English Language Teaching in its Social Context

CONSTRAINTS AND RESOURCES IN CLASSROOM TALK 95Teacher:Learner:What’s the dgerence between “water is heating”and “water is heated’?Water is heating, it - it’s the one who’s heating.a variety of third turns are possible. In each case, a different type of task is revealed to bein progress:Teacher: Good. Say the whole sentence: Water is heating the radiators.(recitation)Teacher: Good. What do we call that construction?(display)Teacher: And can you think fsome things that it might be heating?(cognition)Teacher: Aha, can you explain that in a little more detail?(precision)Adapted from van Lier (1 996a)This cxample shows that the IRF structure cannot be regarded as a single type of pedagogicalactivity. All four IRF types of teacher-learner interaction given above can be used to evaluateor control or to invite participation. Knowing the purpose of a particular IRF exercise,though this may not always be easy, is crucial in determining its pedagogical value. But thereare some things that all IRF sequences have in common, and these common fcaturcs mustbe examined before IRF can be assessed as a pedagogical tool.Learning as co-construction: the limits of IRFThe central feature of IRF is that the teacher is unequivocally in charge.This being in chargemanifests itself in a number of ways.Every IRF exchange is a step in an overall plan designed by the teacher. The plan maybe to check what the students know (as in recitation or display), to construct knowledgeor an argument, perhaps along Socratic lines, or to push the students toward clarityof expression. It is important to note that the plan is not coconstructed. To varyingdegrees, students may be aware of the nature of the plan and aware of the direction in whichthe discourse is moving, but usually these matters are revealed only gradually andincidentally.The teacher does all the initiating and closing (in other words, takes all the first andthird turns), and the students’ work is done exclusively in the response slot.The IRF formattherefore discourages student initiation and student repair work. As Denis Newman, PcgGriffin, and Michael Cole (1 989) note, “the three-part unit has a built-in repair procedurein the teacher’s last turn so that incorrect information can be replaced with the rightanswers”. It is extremely hard, if not impossible, in thc IRF format, for the student to askquestions, to disagree, to sclf-correct, and so on. Indeed, I found that such student utterancesoverwhelmingly occur as private turns, side sequences, or in other ways outside the IRFformat. Oftcn they arc whispered comments to a fellow learner or questions written downin a notebook. The IRF format discourages interruption (or disruption) and can therefore