A corpus based study of educational discourse the SCORE approach

SUMMARY This study draws on three perspectives, specifically, technical implementation, linguistic studies and pedagogical applications, so as to propose the SCoRE approach, a corpus-bas

A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE – THE SCoRE APPROACH

HONG HUAQING

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2009

A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE –

THE SCoRE APPROACH

HONG HUAQING

(BA, PGDE, MA)

A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Secondly, I am also extremely privileged to have Dr Bao Zhiming in the thesis committee Dr Bao is in part responsible for my budding enthusiasm for the pursuit of further study He has spent countless hours with me as a teacher and friend Additionally, he was always interested to hear how I was doing, how I felt about my work, about any doubts and setbacks I was experiencing, and on every occasion tried to encourage me by reminding me that writing this up was possible

R), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), which, together with the National University of Singapore (NUS), kindly provided me with the research scholarship for this work

His unfailing guidance and far-reaching friendship is vital for the development of this work

Next, I would also like to thank the group of colleagues who helped this project in one way or another During my work on this thesis, I have been a member

of the Center for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and I would like to thank some members of the center, particularly, Allan Luke, Anneliese Kramer-Dahl and David Hogan, who supported my research project to build the classroom discourse corpus, on which this thesis was eventually drawn As a team, Zheng Jianzhen, Wu Pengcheng, Niu Guiling, Ao Ran and Hui Chenri have been of invaluable assistance in processing the data Paul Doyle, Pauline Appleyard and Dennis Kwek have given their support and criticism along the way My thanks also

go to Liu Yongbing, Peter Freebody, Laurence Jun Zhang, Rita Silver and Guo Libo, for many interesting discussions and comments on corpus-based classroom discourse analysis

I have been also indebted to my friends, Gong Wengao, Rinka Watanabi, Chen Youping, He Jisheng, Zhang Meisuo, Qi Jianping, Zhao Shouhui, and others who have not been mentioned here but have been by my side all this time

Finally, my special gratitude also goes to my family for continually supporting me throughout this extremely stressful stage in my life when I have to work full time in the day and write this up at night and at the weekend There is no way to adequately thank my father, my wife and my daughter for their love, understanding and tolerance of my 7-11-like work on this project My daughter, who

grew up with this writing, has assisted the relaxation from my writing by her typical nagging and reading of fairy tales to me And she will have more readings from me now when all this is done

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

SUMMARY ix

LIST OF TABLES xii

LIST OF FIGURES xiv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv

2.3 Some Prior Studies 31

CHAPTER 4 TEACHER TALK AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT 83

CHAPTER 5 TEACHER CHOICES OF DIRECTIVES: SPEECH ACT IN

CLASSROOM

129

7.2 The Corpus-based Integrated Approach 193

Appendix 2 A Simple Flowchart Comparison of Singapore's and

American Education Systems

232

SUMMARY

This study draws on three perspectives, specifically, technical implementation, linguistic studies and pedagogical applications, so as to propose the SCoRE approach, a corpus-based integrated approach to the study of educational discourse It set outs with a review of some popular theoretical and methodological approaches to classroom discourse, such as interaction analysis approaches, discourse analysis approaches and conversation analysis approaches, in terms of their relative merits and shortcomings from their historical and intellectual development in relation to the other approaches Notably, while each of these approaches focuses on

a specific aspect or dimension of discourse and provides a useful and credible view, none of them, on its own, can provide a full view Besides, these approaches are rich

in theoretical concepts but thin on data As a rigorous analysis of data requires an iterative process of data interpretation and theory generation based on large amount

of evidence, this study therefore attempts to consider how these different approaches can be harnessed with a corpus-based integrated approach in order to have as comprehensive a view as is possible And it intends to combine these approaches to provide a much richer description and understanding of the complexities and consequences of classroom practices than any separate efforts could provide

With this theoretical background available, there are some technical issues to address in implementing the SCoRE approach One fundamental issue is how to design and build the corpus infrastructure for the purpose of “integration” It is resolved with a list of decisions and processes of data sampling, manipulation, and query For instance, XML is adopted for data storage, and relational database is

employed for corpus query Most importantly, for the purpose of integrating multiple perspectives from different approaches and research traditions, multi-layered and multi-leveled stand-off method is adapted for corpus annotation and a flexible web-based query console is built

