Browsing by Subject "question sequence"

The aim of the research on the classroom interaction is to give information on the social construction of the lesson and further to shed light on the underlying factors encouraging positive atmosphere for learning. Due to an increasingly multicultural society, it is important to explore interaction also among second language speakers. This thesis evaluates the reactions of students in the situations where one student does not answer the teacher's question or the answer is wrong. It further investigates whether students' reactions change when their language and study skills improve. It describes verbal and non-verbal means used by the students to indicate that the answer is incomplete. The reported research was a qualitative case study of which material was analyzed by using the methods of conversation analysis. The research material was gathered as a part of Long Second -project in the autumn 2011 and spring 2012 in Helsinki. It comprised two videotapes of Finnish as a second language lesson among 7-12 years old students. The analysis of the thesis systematically focused on the situations in which the students answered the teacher's question wrong or did not answer at all. The results of this thesis show that students evaluate the balance between teacher's question and student's answer by a variety of verbal and non-verbal means. The students reacted to a wrong answer or no-answer by leering or gazing, by raising one's hand or calling the teacher verbally, by revealing the answer or by commenting derogatorily. In some cases, students did not react at all. In the spring, the students also reacted by using textbooks for searching answers. This can be seen as an indication of the improvement of the students' language and study skills between the two observation periods. Furthermore, in the spring, the students reacted less often by raising hands and more often by revealing the answers without teacher's permission than they did in the autumn. This may be the result of the development of both group dynamics and students' language skills. Students were active participants of the classroom interaction. By their own actions, they affect the formation of positive or negative learning atmosphere.