170 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
Here, the teacher’s Initiations in exchange (264), and again in (265),
(266), (267), predict a whole series of exchanges, with the structure IR
Exchanges such as these are called DVA because they predict a whole
activity (in this case a series of Listing exchanges) on the Inner Independent.
Teacher Follow-up is often withheld until the end of the series or activity,
unless she happens to be listening in to one pair as they finish an exchange,
as in (273). But in fact here, her Follow-up immediately precedes a
Boundary exchange (274) where she draws this activity to a close to
start something new.
This conversation-drill activity here is a very controlled activity. A roleplay
activity could be less tightly controlled, but would still be on the Inner
Independent, since normally in a role play the students are given their parts,
are told what they have to do, both the content of the utterances and the
turn-taking system are controlled by the cues or prompts, and the outcome
is often predetermined. So this too is ‘pseudo-interaction’ despite a surface
semblance of real life. No real communication is happening, and no worlds
are being changed by it.
TYPICAL PATTERNS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING SEQUENCES
Using this three-column display system, then, it proved possible to examine
more closely the relationships between the Outer and Inner levels of
discourse, and to identify typical patternings that occur in language teaching
classrooms.
Four main patterns emerged. These I will now summarize. There are
sections of lesson (in my data a ‘section’ was anything from 1 1/2 minutes
to 4 minutes of lesson) where:
1 Only the Outer column is used, which denotes focus on the topic and
information conveyed, rather than the language itself. (This would also
include organization, etc.) This of course involves interactive and communicative
use of language, ‘natural’ (Widdowson 1980), ‘truthful’ (McTear 1975). In
my data, but not exemplified here, there is a long discussion of the kinds