Demonstrating the actual applications of the SCoRE approach in Singapore education settings, one chapter is devoted to how it can be applied to language studies of classroom discourse, and another two are focused on how it can benefit research on pedagogical practices Linguistically, the corpus provides us with rich data to look into how teachers and students tend to use language to communicate in class Linguistically, the relationship between teacher talk and student engagement levels is investigated with the sophisticated MD/MF analysis The patterns are investigated including conversation text types across subjects, gender, age, qualification, experience and other social variables in class Pedagogically, the sample analyses of speech act and IRE/F patterns in classroom communications also provide us with a better understanding of how such a corpus-based integrated approach can benefit education researchers in this aspect

This study is at least of importance in three aspects First, with the merits and shortcomings identified in various approaches to classroom discourses, it proposes a corpus-based integrated approach which, with a sophisticated architecture, can support and accommodate research with multiple perspectives from different traditions Second, the practical applications both in language and pedagogical studies support the feasibility and significance of the approach to the study of classroom practice in educational settings in Singapore and beyond Finally, the

sample analyses here identified some patterns, views and practices that may not be able to be captured before such a corpus and the corpus-based integrated approach were available Undoubtedly, a number of limitations are also found in present study

and thus some recommendations are provided for future work

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 General statistics of lessons coded and recorded 48 Table 3.2 Number of P5 units coded and recorded 48 Table 3.3 Number of P5 lessons coded and recorded 49 Table 3.4 Number of S3 units coded and recorded 49 Table 3.5 Number of S3 lessons coded and recorded 49

Table 3.7 List of index of speakers in the transcripts 58 Table 3.8 Breakdown of the lexical corpus of 455 transcripts of classroom

discourse

59 Table 3.9 A list of the selected features and annotation tools 62 Table 3.10 Breakdown of the IRF-annotated sub-corpus 71 Table 4.1 List of grammatical features used in analysis 87

Table 4.4 Value of Pseudo-F statistic according to cluster number 92

Table 4.8 Summary of cluster analysis across School Subjects 96 Table 4.9 Cluster means across School Subjects 97 Table 4.10 Cluster standard deviation across School Subjects 98 Table 4.11 Summary of Cluster Analysis between Grade Levels 99 Table 4.12 Table of cluster means between Grade Levels 100 Table 4.13 Cluster Standard Deviation between Grade Levels 100 Table 4.14 Distribution of high and low engagement lessons by School

Subjects

102 Table 4.15 Distribution of high and low engagement lessons by Grade Levels 103 Table 4.16 Distribution of high and low engagement lessons by Stream Types 103 Table 4.17 Distribution of high and low engagement lessons by Teacher

dimensions

109

Table 5.1 Selected P5 English Language lessons as the sub-corpus for the 136

feedback

183 Table 6.8 Distribution of feedback types in teacher talk 186

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 The linkage between classroom interactions and perceptions of

pedagogy

10

Figure 3.1 Flowchart of the SCoRE corpus architecture 46

Figure 3.3 An excerpt of a sample transcript output (trs file) 54 Figure 3.4 An excerpt of human-reader-friendly output (txt file) 55 Figure 3.5 An excerpt of machine-readable output (txt file) 55 Figure 3.6 An excerpt of index file (txt file) 56 Figure 3.7 Importance of feature selection in corpus annotation 61 Figure 3.8 An excerpt of the sample output of Wmatrix POS and semantic

tagging

65

Figure 4.2 Plot of clusters along Dimension 3 vs Dimension 5 93 Figure 4.3 Multidimensional profiles for conversational text types 94 Figure 4.4 Scree Plot of the factor analysis result 105 Figure 4.5 Profiles of high student engagement by School Subjects 111 Figure 4.6 Profiles of high student engagement by Grade Levels 113 Figure 4.7a Profiles of high student engagement by Streams (P5) 115 Figure 4.7b Profiles of high student engagement by Streams (S3) 116 Figure 4.8 Profiles of high student engagement by Class Size 118 Figure 4.9 Profiles of high student engagement by Teacher Gender 119 Figure 4.10 Profiles of high student engagement by Teacher Age 121 Figure 4.11 Profiles of high student engagement by Teacher Experience 123 Figure 4.12 Profiles of high student engagement by Teacher Qualification 125 Figure 6.1 A snapshot of IRF annotation with MMAX2 tool 157

