Third Turn as a Teachable Moment in Foreign Language Pedagogy

Abstract

Talk is the vehicle of exchange in language classrooms when communicative competence is being developed. Turns of talk then facilitate the meaning-making process as students and teachers collaboratively come to understand the discourse of knowledge they are co-constructing. During the pivotal third turn in the essential teaching exchange, there is potential for teachers to realise productive pedagogies as they facilitate their students' organisational and pragmatic skills in the foreign language. This study brings a lens to Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) triadic dialogue, which has been criticised for its monological overuse and limitation of students' language production. Analysis of the third turn shows the uptake to be an implicit move in the exchange. Teachers appear not to be aware of the potential benefit it offers them for co-constructed language use at that point in teacher-student interactions. Teachers draw on students' background knowledge and experiential learning in the four domains of productive pedagogies (intellectual quality, supportive classroom environment, recognition of difference and connectedness) when they engage them through an authentic use of language. For this study, potential for productive pedagogy was investigated in the classroom talk of two teachers of Japanese at year 10 level. In a case study, six transcribed and translated lessons were subjected to conversational and membership categorisation analyses using Bachman's (1990) communicative language ability framework to describe language production around the third turn and to hypothesise its effectiveness in providing opportunities for students to generate output in the target language.