Interaction in the speaking classroom

Classroom interaction unrelated and performed by the teacher and the learners during instruction.
There are some purposed interaction in the speaking classroom such as exchanging ideas or
information, sharing feeling or experiences and socializing. Chaudron (1998:131-136) note that in recent
years, a much greater role has been attributed to the interactive features of classroom behaviors such
as following:

a. Trun taking: In doing the interaction teacher and students, take turns to speak. The number of
tiurns someone takes in interaction is an indication of how effectively he or she participates in
the class
b. Question and answer. The teacher questions may facilitate the learners in their target language
production whereas the learner s’ responses can be viewed as an effective attempt to promote
learning.
c. Negotiation of meaning. When understanding does not take place, either on the part of the
learner nor on the teacher, they can ask for each other clarification by means of comprehension
checks, confirmation checks, or clarification request (Chaudron,1998:131)
d. Feedback. To enhance learning, it is necessary that the teacher give the learner feedback, which
typically include error correction. On the other hand, feedback may come from the part of the
learner, for instance as a clarification request.

Allwright and Breen (1989) as quoted by CHaudron (1998:10) stated further stated that interaction
is considered important for the following reasons:

a. Only through interaction can the learner decompose the target language (TL) structure
b. Interaction gives learners the opportunities to incorporate TL structure into their own speech
c. The meaningfulness for learners of classroom event of any kind, whether thought as an
interactive or not, will depend on the extent to which communication has been jointly
constructed between the teacher and the learner.

Aspect of Interaction

Teacher Talk

In language teaching what is claimed by teacher talk is the language typically used by the teacher in their
communication. in simple word according to Ellis (1998:96) ‘teacher talk’ is a special language the
teacher used when addressing learner in the classroom. Teacher talk is crucial and important, not only
for the organization and for management of the classroom but also the process of the acquisition.

According to FLander the section of the teacher talk is subdivided into two major categories; direct and
indirect. The indirect categories in the teacher talk include accepting the students’ feelings, offering
praise and encouragement, accepting or using the ideas of students and asking questions. Direct
categories include lecturing, giving direction, offering constructive criticism, and justifying authority.
Similar to flanders categories (1998:32) as he has from Foreign Language Interaction (Flint) system, also
put the term teacher talk into indirect and direct influence. He clarifies the indirect teacher talk into the
following.

a. Deals with feeling; in a non-threatening , accepting, and discussion, referring to, or

communicating understandingof past, present or future feelings of the students.
b. Praises and encourages: praising, complimenting, telling students why what they have to say or
done is valued. Encouraging students to continue, trying to give them confidence, confirming
answer are correct
c. Jokes. Intentional joking, kidding, making puns, attempting to be humorous, providing the joking
is not at anyone’s expense. Unintentional humors are not included in this category.
d. Uses ideas of the students. Clarifying using interpreting, summarizing the ideas of the students :
the idea must be rephrased by the teacher but still recognized as being contribution of the
students.
e. Repeat student response verbatim. Repeating the exact words of the students after rhey
participate.
f. Ask questions. Asking question to which an answer is anticipated. Rhetorical questions are not
included in this category.

According to Flint’s system as quoted by chaudron (1998: 32) the direct influence on the teacher talk
is classified into:

a. Giving information: giving information, facts, own opinions, or ideas, lecturing, or asking
rhetorical questions.
b. Correcting without rejection: telling the students who have made mistake the correct response
without using words or intonation which communicate criticism.
c. Giving direction: giving direction, request or commands which are students expected to follow
d. Directing pattern drill. Giving statement which students are expected to repeat exactly, to make
substitution or to change from one form to another.
e. Criticizing students behavior. Rejecting the behavior o students, trying to change the non-
acceptable behavior, communicating anger, displeasure, annoyance, dissatisfaction, with what
the students are doing.
f. Criticizing students’ response. Telling the students their response is correct or acceptable and
communicating by words or intention criticism, displeasure, annoyance, and rejection.

