Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

32 Advances in spoken discourse analysis

within an informing transaction may be brief teacher elicitations, used to
keep attention or to check that pupils are understanding, and also pupil
elicitations on some point raised by the teacher.

Directing transactions

T E – Boundary

E – T-Direct

(E)n – P-Elicit

(E)n – P-Inform

E – T-Elicit

E – Boundary

This structure occurs where a T-Direct exchange stands at the head of a
transaction, rather than in a subordinate position. The directive will usually
be one requesting pupils to engage in some work on their own, for example
working out some cartouches, or writing a sentence in hiero-glyphs. When
pupils are working separately, they have most opportunity for initiating
exchanges. They can make comments on, or ask questions about their
task, and ask for evaluation of their work. Characteristically the teacher
ends such a transaction with an elicitation asking for the pupils’ answers
or results.

Eliciting transactions

T E – Boundary

En – T-Elicit

E – Boundary

When the teacher is asking questions, the pupils contribute continually to
the discourse by making verbal responses, but they have little opportunity
to initiate exchanges. When a pupil does break out of the usual structure
with an elicitation, and this is rare, it does not lead to a series of pupil
elicitations. The teacher quickly resumes the initiating role either by refusing
an adequate answer as in the first example below, or by taking over the
pupil’s topic as in the second.