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

A*STAR Agency for Science, Technology and Research

BNC British National Corpus

CGEL The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language

CPDD The Curriculum Planning and Development Division

CRPP Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice

EAGLES Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards

ESP English for Specific Purposes

GSSEC Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus

I2R Institute for Infocomm Research

IAA Inter-Annotator Agreement

ICE International Corpus of English

ICE-GB Great Britain component of International Corpus of English

ICE-SIN Singapore component of

IRE

International Corpus of English Initiation, Response, Evaluation

IRF Initiation, Response, Feedback/Follow-up

LGSPWE Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

LGSWE Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

MF/MD Multi-Feature/Dimension (approach)

MMAX Multi-Modal Annotation in XML

MOE Ministry of Education

NIE National Institute of Education

NIECSSE The NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore English

NTU Nanyang Technological University

NUS National University of Singapore

POS Parts of Speech

PSLE Primary School Leaving Examination

SCE Singapore Colloquial English

SCoRE Singapore Corpus of Research in Education

SFG Systemic Functional Grammar

SGEM The Speak Good English Movement

SPSS Statistical Product and Service Solutions, also known as Statistical

Package for the Social Sciences SSE Singapore Standard English

XML Extensible Markup Language

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Issues and Motivation

Classroom practices are multifaceted and too complex to be described completely, and thus the study of educational discourse - the primary means of classroom practices - has been the focus of many research projects for decades Classroom discourse, as the form of educational discourse in classroom practices, refers to all forms of discourse that take place in the classroom, including linguistic and non-linguistic elements of the discourse As Tsui (2008) defines them, the former includes the language used by the teacher and the learners and the interactions between them The latter includes paralinguistic gestures, non-verbal cues, prosody and silence - all of which are integral parts of the discourse These linguistic and nonlinguistic elements constitute the observable dimensions of classroom discourse The unobservable dimensions of classroom discourse, typically formed by the sociocultural contexts in which the discourse is generated, include the physical environment, the socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds of participants,

as well as the psychological dimensions such as their perceptions, emotions, beliefs and orientations Research on classroom discourse has explored both observable and unobservable aspects as they are hardly divisible

Discourse analysis, the study of the use of language for communication in context, is a rapidly-expanding field which is characterized by proliferation of

analytical methods and continuously reviewed tools Discourse analysis, though often seen as located within the discipline of linguistics, is in fact an interdisciplinary field of inquiry With a history of about 50 years, it has been defined as the analysis

of linguistic behavior, written and spoken, beyond the limits of individual sentences, focusing primarily on the meaning constructed and interpreted as language is used in particular social contexts It has attracted the attention not only of linguists and applied linguists, but also socio-political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, computer experts, business and legal specialists, communication experts and organizational theorists In this context, it is hardly surprising that discourse analysis has developed into a variety of schools using different approaches, frameworks, procedures and methodologies and focused on different kinds of semiotic data, with the aim of deriving insights for a variety of purposes

The discourse analytical approaches that have grown out of these interdisciplinary developments are many, including register and genre analyses, critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, the ethnography of communication, stylistics, mediated discourse analysis, corpus-based analysis, narrative analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, rhetorical-grammatical analysis, argumentation analysis and many others Work on discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, literary analysis, semantic analysis, sociolinguistics and text analysis, among others, has developed a rich body of constructs and methods that are relevant to the analysis of the construction of meaning in classroom settings Thus, methodological and theoretical advances have made it possible to contribute to an understanding of the multiple

dimensions of classroom practices, and to the overcoming the earlier limitations on developing explanations of the differences observed from one or two perspectives alone

It is necessary to understand in what way and why these approaches diverge from common intellectual traditions In doing so, we hope to understand not just what is unique about each of these approaches, but also where the possibilities for convergence and interdisciplinarity are opening up As will become clearer in the review of related literature in the next chapter, despite a common commitment to the study of texts and their use in social contexts, these differences can be seen as the result of the influence of multiple disciplines on the development of discourse analysis For instance, sociology and anthropology have encouraged analysts to view the use of language as a function of the context in which language is used, whereas linguistics has constrained discourse analysts to focus primarily on text, with context

in the background

For applied linguists seeking to establish the roles of teachers and students in

a particular classroom context, the independent insights into the same data from some rival perspectives can be an advantage For example, leading exponents of both Conversational Analysis and Structural Discourse Analysis have often been dismissive of each others’ approaches (cf Levinson, 1983: 294; Coulthard & Brazil, 1992: 53) Apparently, the application of both approaches to the same data does more than just provide different angles on that data It also provides special insights that neither field could provide independently In this sense, it is important to avoid

imposing a single framework of analysis that prejudges which categories are important

