An Examination Of IRF Pattern Dialogues In Chinese Primary School Classrooms

The fact that the spoken texts of classroom interaction - particularly those involving teacher with whole class - are co-constructed relatively smoothly, despite the number of participants involved, suggests that like written texts, they can be thought of being constructed according to one of a set of educational genres and following a fix structure. One three-part structure labeled as Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) pattern dialogue has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and has variously been seen as, on the one hand, a deviation from the educational goal of encouraging students'initiative and creativity, and on the other hand, an essential tool for the co-construction of a common body of knowledge, and it does not preclude collaborative interaction between teachers and students.Compared with western scholars, fewer Chinese scholars have set foot in the research of classroom interaction. The motive of writing this thesis is to make some contributions to classroom discourse analysis under Chinese background. Drawing on episodes of teacher-whole-class interaction collected during a semester, this author wants to show:(1) Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) pattern dialogues vary due to teacher differences. This author divides the subjects into four macro-categories: excellent teachers'reading lessons; mediocre teachers'reading lessons; excellent teachers'writing lessons; mediocre teachers'writing lessons. The results show: there is a significant greater proportion of negotiatory questions used by excellent teachers in reading lessons and a significant greater proportion of evaluative follow-up moves used by mediocre teachers in both reading and writing lessons(2) The choice of initiating questions and follow-up moves may affect students' participation. On the whole, the use of known information questions and evaluative follow-up moves may impede opportunities for interaction; the use of negotiatory...