A Study On The Interaction Of Communicative English Classroom

Since the 1970s, classroom interaction has drawn a lot of attention from linguists. The reason is that the present English teaching and learning are mainly in the communicative teaching era and interaction is the heart of communication.Based on the literature review about classroom interaction, the author finds that CA approach and ethnography can be explored together to make the classroom interaction study dynamic, qualitative and holistic. Therefore, by employing the above methods, the author has audio-recorded the communicative English classroom interaction of English majors in a certain university in Changchun, Jilin Province for three months. After the audio-recording, the author transcribes the recordings into written materials by herself and selects 40 valid written extracts for the further study.The result of the study shows: in form-and-accuracy context and procedural context, the teacher is in the control of the three types of interactional organizations—turn taking, sequence and repair. Whereas in meaning-and-fluency context and task-oriented context, students are in the control of the three types of interactional organizations. And the classroom interaction in those two contexts is comparatively dynamic and interesting. Therefore, in turn taking organization, the teacher must provide enough opportunities for the students to control the turn taking organization; in sequence organization, it is necessary for the teacher to cultivate students'ability in initiating and taking adjacency pairs; in repair organization, the teacher should emphasize on fostering the students'ability in making self-initiated self-repairs. Meanwhile it is better for him/her to avoid the negative evaluation on students'output. Turn taking, sequence and repair organizations are equally important in classroom interaction. In the three types of interactional organizations, incomprehensible or partly comprehensible input becomes comprehensible through negotiation of meaning between the teacher and the students or the students and the students. Comprehensible input promotes classroom interaction, classroom interaction promotes second language teaching and learning.