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Minkyeong:
The short, clear, simple answer to most of your questions is that I did the coding too quickly and I wasn't careful enough.
Sometimes a short, clear, simple answer is not so useful! Remember:
Lift every bell that still can ring
Lift every voice that still can sing
Sure there's a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
So here is a somewhat longer, cloudier, more complex answer that's more interesting.
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
Why is the number of uptakes 2, not 1? What are the two sementic units that were uptaken? Are they omitted 'There is' and 'a calendar'?
The short answer is that I was careless, and it should be 1 and not 2.
But notice that this data is at the BEGINNING of the extract (the sequence). Notice something else, that the the coding RR instead of RU is used. So I was still thinking that the ROLES were reversible rather than the utterances.
This makes a difference. Suppose we are looking at ROLES. That is, suppose we are interested in whether or not the children can DO what the teacher is DOING rather than whether or not the children can SAY what the teacher is SAYING.
For example, suppose we are interested in whether the children can tell the teacher to look at a picture rather than whether or not the children can say "Would you all please have the kindness to examine this illustration for a moment?" or "Ya! Look!" to a classmate.
Then we will NOT want to count WORDS of uptake. Words don't really operationalize social roles very well. We will want to look instead at systemic-functional categories (Halliday 1985, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004) such as COMMAND (imperative), STATEMENT (indicative-declarative) and QUESTION (indicative-interrogative).
These provide a good way to operationalize social roles; on the one hand, they are close to the data and on the other hand they are relevant to our analtytical construct ROLE.
But suppose we are interested in whether the children can SAY what the teacher SAYS. That is, we are interested in whether the idea of "teaching English through English" really DOES help the children learn more than the grammar translation method that ruled Europe for over two hundred years or the bilingual method that existed for two hundred years before that.
As I said in class, I think that theories that claim that children can LEARN from input that they never actually USE are somewhat MYSTICAL. Some of them claim that learning is subconscious. Others claim that acquisition happens without actually remembering.
The reason why these theories are only THEORIES is that they have been DISPROVED as hypotheses. For example Krashen's theory of comprehensible input was disproved empirically by Huilstijn and Huilstijn almost immediately. The input acquisition order was disproved by Larsen-Freeman and others. The theory, however, remains as a form of faith.
Let's assume that for Korea, anyway, children will LOSE it if they don't USE it. Let's assume that uptake is necessary, though not sufficient, for intake, because without uptake the children will forget. This seems a reasonable working hypothesis to me; it seems to fit Korean experience a little better than the American theory.
The problem is, then, that a great deal of the so-called "input" we get from the teacher is not UPTAKEABLE, either because it's too long or because it's not appropriate. Now, in YOUR data, the teacher is a NATIVE, that is, not a foreigner, and there is considerable evidence of local expertise. The teacher is using short uptakeable sentences that are easily within the Zone of Proximal Learning.
So that means that the question of APPROPRIACY turns out to be important as an EXPLANATION of why the kids don't uptake very much. I think your analysis really shows this.
However, there's more to it than that. In many cases, particularly at the beginning of the data, the language of the teacher and the language of the children is not the same language. The teacher uses grammar, and the children respond in vocabulary.
To explore THIS question, it might be more interesting NOT to look at semantic units, but instead to look at EVERYTHING: articles, preps, pronouns, and so on.
(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
(I guess 'a boy' and 'a girl' are the two units in this case, right?)
Yeah, but their only semantic units. Like I said, syntactic units (just orthographic words) might be more interesting. What do you think?
(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
(Why Uptake = 1? Is it 'this girl' or 'Korean'? Either way, isn't it from a T's utterance to another T's utterance? Can that be an uptake, too, within one's turn? Or is it a mere typo?)
The word I counted was "Korean", since "this girl" is not immediate uptake. I think that self-uptake (that is, uptake from within a turn) IS uptake, and it's worth studying. Very often, when you mike kids, you find that some of them are talking to themselves, and they are often repeating exactly what the teacher says, more than once. But maybe we should code it differently. What do you think?
Notice that the analysis gets more and more QUALITATIVE when we multiply categories.
