Classroom Interactional Competence of Primary School EFL Teachers

In foreign language teaching, interaction in the target language is a driving force in the learning process because learners become actively involved in a negotiation of meaning. Walsh's (2006, 2011) construct of "Classroom Interactional Competence" (CIC) describes teachers' and learners' ability to use interaction as a tool to mediate and assist learning. Understanding classroom discourse and improving one's CIC can promote successful learning. Language teachers, who conduct their lessons in a participatory, communicative and inclusive way, are faced with high demands to make optimal use of the interactional opportunities in the classroom. While a great deal of classroom research has analyzed interactions between teachers and learners, interactional principles in the teaching of English to young learners in primary school have so far been less studied. In this talk I will look at corpus data of primary school English language classrooms in Germany to explore how this construct is manifested in the interactional behavior of the teachers. Transcript excerpts from the Primary English Classroom Corpus (Limberg 2019) are used to display primary teachers' interactional behavior in their daily teaching practices in the EFL classroom. Features of CIC on an elementary level with 3^rd and 4^th grade learners are discussed, such as embodied language practice, involvement strategies (signposting), and ways of dealing with learner contributions. Insights into authentic classroom interactions help to build a more solid knowledge base of how teachers can enhance their classroom interactional competence to promote foreign language development in primary school. 

References: Limberg, H. (2019). The Primary English Classroom Corpus. Volume 1. Flensburg: Flensburg University Press. 

Walsh, S. (2006). Investigating classroom discourse. London: Routledge. 

Walsh, S. (2011). Exploring classroom discourse: Language in action. London: Routledge.