Task-setting micro-context

Task-setting is the micro-context in which the pedagogic focus is the successful and expeditious accomplishment of some learning task or activity. It is an essentially managerial or procedural context (to use the terminology introduced by Seedhouse [2004] and Walsh [2006] to describe L2 classroom interaction). Often, the teacher is giving instructions about how to do an activity, for example, the ways in which an instrument or piece of equipment should be used, the format in which the students are expected to work on the task, or the time allocated for it. As Walsh (2006) shows in his description of ‘managerial mode’, this micro-context is characterised by long teacher turns with only minimal student verbal contributions. This extract, from a third year geography lesson on development, is a clear example of this micro-context. The teacher is giving instructions on how to do an activity which consisted in filling in information about factors of development in a grid:

(6.8) GEOGLSN3

T: now I would like to stop now for a second 1

I want you to ↓do (.) another activity, 2

with (.) the photocopy you have. 3

okay everybody has this grid? 4

(4.0) 5

everybody has this grid correct? 6

photocopy? it was on page 4. 7

(24.0) 8

+students looking to see if they have photocopy

9

↓okay. everybody has that? 10

(0.4) okay yah development? 11

measuring development? (1.5)yeah? ↓okay. 12

remember that when we spoke about development, 13

we said there were different uh factors (.) 14

to make a measure how developed the country was, 15

or it wasn’t, okay? 16

so, here is an activity for you to uh 17

to be aware of the important facts 18

which make an area developed (.) 19

more developed or less developed. 20

and uh we don’t want you to reflect on ↓this. 21

okay, so. here is a ↑grid 22

where there are eh different terms,(.) 23

and you have to ↑think <how important they are> 24

to measure the development in a ↓country. 25

(.)uh (.) placing the most important on ↑top 26

of the ↑diamond (.) right? 27

and: uh considering which is the least important 28

at the bottom. (1.2) 29

you can also ↑number them if you ↑want to, okay, 30

so: the one on top can be (.)↓one (.) 31

and those following on the second (.) stage there 32

if you want to say that, you can say: 33

(.) one A one B, 34

so the third row would be: three A three B three C 35

if you want to. okay? ↓so. 36

the factors to consider are the ones, 37

which are in the square there. can you see them, 38

SS: yes 39

T: what’s the first one. 40

S1: car [ownership 41

S2: [car owner- 42

T: car ownership o↑kay (.) what’s the second there. 43

SS: inter [national trade 44

T: [↓trade okay. 45

(.) uh spend a minute reading very quick- 46

them very quickly 47

and see if you understand them. 48

One important task in any micro-context is for the teacher to effect a transition between whichever context the class was in to the new one, the new relationship between

interactional organization and ongoing moment-by-moment pedagogic goals. This action can be seen at lines 1-3 where the teacher announces that they are stopping what they were doing and are going to do another activity. Other important interactional work at the beginning of sequences in this micro-context is locating the resources or materials to be used in the activity the teacher is going to set up. This can be seen here at lines 4- 12 where a joint attentional focus on the piece of material to be used, the grid, has to be established before further instructions for the task can be given. In giving instructions for doing the task, teachers may have to reactivate certain concepts from previous learning which may be the focus of the activity, as the teacher does here at lines 13-21. At lines 22-29 the teacher shifts the focus from the topic to the nature of the task itself, giving instructions about where they have to place items on the diamond. Another common teaching practice in this micro-context is to offer the students options in the ways in which they can go about doing the task, as the teacher does at lines 30-36 here.

The sequence then moves into a ‘checking’ phase at lines 38-45, where the teacher ensures that intersubjectivity is maintained by eliciting from the students displays of knowledge at lines 41-42 and 44. The extract ends with another common practice, that of allocating the students time to do the task, at lines 46-47). If the sequence of

interaction in the micro-context has been successful, the students will go on to do the task. If mutual understanding has not been successfully achieved, the teacher may need to step in again to troubleshoot and clarify the instructions for the task. Students may also ask questions or even negotiate about aspects of the task, ranging from such issues as timing, who they can work with, location of the activity in materials, and clarification of vocabulary. For example, a little later in this episode, the teacher responded to a student’s other-initiated repair on the word ‘grid’:

(6.9) GEOGLSN3

T: ↑okay so. among the ↓others (.) 1

very very quickly (.) 2

<you mu:st place them> in the grid, (0.3) 3

S3: in the? 4

T: in the grid, in the chart, (here) the grid, 5 + points to photocopy 6 S3: yes 7

T: okay, very very quickly. 8

and then, and at the same time 9

you have to think why you placed them ↓there. 10

At line 4, S3 carries out a repair initiation by repeating part of the teacher’s turn up to the slot where ‘grid’ would be with a rising intonation. The teacher responds at line 5 by first repeating ‘grid’ and then offering a synonym, as well as reinforcing the

identification of the material by pointing at the grid itself on the photocopy. S3 acknowledges this at line 7 with a display of understanding, and the teacher then continues with reformulation of instructions aready given, another common practice in this micro-context.