(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
With this, did you mean 'RR'? What is "NR" in your analysis? I guess it's a typo.
No, it isn't. On the one hand, it's a DISPLAY question, that is, a question to which the teacher already knows the answer. It's a KNOWN-ANSWER question that is part of a typical IRE exchange.
On the other, it's in the book! In the Fourth Grade English book, Lesson Five is called "Who is she?" So it could be either NR or RR, depending on whether we are looking at the role or the actual utterance.
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
Is this 0 uptake because it comes after "Oh, yeah."? But isn't it immediate enough after the S6's turn? I think it should be at least uptake = 2. No?
Yes. In fact, if we are interested in SYNTACTIC uptake and not just SEMANTIC uptake, we've got Uptake = 5.
Now, this shows ANOTHER weakness of the coding scheme that has to be straightened out in order to get inter-coder reliability of more than 90%. We have to operationalize the word "immediate". What does immediate mean? Does it mean from the previous TURN or from the previous UTTERANCE.
Let's assume the following hypothesis:
H1: Learner UPTAKE (and therefore INTAKE) is NUMERICALLY INCREASED (that is, the number of orthographic words that re uptaken increases) when teachers set an example, by uptaking what learners say IMMEDIATELY, that is, within the same exchange.
This seems like a reasonable and testable hypothesis to me. But it suggests we should be looking at SYNTACTIC uptake and not just semantic units, and it also suggests that we should be counting all repeated words, no matter what they are, within the same exchange. Right?
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 (I) Uptake = 1
Why is he sad? NU (I) Uptake = 1
Can you guess? NU (I) Uptake = 0
I understand that "Why do you think he is sad?" and "Can you guess?" are NUs because the utterances are inappropriate for students to say, but why is "Why is he sad?" an NU, specially, compared to the above (underlined) "Why is he happy?" being an RR.
I don't understand the data very well, Minkyeong! I looked at the picture and I saw that Jinho was UNHAPPY. Now, if someone says something that is UNTRUE, it can easiy be uptaken, and in fact it usually is. But it wasn't.
However, you are right! The kids are talking about JOON, and this is a DISTRACTION--it has nothing to do with the story. Joon was only put in the picture by the artist to "balance" the picture, and as usual the artist wasn't thinking about the text that we are trying to teach!
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 guess you meant 'NU' here, right?
Right.
Okay, another thing is....
You mentioned that you couldn't understand why Jinho is happy in the data whereas the picture shows otherwise. The teacher and students say that Jinho feels SAD, not happy. It's Joon they think is happy. I don't have the book now, so I can't verify it, but I think Joon has a sort of smile on his face. Even if not, students perceived it that way, so the teacher accepted it, I guess.
You are right. Joon has a big stupid grin on his face. What a terrible picture! Why don't the artists READ the book?
Next, I agree with you that there are a lot of reversible utterances in the teacher's turns. Now, how about the roles? Would you agree that students can't take on the teacher's role of rebroadcasting?
We want to code the data RELIABLY but not MECHANICALLY. But children DO sometimes rebroadcast what other children say, and they even rebroadcast what the teacher says.
In a very important sense, rebroadcasting IS a form of S-T-S intake, that is, the students are taking in something that was uptaken by the teacher from one student. I think it's actually a very good source of integrating spoken and heard language.
I think that UPTAKE is the concrete way in which spoken and heard language is integrated, and the REAL way in which the skill of speaking is integrated with that of listening.
Do you mean that if the teacher is only uptaking and rebroadcasting students' utterances, it's not so assymetrical?
Lastly,
Who is AUTHORING the turn? (See Kwon and Kellogg, 345-346)!
What does this mean? Please elaborate it. Thank you very much.
"Fixed phrases" are not actually AUTHORED by children; they are simply repeated from another source. "Item-based combinations" are PARTIALLY authored by children, but partially UPTAKEN from another source. Only abstract constructions are completely authored by the child.
That doesn't mean (Seong-eun!) that only abstract constructions represent learning. On the contrary, it MIGHT mean that abstract constructions only represent the level of ACTUAL development and not the level of POTENTIAL development.