A Study Of Approaches To Classroom Discourse: Conversation Analysis And Ethnography Of Communication

Classroom discourse analysis has received a lot of attention in the recent decades, as these studies make great contributions to the language teaching and learning. While it is a popular research topic in Western countries, like in American and Japan, there are few studies regarding classroom discourse in China. This thesis attempts to compare two widely used approaches to classroom discourse - conversation analysis (CA) and ethnography of communication (EC). CA, developed from ethnomethdology, aims to discuss the order in the interaction, regardless of the particular persons, places and time. EC, on the other hand, originated from anthropology and linguistics, focuses on the aspects of communication patterns across cultures from a holistic perspective.This study first presents a critical review of some previous studies on the basic principles and assumptions of these two approaches. Based on eight collected sample studies exploiting the two approaches, the author discusses the strength and limitations of the approaches. The author finds out that CA successfully describes the organization of the interaction, but sometimes it can't explain the educational problems as it is not allowed to analyze the context and psychological thinking of the interlocutors. EC takes both macro and micro levels of context into consideration, and it employs various data collection techniques, therefore, nowadays it is very useful to analyze classroom discourse from the perspective of language socialization.Another focus of this study is on the validity and reliability of these two approaches, and some suggestions to enhance their validity and reliability are included in the thesis. In the final part of the study, the researcher argues that more attention should be paid to the classroom discourse research in the Chinese EFL context.