Nobody would disagree with the statement that communication plays an important role in classroom teaching. However, what does effective classroom communication look like? How can teachers overcome communication hurdles when piloting a lesson plan? This course offers M.A. students concrete answers to these questions based on the microanalysis of real-life (in opposition to simulated) classroom encounters. 

Students will explore how scientific knowledge from the fields of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics can answer questions stemming from teaching contexts, e.g., "How do students display that they did not understand a given point or task?" and "How do teachers deal with such displays?”. The course starts with an introduction to state-of-the-art insights from classroom interaction research. During the following seminars, students will engage in data sessions and work in pairs to conduct a literature study of relevant scientific research findings for each specific classroom interactional task and report their findings in a literature review, which may also provide recommendations for practice. The cases cover major interactional tasks teachers are faced with when teaching:

Giving instruction 

Seeking information 

Responding to students’ contributions

Allocating turns

Checking students’ understanding 

The course includes a guest lecture about classroom interaction.  

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to: 

- name and explain important notions and phenomena related to classroom interaction from a CA/IL perspective,

- find and explain relevant scientific findings from CA/IL discipline for classroom practice,

- evaluate scientific research findings through the writing of a literature review.