Intonation and feedback in the EFL classroom 19529 T: //oTHIS one HERE please //o siti noRAIN //
S: (some rice)
T: //p RICE //p oKAY //p SOME RICE //
Developing the model of classroom discourse outlined by Sinclair and Coulthard
(1975), researchers (reported in Coulthard and Montgomery 1981:ch. 1)
saw evidence for an additional unit between exchange and transaction to
which the label sequence was given. Sequences represent stretches of discourse
in which a formal pattern is maintained above the level of the exchange. In
the classroom, for example, a sequence
arises when a predictable routine is begun—perhaps a number of similar
questions, or repetitive commands, or anything that participants recognize
as forming a distinctive set of exchanges, with a beginning, middle
and end.
(Sinclair and Brazil 1982:52)A drill, for example, eliciting responses of a particular syntactic pattern,
would constitute such a ‘predictable routine’. The ends of such sequences
in the corpus are often marked by the production of two consecutive low
termination tone units as in (29). This pattern is frequently followed by a
change of topic or activity, introduced, for example, by ‘Right. Let’s look
at the next set of pictures now’ or ‘Can you take out your exercise books,
please’. The item
//p SOME RICE //has the status of a discrete pitch sequence: that is, an intuitively significant
section of the discourse. Its local significance appears to be that it marks a
more significant boundary, that is a boundary between two elements of a
higher rank in discourse structure, than that between two exchanges. As an
item of feedback, while the first low termination tone unit,
//p oKAY //marks that the exchange has been completed to the teacher’s satisfaction,
the second indicates that the sequence is similarly complete.
While this pattern is most often found at the end of a clearly defined
sequence coinciding with the beginning and end of a drill, it is also common
at the end of a section in which the fluency of the drill has been seriously
disrupted. In example (30) the teacher accepts (b) a student’s response (a)
and it is then pointed out to him that the response was inappropriate (c).
30 Sl: //o GREEDy TOM //o HAS EATen //p a DUCK // (a)
T: //p a DUCK // (b)
S2: //p a CHICken // (c)
T: // o SHE // (d)
S2: //p SAY CHICken //