INPUT AND INTERACTION IN CONTENT CLASSROOMS: FOREIGNER-TALK AND TEACHER-TALK IN CLASSROOM DISCOURSE

This study investigated teacher-talk to different audiences of listeners.; Three research questions and one discussion question relating to the following were posed: (RQ1) differences in teachers' interaction with NS and NNS students; (RQ2) differences in teachers' linguistic input to NS and NNS students, (RQ3) differences in teachers' input to and interaction with NS senior and NS junior students; and (DQ) differences in foreigner-talk in and out of classrooms.; The proceedings of 30 lessons were tape recorded. These represent the verbal behaviors of eleven high-school teachers and fifteen student groups, learning one subject (social studies) in three educational settings (ESL, NS junior and NS senior). Twenty-eight hypotheses related to the three research questions were posed. Twelve measures common to both this study and Long's (1980a) study of foreigner-talk outside the classroom were discussed.; Concerning research question (1), the distribution of questions, statements and imperatives, the number of comprehension checks, self-repetitions, other-repetitions and expansions were found to be significantly different between the NS and NNS settings. The distribution of question-types, proportion of display and referential questions and number of conversational frames were non-significantly different. The observed frequencies of confirmation checks and clarification requests were too low to permit statistical analysis.; Concerning research question (2), the average length of T-unit in words and the average number of S-nodes per T-unit were found to be significantly different. No difference was found in lexical frequency.; Concerning research question (3), of the fourteen null hypotheses, whose measures were the same as those stated for research questions 1 and 2, eleven had null findings. The distribution of questions, statements and imperatives was found to be significantly different. Confirmation checks and clarification requests were too low to permit analyses.; Concerning the discussion question, foreigner-talk in and out of classrooms had similar findings for eight of the twelve common measures discussed.; Results of the study were discussed in terms of tentative implications for second language classroom practice, and suggestions were made for future research.