Re:Homework - data analysis 2

[kellogg]

Professor, I coded my old data and discussed it with examples, but it's not very statistical because I wasn't sure about the exact numbers of the categories.

★ My data: 6th Grade English Class Transcript            

 ① Date: Monday, April 25th, 2008

 ② Situation: Lesson 4: When Is Your Birthday? 1차시

 ③ Characters: 27 students from a 6th grade class - 14 boys, 13 girls

The data will be coded as below:

 Immediate Uptake → IU

 Reversible Roles → RR

 It's interesting that Minkyeong doesn't really use this! It seems quite useable to me. So I'm going to use it on her data. Let's see if she agrees.

If the teacher says something to the children that COULD be uptaken, word for word, and said back to the teacher, we'll call it a "reversible utterance" and code it RU.

If the children say something to the teacher that COULD be uptaken by the teacher, word for word, and said back to the children, we'll call that "reversible" too and code it the same way.

If the teacher says something that the children CANNOT uptake, either because it's too long or it's not appropriate language to address the teacher with, I'm going to call it a "nonreversible utterance" and code it "NU"

So that gives me a kind of flow-chart:

1) Start

2) CAN the utterance be taken up by the other party?

YES-->Code RR and stop

NO-->Code NU and go to step 3)

3) Is the reason why the utterance is not uptakeable because it is too long?

YES-->Code NU (L) and stop

NO-->Code NU (I) and stop.

Now, the other thing I want to do is to QUANTIFY uptake. Here's how I'm going to do it.

1) Start

2) Is there uptake?

NO-->Code "0" and stop.

YES-->Count the number of repeated words (semantic units) and stop.

 Syntagmatic Variation → SV

T: Now look at the picture. NU (I) Uptake = 0

   What do you see? NU (I) Uptake = 0

S3: A calendar! SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Yes, there is a calendar. IU  RR Uptake = 2

   (pointing) The boy and the girl are looking at the calendar. SV  RR Uptake = 1

   What is the month? RR Uptake = 0

Ss: May. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Right. RR Uptake = 0

   What else do you see? NU (I) Uptake = 0

S4: A boy and a girl. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: A boy and a girl? IU RR Uptake = 2

   (pointing) There is another boy here. RR Uptake = 1

   There are TWO boys and a girl. SV RR Uptake = 1

   What's this girl's name? RR Uptake = 1

S4: Mmm... Nami? SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Nami? IU RR Uptake = 1

   But she has dark hair. SV RR Uptake = 0

   She's Korean. SV RR Uptake = 0

   Look! NU (I) Uptake = 0

   This girl is not Korean. SV RR Uptake = 1

(Ss flipping through the book) RR Uptake = 0

T: Yeah, you can find her name in the front. (flipping the book) RR Uptake = 0

S5: Ann. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Yeah, she's Ann. IU RR Uptake = 1

   Who is he? NR RR Uptake = 0

Ss: Jinho. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Jinho! IU RR Uptake = 1

   And this boy is? SV RR Uptake = 0

Ss: Joon! SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Yes. RR Uptake = 0

   Now look at Joon's face. SV NU (I) Uptake = 0

   He's smiling. RR Uptake = 0

   How does he feel? RR Uptake = 0

Ss: Happy! SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Why is he happy? IU, SV RR Uptake = 1

   Can you guess? NU (I) Uptake = 0

S6: His birthday is May fifth. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Oh, yeah. RR Uptake = 0

   Maybe his birthday is May fifth. IU RR Uptake = 0

   Now look at Ann's face.  NU (I) Uptake = 0

   How does she feel? RR Uptake = 0

Ss: Happy! SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Why is she happy? IU, SV RR Uptake = 1

   Can you guess? NU (I) Uptake = 0

S7: Mmm.. Ann is going to Joon's birthday. SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Ah~! Ann is INVITED to Joon's birthday party. SV RR Uptake = 3

   Now look at Jinho's face. NU (I) Uptake = 1

   How does he feel? RR Uptake = 0

S8: Very bad.... Sad! SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Yeah, he looks sad. IU, SV RR Uptake = 1

   WHY~ do you think he is SAD? SV NU (IU) Uptake = 1

   Why is he sad?  NU (I) Uptake = 1

   Can you guess? NU (I) Uptake = 0

S9: He's not .... invited. IU, SV RR Uptake = 0

T: Oh! He's NOT invited to Joon's birthday party. IU, SV RR Uptake = 1

S10: Ann ate his birthday ... cake. 케잌을... SV RR Uptake = 1

T: Oh, Ann ate Jinho's birthday cake, so he's... IU, SV RR Uptake = 4

   (in a different voice) "I'm going to go to your party and eat your cake!" RR Uptake = 2

(Ss laugh) Uptake = 0

T: We'll find out as we watch the video. IU (I) Uptake = 0

I think you can see that for the most part the teacher uses VERY reversible turns. You can also see that Uptake increases a lot towards the end of the exchange, but it's mostly thanks to the teacher. There is SOME student uptake, though.

In the above data, the teacher and students look at a picture in the textbook before they watch the first video clip of the unit. The teacher asks a lot of open, wh- questions about the characters and their feelings to help students develop stories from the picture. Students appear to center their answers around birthdays perhaps because they got a hint from the title of the lesson, "When Is Your Birthday?"

But actually the picture in the textbook does NOT show a happy Jinho. It shows Jinho very unhappy. I don't understand!

In this Ask & Answer type of exchange, there is very little reversibility between the teacher's and students' roles. Fisrtly, the teacher's turns are longer and more complicated than those of students.

If you look at the data, you'll see that there is a LOT of reversibility. Certainly EVERYTHING the children say is reversible. And I'd also say that the VAST majority of what the teacher says is reversible (What are the exceptions? Why?)

Now, you claim that the teacher's turns are LONGER. I suspect this is true, but only because the teacher takes several turns that are many utterances long.

If you look at UTTERANCES and count the words you will probably find that the length of UTTERANCE is pretty similar. The kids take some long utterances towards the end. And I think that you'll also see that the person who uses PASSIVE is not the teacher but a student (although it's true that the teacher uptakes it.)

Secondly, the teacher uptakes students' remarks and varies them syntagmatically, but students don't seem to uptake the teacher's remarks as much.

That's true. Why do you think that's the case?

Lastly, the teacher uses full sentences (e. g. "What do you see?", "How does s/he feel?", etc.) to ask questions, but students answer with vocabulary most of the time (e. g. "A calendar!", "Happy!", etc.).

However, students start to say grammatical sentences in response to the teacher's 'why' questions toward the end (e. g. "His birthday is May fifth.", “Ann is going to Joon's birthday.”, “Ann ate his birthday ... cake.”, etc.). Also, there is some degree of uptake and syntagmatic variation on students' part. S9 listened to what the teacher said ("Ann is INVITED to Joon's birthday party.") and then beautifully incorporated what he uptook into his answer ("He is not .... invited.").  

Exactly.

In conclusion, the exchange is by and large assymetrical in the sense that the teacher speaks far more than all students combined and their roles seem irreversible. The teacher does a LOT of work: She constantly uptakes students' utterances and varies them to continue the discourse. The teacher's incrementalism from what/how questions to why questions, however, seems to induce students' production of grammatical sentences in the end.

When the teacher UPTAKES from the students and "rebroadcasts" to the class, should we really say that the exchange is assymetrical?

Who is AUTHORING the turn? (See Kwon and Kellogg!)

[이민경]

Thank you for your detailed feedback, Professor. I have some questions (as always, I'm a bit slow to understand your words) in my reply.