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Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences

  • Yan Zhu ORCID logo , Jonathan Newton ORCID logo , Yue Liu ORCID logo and Dingfang Shu ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: January 10, 2025
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 63 Issue 3

Abstract

In TBLT research, there is a noticeable lack of attention to the use of tasks with whole classes. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating the discourse of whole-class task-based teacher-student interaction compared to other types of teacher-student interaction in EFL classrooms in a primary school in China. A total of 223 pedagogic sequences from 16 EFL lessons taught by Chinese teachers to Grade 1 to 5 primary school student were recorded, transcribed, and coded as tasks or non-tasks using the four defining features of tasks proposed by Ellis and Shintani (2014. Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition research. London: Routledge). The analysis revealed that 95 sequences were task-based, 44 were non-task-based (i.e. they contained none of the four task features) and a further 84 sequences were also non-task-based but contained some but not all the four task features. In terms of the discourse features of task versus non-tasks sequences, task sequences had a higher ratio of teacher talk to student talk, a higher frequency of IRF exchanges, a lower frequency of teacher-class interaction, a lower frequency of teacher-initiated exchanges, a higher frequency of FoM exchanges and a lower frequency of FoFs exchanges, and a higher frequency of both display and referential questions. Overall, the findings provide process-oriented evidence for the distinctiveness of task-based teacher-student interaction.

Keywords: teacher-student interaction; task; non-task; sequence; primary EFL classroom
Corresponding author: Dingfang Shu, The Shanghai Center for Research in English Language Education, Shanghai International Studies University, 550 West Dalian Road, Hongkou District, Shanghai 200083, China, E-mail:

Funding source: National Social Science Fund of China

Award Identifier / Grant number: 23BYY149

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all the participants for their support in data collection. We would also like to extend our gratitude to four research assistants: Bo Peng, Xinning Wang, Xiaolan Zhang, and Meiying Wu, for their assistance with data analysis.

  1. Research ethics: Informed consents were obtained from the school principal and the participants.

  2. Author contributions: The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Research funding: National Social Science Fund of China.

  5. Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.

Appendix: Transcribing scheme

Code Description Example
TT Teacher talk Sit down, please.
AST All students talk Good morning, teacher.
SST Some students talk Yes, there is.
PST Paired students talk <SS talk in pairs freely.>
IST Individual students talk I can find animals in the park.
NV Non-verbal talk [The teacher mimics a penguin.]
VI Video input It’s sunny today.
AI Audio input We are having a picnic.
Silence No one is talking. (1.8)
< > Activities <Students work in pairs.>
*** Incomprehensible or inaudible words ***
[ ] Non-verbal interaction [The teacher sways to the music.]
{ } Music {Twinkle, twinkle,little star.}
Capital letters Emphasized parts There is a MOUSE in the classroom.
SN (1,2, …) Student’s name SN1, could you answer this question?

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Received: 2024-05-28
Accepted: 2024-12-07
Published Online: 2025-01-10
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
  4. Research Articles
  5. Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
  6. Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
  7. Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
  8. Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
  9. Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
  10. Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
  11. Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
  12. “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
  13. Regular Articles
  14. Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
  15. A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
  16. Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
  17. Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
  18. Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
  19. General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
  20. Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
  21. Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
  22. Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
  23. The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
  24. An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
  25. “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
  26. Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
  27. Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
  28. A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
  29. Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
  30. The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2024-0164
Keywords for this article
teacher-student interaction; task; non-task; sequence; primary EFL classroom

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
  4. Research Articles
  5. Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
  6. Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
  7. Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
  8. Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
  9. Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
  10. Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
  11. Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
  12. “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
  13. Regular Articles
  14. Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
  15. A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
  16. Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
  17. Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
  18. Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
  19. General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
  20. Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
  21. Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
  22. Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
  23. The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
  24. An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
  25. “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
  26. Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
  27. Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
  28. A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
  29. Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
  30. The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
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