a CCDA perspective. It suggests that EFL teaching should incorporate learner identity as an explicit goal that serves as an interpretive frame for learners’ on-going academic growth as English users within and beyond classroom contexts.