Teacher needs to control the talking time in the classroom. Nunan (2000:190) describes that when
determining the appropriateness or otherwise of the quantity of the teacher talk, then we need to take
into account a variety factors including:

1. The point in the lesson in which the talking occurs.

2. What prompts the teacher talk: whether it is planned or spontaneous and if spontaneous,
whether the ensuing disgression is helpful or not.
3. The value of the talk as potentially useful input for acquisition.
The effectiveness of teacher’s talk should not be determined based on how much teacher spends time
talking in teaching learning process, but rather than the way teacher uses talk to promote meaningful
interaction. The effective teacher talk may provide essential support to facilitate both language
comprehension and learner production. When teacher gives long explanation, the students tend to be
passive. Speaking class require an interactive classroom climate when students are free to interact and
become active. to manage teacher’s talking time, it is necessary for the teacher to selectively answer
students’ questions, give instruction, explain assessment, and use daily interpersonal communications
with the students.

In the classroom, teacher make adjustments to both language form and language function in order to
help communication in the classroom. The adjustment are called “teacher talk
(www.finchpark.com/courses/glossary.htm) . from those meaning, it can said that teacher talk is a major
way used by the teacher to convey information, have discussion, and negotiation and motivate the
students. So teacher can give the students knowledge and control their behavior.

Teacher talk is regarded as special simplified code with double faatures namely formal feature and
functional features of teacher talk, such as the speed, pause, repetition, modification of teacher talk.
The second one refers to the language used by the teacher to organize and control classes including the
teacher’s question, interactional modification and feedback. In formal feature, Chaudron (1988: 85)
proposed teacher talk in the language classroom tend to show the following modification as
characteristic of teacher talk’;

a. Rate of sppech appears to be slower

b. Pauses which maybe evidence of the speaker planning more, are possibly more frequent longer
c. Pronunciation tend to be exaggerated and simplified
d. Vocabulary used is more basic,
e. Degree of subordination is slower,
f. More declarative statement are used than question
g. Teacher may self-repeat more frequently

2. Learner Talks

According to Halliday, children have language development when they learn language (Halliday,
1986:16). It is the same as they learn foreign language in the classroom. Firstly, they imitate the teacher
talks and they need time to record every teacher’s talks that it is called “silent period” then they start to
express their own ideas, having discussion and finally can get their communicative experience.

The learner talks can be used by the learner to express their own idea, initiate new topics, and develop
their own opinions. As the result, their knowledge will develop. Learner’s talks will show the activity
concentration of the learner to their teaching learning activity. Learner’s talk can be said as students
speech when he imitates his teacher’s examples, expresses his idea or gives comments and criticism
about something in the classroom. Those includes the characteristic of students talk. The other
characteristic are as follow:
 a. Mispronouncing syllables or whole word.
b. Voice disorder, including abnormal pits, loudness or voice quality
c. Fluency disorder, pause, hesitation, and repetition
d. Stutter
e. Reluctance to speak

According to Chaudron (1998: 32-33), the following re the items concerning with the learner’s talk in
classroom interaction based on Flint System.

a. Students’ response, specific: responding to the teacher within a specific and limited range of
available or previously shaped answer.
b. Students response, choral: choral response by the total class or part of the class.
c. Students’ response, open ended or students initiated: responding to the teacher with the
students on ideas, opinions, reactions, feelings, giving one among many possible answers.
d. Silence: pauses in the ineraction. Periods of quiet during where there is no verbal interaction
e. Silence-AV: silence in the intraction during the period of audio visual equipment is being used to
communicate
f. Confusion, non work oriented: more than one person at the time are talking, so the interaction
cannot be recorded. Students are out of order, they are not behaving as the teacher wishes, and
they are not concern with the task in hand.
g. Laughter: laughing, giggling, whether it is individuals or with the teacher
h. Uses English: using English by the teacher of students
i. Nonverbal: nonverbal gestures or facial expression used by the teacher or students without the
use of words.

Students have different characteristic and skill in learning language. Some students can easily follow
the process of learning while some of them need to work hard. It has been one of the teacher
responsibility to make sure that students are able to accomplish the skill.

PATTERN OF INTERACTION

Ur (1998: 228) classified some intraction patterns as follow:

1. Group work

Students work in a small groups on task that entail interaction: conveying information, for
example, or group decision making. The teacher walks around and listening, intervenes a little if
it is necessary.