This sequence was shown to the teacher as a video vignette. The interaction in the video-clip based interview followed the typical pattern: ‘open’ invitation to comment from the interviewer, disourse unit (DU) response (see section 5.6.4) in which the teacher gives an account of what she was doing and her purposes, ‘focusing’ question by the interviewer to shift attention to how the teacher was interacting with the students, and more focusing work depending on the teacher’s response:

(6.10) VSC3

I: okay (.) so what was happening there. 1

T: I was trying to fill in a grid 2

and that grid has a content 3

and at the same time they have both to make sure 4

they do understand the issues 5

the factors we are talking about 6

and they have to read 7

to put them in order of importance 8

how important they are in development 9

and they have to decide which were the issues 10

which really showed development in a country. 11

I: so the way you were speaking here 12

was the way you were speaking important 13

in terms of what you were trying 14

to achieve with this? 15

T: yeah (.) I wanted them to both- 16

taking turns which make development be shown 17

and at the same time to make them aware 18

as I said that I do work on values 19

and to be aware of how important some ( ) are 20

make them think and realize 21

they are not political here 22

but they are starting to make up their mind 23

to decide which is more important 24

which is less important 25

and I think they got it well (.) 26

they understood the point. 27

I: this activity (.) they had to- 28

it’s a diamond they had to put things 29

so what’s important for you- 30

for them to understand how to do the activity. 31

T: I think so in order (not)to waste time later on 32

because they usually- 33

students tend to say yes to everything 34

and sometimes they do not understand 35

exactly what to do with a task 36

and maybe I insist too much 37

sometimes on explanations 38

because I hate to give instructions 39

one or two or three say yes we understand 40

and after 10 minutes they have done nothing 41

because they have been very very shy 42

not doing the activity 43

because they were shy to speak out. 44

so this is why I insist at the beginning 45

when I give instructions. 46

In her first DU at lines 2-11, the teacher is carrying out a number of different actions. First, at line 2, she formulates her immediate purpose, what she was trying to get the students to do (even though she expresses this as if she was the one who had to fill in a grid). However, she describes her purpose as more than just completing the grid, but understanding the issues they were dealing with as they ranked factors in terms of their importance as indicators of development (lines 4-6). From lines 7-11 she describes what the students have to do to complete the task. Interestingly, in the interview situation, she is taking on the identity of informant, letting the interviewer know what is going on. At lines 12-15, as in all the video-vignette interviews, the interviewer asks the ‘focusing’ question, which projects a response in which ways of talking or interacting in relation to pedagogic goals is made relevant. However, in this case (and this was a frequent

occurence), the teacher, in her second DU at lines 16-27, maintains a topical focus on her pedagogic aims, rather than on any specific ways of talking or interacting. She highlights the importance of values in her teaching (something she had talked about in the CoRe interview), and of getting the students to think for themselves (lines 21-25). At lines 26-27, she carries out another action frequently found in the video-vignette

interviews, an evaluation of the effect of her own actions in the classroom. In this case, it is a positive evaluation, but in others, the teachers negatively evaluated what they saw on the video in terms of its effectiveness.

It is not until the interviewer asks the second focusing question at lines 28-31, in which he shifts attention to the topic of ensuring that the students understand how to do the activity, that the teacher produces a DU in which interaction is topicalised. This occurs at lines 32-46, where the teacher gives a rich account of her interactive practices in giving instructions, script formulated as what she does normally (not just on this

occasion), with the use of ‘tend to’ (line 34), ‘sometimes’ (lines 35 and 38), and the use of the ‘habitual’ present tense in her description of her practices. At lines 37 and 38 there is an example of a more negative evaluation of her practices (‘maybe I insist too much’), but this is expressed tentatively (‘maybe’) and is immediately followed at lines 40-44 by a justificatory account of why she does this.

Overall, in this extract, the teacher builds into her descriptions of practice a range of practical knowledge categories. Knowledge of instructional activities appears in her concern that the students complete the grid properly, and knowledge of subject matter appears in her talk about the importance of them understanding the factors indicating development. Underlying aims of instruction emerge in her talk about values and the importance of getting the students to think, and knowledge of learners is prominent in her concern for their epistemic states, both in understanding the relevant concepts, and in understanding what to do in the activity. This suggests that task-setting is a rich interactional context (in spite of its superficially non-interactive character), in which a wide range of pedagogic goals is realised. It projects the relevant task-based activity, and if unsuccessful can impair or even scuttle the successful completion of that activity. Although the teacher doesn’t explicitly mention the fact that an L2 is being used for instruction, we can interpret that her ‘insistence’ on clear instructions, and her experience of activities going wrong due to unsuccessfully given instructions, is relevant to this context. Furthermore, task-setting was a frequent context for language- focused practices (see chapters seven and eight), such as the ‘grid’ sequence described here, showing that focusing on aspects of the L2 was oriented to as necessary for the establishment of sufficient mutual understanding for activities to run smoothly and

In document Teachers' knowledge about language and classroom interaction in content and language integrated learning (Page 176-182)