talk analysis

Introduction

In a modern classroom, one of the main role of teacher is to facilitate communication. Teachers are supposed to bring more students talk rather merely of transmission of information. Many employers are now looking for colleges or graduates students with 21st century skills. The 21st century skills includes communication, problem-solving and innovation. However, the practice of teachers transmitting knowledge to their students by instruction is prevalent especially in area where learners have limited access to resources. This method of instruction hardly develop 2lst century skills. In area where knowledge is readily accessible where learners can access wealth of information or content on the internet, the model of knowledge instruction is no longer adequate (n.a, 2013). Students need to be autodidactic and long life learner.

In science education the word constructivism is commonly used by science educator. Constructivism is a learning theory based on the idea that leaners learn and construct meaning and develop understanding based on their experiences in connection to their prior understanding. It may sound that the constructivist science educators favor the traditional teaching approaches by bombarding students with facts, however, the inquiry-based approaches in teaching support constructivist idea of learning as well.

In inquiry oriented classroom, teacher-student interaction forms the important component of classroom talk. Teachers are regular component of classroom talk and they play a crucial role in constructing the nature of discourse in a lesson. The types of question teacher ask will affect the cognitive processes of the students dealing with scientific knowledge construction. How students construct knowled...

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...00), IRF pattern can be categories as authoritative and dialogic. IRF pattern is authoritative if the teachers’ feedback is merely evaluation. Instead, if the teachers’ feedback is adding extra information to extend students response or building new knowledge from them, then the IRF pattern is dialogic.

The transcribed audio shows that the teachers-students interaction followed IRF pattern. Here are two sample of IRF/E pattern appears from the transcript:

The two sample shown that the interaction between teachers and students initiated by teacher question. Firstly teacher asked question then students gave response. Lastly teacher gave feedback/evaluation. In sample (1) the IRF pattern is dialogic. Teacher only asked for simple answer but extra information was added to build new knowledge. In this example, the question asked by teacher was an open ended question.