An Analysis of Classroom Discourse - University of Birmingham

According to Sinclair and Coulthard, the structure of an informing exchange is I(R)
without an option for being a follow-up move (1992, pg.26). As you can see from the
previous examples, the teacher gives a follow-up response to the students. I believe that
the follow-up reply from the teacher is him accepting the students’ responses and
understanding that the students have mistaken their roles but have produced valid
answers regardless. It seems that the teacher wanted an informing exchange, but due to
the misunderstanding by the students it turns into something different. Perhaps this
positive feedback could be the reason why the students continue to mistake their roles
because they are never told that they are making an inappropriate response.
4.4 PUPIIL INFORM EXCHANGES
Other utterances that I had difficulty categorizing were when a student would produce
language that did not follow the structure. These types of utterances always followed
repetition exchanges. It seems that the students wanted to voice their own discourse after
repeating as a class, either by repeating the model again or producing a phrase that was
linguistically linked to the model. I have considered these to be pupil inform exchanges.
Sinclair and Coulthard describe these exchanges as students “…offer[ing] information
which they think is relevant, or interesting [and] usually receiv[ing] an evaluation of its
worth…” (1992, pg.28). Even though the students have only a minimal knowledge of the
language, it seems that they understand and are voicing relevant phrases following the
model. The structure here is IF and can be seen in exchanges 2-4, 70-71, and 105-106.
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