Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

The language of classrooms in general
Let us start with the language interaction common to all classrooms. In most face-
to-face conversation people interact with each other and adapt what they are say-
ing to the listener’s reactions. Some situations, however, give one participant a
more directive role than the others; one person can be the ‘leader’ who takes the
initiative, the others are ‘followers’ who respond to it. For example, an interviewer
has the right to guide the conversation and to ask questions that would be out of
place in other situations. ‘How old are you?’ addressed to an adult is unthinkable
except in an interview. In the classroom this overall ‘leader’ role falls to the teacher.
The exchange of turns between listeners and speakers is under the teacher’s overall
guidance, overtly or covertly. So, not surprisingly, about 70 per cent of the utter-
ances in most classrooms come from the teacher.
In first language acquisition, adults assume the basic right to direct the conversa-
tion when talking to children; ‘How old are you?’ is a frequent question from adults
to children. The same assumption is often true when talking to foreign adults.
The difference between the classroom and other leader-directed conversations
lies in the way that the conversation is directed. Let us take a short classroom
exchange from Sinclair and Coulthard (1975):
Teacher: Can you tell me why you eat all that food? Yes.
Pupil: To keep you strong.
Teacher: To keep you strong. Yes. To keep you strong. Why do you want to
be strong? . . .
This exchange has three main moves:
1 Initiation. The teacher takes the initiative by requiring something of the stu-
dent, say through a question such as, ‘Can you tell me why you eat all that
food?’ The move starts off the exchange; the teacher acts as leader.

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2 Response. Next the student does whatever is required, here answering the ques-
tion by saying, ‘To keep you strong’. So the move responds to the teacher’s ini-
tiation; the student acts as follower.
3 Feedback. The teacher does not go straight on to the next initiation but
announces whether the student is right or wrong, ‘To keep you strong. Yes.’
The teacher evaluates the student’s behaviour and comments on it in a way
that would be impossible outside the classroom.
This three-move structure of initiation, response and feedback – or IRF as it is
known – is very frequent in teaching; indeed some people see it as an important
way in which parents speak to their children. Even in lectures, teachers sometimes
attempt feedback moves with comments such as, ‘That was a good question.’
Some language teaching styles rely heavily on this classroom structure. IRF was,
after all, the format of the classic language laboratory drill. Other styles of teach-
ing, such as the communicative, may discourage it because it is restricted to class-
room language rather than being generally applicable. Nor is IRF the only
characteristic of such exchanges. One common feature, illustrated by the ‘Yes’ in
‘Can you tell me why you eat all that food? Yes’, is that the teacher selects and
approves who is to speak next, a feature common to all leader/follower situations,
ranging from the chairperson at a committee meeting to congressional commit-
tees of investigation.