Topic management and student initiation in an advanced Chinese-as-a-foreign-language classroom

The focus of this article is on topic management and student initiation in the context of an advanced university-level Chinese-as-a-foreign-language class. Drawing on a corpus of 17.5 h of video-recorded classroom interactions, we focus on the ways in which students initiate topic expansions, thereb...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inClassroom discourse Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 80 - 98
Main Authors Dolce, Frank M., van Compernolle, Rémi A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 02.01.2020
Subjects
Chinese
classroom interactional competence
Classroom Techniques
College Students
Discourse Analysis
Interaction
IRF
language learning
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
student initiations
Student Participation
topic management
Video Technology
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Summary:The focus of this article is on topic management and student initiation in the context of an advanced university-level Chinese-as-a-foreign-language class. Drawing on a corpus of 17.5 h of video-recorded classroom interactions, we focus on the ways in which students initiate topic expansions, thereby disrupting the IRF structure of discourse and enhancing learning opportunities. We identified three types of student-initiated topic expansions: genuine questions, topic elaborations and challenges to teacher assertions. We discuss our findings in relation to the enhancement of content and language learning opportunities, and we highlight several avenues for future research and implications for pedagogy.
ISSN:1946-3014
1946-3022
DOI:10.1080/19463014.2018.1563799