2. Close ended teacher questioning

Only one correct response will be approved. Sometimes cynically called “the guess of what
teacher wants u to say”

3. Individual work
 Teacher gives tasks and the students work on them individually, the teacher walk around
monitoring and assisting
4. Choral responses

The teacher gives a model which is imitated by the students in the chores or gives a cue which is
responded to in chorus.

5. Collaboration
Studnts do the same short of tasks as individual work,

b. students talk

BROWN INTERACTION ANALYSIS SYSTEM

Brown’s Interaction Analysis System (BIAS) was designed by Brown. Borwn (1975: 67) in Richard and
Lockhart (1994: 147) states that this system only consist of seven categories: three types of teacher-talk,
two of students talk, one silence, and unclassified.

a. Teacher leactures: describes, explains, narrates, directs.

b. Teacher question: question about content or procedure which pupils are intended to answer.
c. Teacher response: accept feelings of the class, describes past feelings, and future in non-
threatening way.
d. Pupils response: pupil’d direct and predictable response to teacher questions and directions.
e. Pupils volunteer: pupil’s information, comment, or question.
f. Silence: pause , short period of silence.
g. Unclassified: confusion in which communications cannot be understood. Unsual activities such
as reprimanding or criticizing pupils.

in speaking classroom, how the teaching learning process run depends on the interaction between
the teacher and the students. Therefore understanding the interaction happened in the speaking
classroom is important.

INTERACTION IN SPEAKING CLASS

ALTHOUGH TEACHER HAS THE AUTHORITY TO CONTROL INTERACTION, learners also need to learn
how they are expected to interact in the classroom. Fauziati (2008: 15) states that the goal of
teaching speaking is communicative efficisnecy” it means that the learners should be able to create
communication and interaction. Through communication and interaction many aspect of both
linguistic and communicative competence are developed. Hatch (1978: 404) in RIcharrd and
Lockhart (1994: 147) argues “ one learns how to to conversation, one liearns how to interact
 verbally, out of this interaction syntactic structures are developed”. The teacher can manipulate the
situation of the classroom to create interactive teaching learning process. Gebhard (1996: 53)
defines at least five factors that can contribute in making interactive classroom:

1. Reduction in the centrality of the teacher.

2. An appreciation for the uniqueness of the individuals.
3. Chance for students to express themselves in meaningful ways.
4. Opportunities for students to negotiate meaning with each other and the teacher.
5. Choices, both in relation to what students say and how they say it.

In this case, reducing centrality of the teacher foes not mean that teacher has control to the classroom.
The teacher should give chance for the students to have interaction among themselves and with the
teacher. The teacher need to be sensitive to teach student individual’s background. Each student has
their unique language-learning style. It is important for the teacher to appreciate it, and gives chance for
them to express their ideas in meaningful way because actually students also need apportunity to listen
each other, express their ideas in speech ask question, respond to question, choose what they wanna
say, to whom they want to say it, and how they want to say.

Rchard and Lockhart (1994: 182) define language use in the classroom which plays part in developing
interaction between teacher and students.

1. Modification of teacher speech - teacher’s speech can lead to a special type of discourse which
has been referred to as a teacher talk.
2. Teacher’s questions – questioning is one of the common techniques used by teacher.
3. Feedback – providing feedback to learners on their performance is another important aspect of
teaching. Feedback can be either positive or negative and may serve not only to let tearners
know how well they have performed but also to increase motivation and build asupportive
classroom climate.
4. Learner language used in the classroom – students use the target language for a variety of
different purposes within lessons, including intracting with others learners, and using language
to negotiate and complete learning activities and assignment.

Classroom is the primary situation in which teacher and the students have opportunity to use the target
language, the kind of language use during the lessons has an important influence on students’ language
development. Commonly, language use in classroom can be used as media to create meaningful
interaction during the lesson. For example, the teacher can use teacher’s question to stimulate the
students to take part in teaching learning process. As students’ response, the student can use feedback.
In the meaningful interaction, learns makes progress in learning English.