What should become clear on why there are a variety of approaches commonly applied to the study of classroom discourse is that these approaches are not developing in isolation, but rather in constant dialogue with one another While each focused on a specific aspect or dimension of discourse in educational settings, none captured the “whole” In other words, although each individual approach provides a useful and credible view, none of them, on their own, can provide a full view

This present study therefore attempts to consider how these different approaches can be harnessed and integrated in order to have as comprehensive a view as is possible And I hope to combine these theoretical and methodological approaches to provide a much richer description and understanding of the complexities and consequences of instructional processes than any separate efforts could provide

1.2 The Need for a Corpus-Based Integrated Approach

Educational research has increasingly focused on analyses of teacher-student and student-student interactions in the classroom (Nystrand, 1997; Westgate &

Hughes, 1997; Luke et al, 2004) Although these classroom studies have been

informed by various theoretical traditions, their major assumption is that

teacher-student face-to-face interaction is cultural-linguistic pedagogical communication, where participants use language and discourse to make sense through dialogic practices, to exchange and construct meanings, and to engage in complex interactions (Westgate & Hughes, 1997; Cazden, 1988 & 2001; Hall & Walsh, 2002) Their emphases have been largely placed on different ways teachers or advanced learners can scaffold the participation of students in classroom dialogic activities, for example, by questioning, directing attention to key aspects of the curricular task, simplifying the task, appropriating language or other tools, monitoring ongoing performance, and providing appropriate feedback depending on the students’ level of understanding in classroom interaction (e.g., Carlsen, 1991; Christie, 2002; Mercer, 2000; Skidmore, 2000; Wells, 1999) These are very often analyzed in relation to local classroom contexts and other contextual factors which influence choices of particular communicative and pedagogical strategies These taken together, in turn, have differential effects on learning and cognition, language development and, generally, educational achievements (for detailed reviews, see Carlsen, 1991; Hall &

Walsh, 2002; Luke et al, 2004)

There are different methodological tools for examining classroom interaction

or discourse Among them, discourse analysis is one of the most widely used analytic techniques in studies of classroom talk (e.g., Green & Dixon, 2002; Hall & Walsh, 2002) However, classroom discourse analysis does not refer to a single disciplinary

or methodological tradition but it is involved with a broad family of techniques and

theories (Green & Dixon, 2002; Rampton et al, 2002) Its strength is in the provision

of detailed micro-analytic descriptions and analysis of dialogic talks in classrooms

The description and analysis can be linked to normative educational and disciplinary theories to evaluate classroom interaction and to propose educationally viable

alternatives (for reviews, see Green & Dixon, 2002; Rampton et al, 2002; Luke et al,

2004)

However, classroom discourse analysis has so far been difficult to produce generalizations as there appear to be two areas that need attention For one thing, there has been relatively little in the classroom discourse literature that examines critically the methodological assumptions made in the analysis of data (Tsui, 2008)

As mentioned in previous section, as the field draws on theoretical concepts and research methodologies from a variety of disciplines, it becomes all the more important that the methodologies and approaches to specific dimensions should be extended or redefined to multiple perspectives In other words, there is a need for a harnessed and integrated approach to classroom discourse in order to have a comprehensive view and warranted claims for generalization

For the other, quantitative analyses of classroom discourse, corpus-based studies, in particular, are rare if not nonexistent, since common approaches to classroom discourse are largely just suitable for a small sample size or a case study

(for notable exceptions, see Nystrand, 1997; Applebee et al, 2003) rather than a large

data set In his TTA lecture, Hargreaves (1996) made a trenchant criticism of educational research in the UK by saying that “in education there is simply not enough evidence on the effects and effectiveness of what teachers do in classrooms

to provide an evidence-based corpus of knowledge.” (p 4) Similarly, in reviewing

the education research in the US, Biber et al (2004) pointed out that “to date there

have been few large-scale empirical investigations of academic registers, and virtually no such investigations of spoken academic registers.” Given this lack of large quantity of data as support, it has been impossible to generalize the educational research results on the basis of traditional pen-and-paper approach or observation-based approach (cf Cazden, 1988 & 2001; Markee, 2000; Christie, 2002) Specifically in the context of classroom research, we have lacked the empirically defined classroom interaction models drawn on a large sample of data

