Re:Let's play Catch!

[kellogg]

▶ Data: part of 5th grade lesson, 8. Let's Go Swimming (4/4), recorded in 2008

  (Situation: The teacher, as a EFL specialist not as a general subject teacher, is demonstrating how to make a schedule with one student chosen by the class number card as she always does, picking one child to have an example T-S interaction. After talking about the schedule, she is struggling to write it down on the schedule table on the board trying to show Ss how to do the activity.)

The data is going to be coded like below;

Immediate Uptake → IU

Reversible Roles → RR (See my comments on Minkyeong's comments on "role" vs. "utterance", Seong-eun!)

Syntagmatic Variation → SV

Non-reversible Utterance → NU

the Number of the words repeated in Uptake → Uptake = N  (Good! Now, when I tried to code Minkyeong's data, I used "semantic word" and didn't count functors. I think this turns out to have been a mistake).

T: (writing "shopping" in the box of the schedule on the board) RR Uptake = 0

    I will go shopping. RR SV Uptake = 1

S: 야구하자마자 바로 가야되네... Uptake = 0

T: Yes. After baseball, I will go shopping. IU RR SV Uptake = 2 (Notice how Seong-eun counts KOREAN initiates as uptake. But she DOESN'T count self-uptake; otherwise, she'd ahve to count SIX words and not 2). 

Ss: 와우 Uptake = 0

T: (writing "Wow Mall" in the "Where?" section on the board) Wow. IU RR SV Uptake = 1 Ha! I never realized this was uptake!

Wow shopping mall! RR SV Uptake = 1 Now, Seong-eun is using the principle of IMMEDIATE uptake (that is, "next turn" uptake). Much easier to code of course. But perhaps not so theoretically relevant! 

Ss: 와우~! 하하하~ Uptake = 1

S: Teacher! RR Uptake = 0

T: What time? RR SV Uptake = 0

S: Four! RR SV Uptake = 0

S: 와우쇼핑몰 is ..... RR SV Uptake = 0 (Seon-eun considers this to be a NEW exchange. But there's some evidence that it is part of the same exchange, in which case the kids are uptaking the Teacher's English sentence both from the board and from her utterance!) 

S: 망했어! Uptake = 0

S: 아직 안 망했어! Uptake = 0

S: 망했어! Uptake = 0

S: Die! RR SV Uptake = 0

T: Closed? RR SV Uptake = 0 (This is a good example of a recast--but the kids don't take it up!) 

S: Die! RR  Uptake = 1

T: Oh, we can not go shopping to 와우쇼핑몰? RR SV Uptake = 0

S: 와우 쇼핑몰 is beggar! RR SV Uptake = 0 They have their OWN recast! What wonderful data! 

S: hahahaha~ Uptake = 0

T: Beggar? IU RR SV Uptake = 1 (You can see that Seong-eun doesn't STRICTLY obey the "next turn" principle)

S: 거지! IU Uptake = 1

T: Why? RR SV Uptake = 0

S: No money! RR SV Uptake = 0

T: No money? IU Uptake = 2

S: 롯데! 롯데! 롯데 백화점! RR SV Uptake = 0

T: 롯데백화점? IU RR SV Uptake = 1

   Too expensive! Too expensive! RR SV Uptake = 0

  I have no money! RR SV Uptake = 0

S: 아이쇼핑! 아이쇼핑! RR SV Uptake = 0

T: 아! Window shopping? RR SV Uptake = 1

S: Yes, window shopping! IU SV Uptake = 2 (But HERE the kids DO uptake! If you look at Minkyeong's data we see the same thing--the kids are MUCH more likely to uptake later on in the exchange.)  

T: I don't like window shopping. RR SV Uptake = 2

S: (laughing) Uptake = 0

IU	RR	SV	NU	Uptake
7	24	22	0	17

  According to the data above, I can see the T-S interaction/discourse seems quite TALL and THIN sustaining the topic for long, utterances made by the teacher and the children are very similar in the length, and also there are great number of reversible utterances and syntagmatic variations.

And we can see that uptake takes place in nearly 75% of reversible turns. VERY high uptake rate.

 Very interestingly, there is seen more students' co-created constructions than those of the teacher's, that is, the teacher is just taking up what the children have already constructed (authored) collaboratively and then varies a little bit trying to keep the discourse longer and more coherent. Right. But there seems to be something desired for the teacher's uptakes, to say, I think it could be more reversible with correct lexicogrammar with no error from the learners.

A lot of the uptake is not grammatical but lexical (e.g. "window shopping" for "eye shopping" and "Wow Shopping Mall" for "Wow!"). Isn't LEXICAL uptake also part of lexicogrammar? (Hint! Lexicogrammar does NOT simply mean "grammar".)

If the teacher's utterances were to intend to include more (immediate) uptakes (we can see "Uptake=0" a lot in the coding of data above) and more slightly varied syntagmatic constructions (I think the teacher unfortunately lost the great chance to get the children to learn the new language, " Wow-mall went/turned/became bankrupt" intramentally through intermental cooperative negotiation, that must be pretty hard for a child to get internalized though).

I think the teacher's working assumption is that the word "bankrupt" is not FREQUENT enough to learn. Unfortunately, it probably WILL be.

  Additionally, there is no NU (Non-reversible Utterance), such as projective commands ('Listen and Repeat'), display questions ('What do you see in the picture?'), or set texts ('Once upon a time...'), so the utterances produced by the teacher and the students are like the friendly ball for playing a collaborative (not competitive) game of Catch.

Good! Everybody! Notice that Seong-eun has actually READ Kwon and Kellogg (or at least the title and the abstract) and she's applying the IDEAS and not just the coding categories!

This is very important. Coding categories DEPEND on the underlying ideas, the hypotheses you want to test. Bravo, Seong-eun!

And further, one of the characteristic feature of Vygotsky's ZPD is being unveiled from "unpredictability" of outcome of the discourse between T-Ss which provides the learners with moderate pain to respond to unpredictable ball thrown from the teacher with "free pairs" (not just with "frozen pairs") on the spot.

I completely agree. I will sign my name to EVERY word!