174 Advances in spoken discourse analysis
So what went wrong? Socoop understood the question, and offered ‘Yes, I
am er father of four children’ as proof of his enjoyment of being a father,
as one might in a normal conversation. The teacher was not satisfied because
she had expected a response which practised the form of ‘like’ with verb in
‘-ing’. The teacher’s reaction, getting Virginia to repeat her question to him,
baffled Socoop, who thought he had already answered it rather well. Finally
he half-heartedly repeated the words ‘like being’, then thought perhaps it
should be ‘like be’, whereupon the teacher gave up and answered the question
herself. (Which must have worried her students somewhat since she was
quite definitely a woman.)
So basically what happened was this: the teacher required a response on
the Inner, to practice ‘like’ with a verb, and Socoop responded on the Outer.
And in normal conversations, one does not repeat the words of the question
in the answer, so he was merely applying (quite correctly) the rules of
natural conversation.
Many other classroom researchers have recorded similar breakdowns (see
McTear 1975, Long 1979), and anyone who has taught a foreign language
to elementary students will have had similar experiences.
Sometimes students deliberately react to a DVX in a meaningful way just
for fun; one class I was observing was practising polite requests with ‘Would
you mind...’ followed by ‘No, not at all’. They got to the cue: ‘Would you
mind lending me 50 cents?’ One student’s partner answered, loudly, ‘Yes,
I mind.’ And then added for the benefit of the teacher and the other students,
‘He never pay back!’
SO HOW DO STUDENTS TELL INNER FROM OUTER?
Close analysis of classroom data in the light of the Hallidayan concept of
‘situation’, consisting of ‘tenor’, ‘mode’ and ‘field’, (see J.Willis 1981:124),
suggested that students perceive different types of clues from the general
‘situation’ to help them distinguish what is wanted.
Firstly, they may recognize the current role of the teacher (tenor): if the
teacher is encouraging an open discussion, what is required will almost
certainly be Outer. If the teacher is in the role of instructor, and the ‘field’
is largely concerned with language per se, the likelihood of an Inner requirement
is higher. See Example 4 above, which illustrates the teacher’s role about
to change in this way. Most teachers use explicit Boundary exchanges followed
by a series of Direct and Inform exchanges, which tell students what to do
and how to do it. In the language classroom, they are often explicitly given
the words to do it with. (See Example 4, 263–5.)
Secondly, if there are no explicit Boundary exchanges, students may
deduce from the preceding series of exchanges, paying special attention
to the teacher’s Follow-up moves, how they are to respond. After one or
two DVXs, it is highly likely the next will also be a DVX, and require
an Inner response, unless the teacher signals in some way that it is not;