Fortunately, recently we have seen the progress in this respect Methodologically, in the last decade, research on classroom discourse has advanced the field in several aspects Firstly, instead of focusing on specific aspects of classroom interaction, there is emergent research which takes a more holistic view of classroom interaction, integrates micro- and macro-analyses, and attends to the multiple dimensions of context and the multiple levels of discourse in the classroom Secondly, the theoretical frameworks, which draw on neighboring disciplines to illuminate the complexity of classroom data, continue to widen For example, studies

of Lantolf (2000), Van Lier (2000) and Kramsch (2002) have advocated a pluralistic approach to classroom interaction as a powerful way of capturing the symbiotic relationship between the language user and the context This approach offers a new way of bringing together theoretical frames from other disciplines to enhance our understanding of the complexities of classroom discourse Finally, there are an increasing number of studies which have adopted an eclectic approach to research methodologies in which qualitative and quantitative data are collected from a variety

of sources for triangulation, and have provided multiple perspectives in their data analysis

In recent years, advances in computer technology have provided corpus linguistics the capacity for analyzing many more variables and data of classroom discourse (for reviews, see Wegerif & Mercer, 1997; Conrad, 2002) In other words, corpus linguistics can “provide a complementary perspective to more intensive approaches to discourse analysis” in classroom data (Conrad, 2002: 78) Its strongest analytical strength is in providing “big picture” perspective on classroom discourse analysis (Conrad, 2002: 78) The statistical analysis of text in educational measurement is more effective when used with reliable corpus evidence (Leacock, 2004) Therefore, with the availability of a computerized corpus of education discourse, especially the collection of a large quantity of classroom interactions, researchers can conduct large-scale empirical investigations of classroom discourse

In line with these emerging instruments and the availability of resources, the present study thus proposes the SCoRE approach, a corpus-based integrated approach to the studies of classroom discourse

The approach was initially conceptualized in 2005 while I was looking for a better approach to a large-scale study of pedagogical practices in the educational settings in Singapore After the literature review and a pilot study, I started to devote the last few years to implement the approach to build the classroom discourse corpus project for the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Eventually a computerized corpus database of education discourse, the Singapore Corpus of Research in Education (SCoRE) (Hong, 2005) was built and made available to the research community Together with the corpus, various technical and empirical explorations have contributed to the success of the SCoRE approach and the corpus architecture, which has been refined and is still under refinement with comments and suggestions from various scholars and interesting parties in the field

In the next two sections I will illustrate more about the rationale, overall aim and specific objectives of the SCoRE approach

1.3 Rationale and Overall Aim

One of the important lessons from much of the classroom-based research, as discussed in the literature review section of next chapter, is that a particular feature

of classroom talk cannot be evaluated or even fully understood without taking account of the local and extended contexts That is, sequences of analytic features perform particular functions in their local and extended contexts, and students’ participation in those sequences make available to them certain orientations to knowledge and learning In a complex learning environment such as the classroom, teachers and students work on particular combinations of interactional features, to some extent depending upon the pragmatic concerns at any given moment, but also

in order to effect the various combinations of perspectives on learning that the teacher seeks

Figure 1.1: The linkage between classroom interactions and perceptions of pedagogy

While the classroom-observation coding data will allow relationships to be drawn with the findings from various approaches to classroom interactions, it will not provide a clear illustrative material of what the key coding categories actually look like in action or the ways in which those features operate together in actual classroom talk Besides, it is also not clear about the relationship between classroom interactions on the one hand, and on the other, perceptions of pedagogy and students’ understanding reflected from classroom tasks/assignments That is to say, a linkage should be established for a fuller view of the education practice, as illustrated in Figure 1.1

With the linkage established, the aims of the approach are now clear To be specific, this approach is intended to engage in significant analyses of the classroom talk from qualitative and corpus-based perspectives, partly to discover more features

of classroom activity, partly to illustrate key findings from the empirical analysis,

Classroom interactions

Perceptions

of pedagogy

Observation coding

and partly to provide data that can be used to examine problematic areas of other approaches to classroom discourse, and most important, eventually to integrate the results from different perspectives to present a fuller picture of the current practice and therefore facilitate future school intervention and professional development

In so doing, it will also provide a corpus database from which illustrative material on classroom discourse may be drawn by both researchers and teachers The corpus can then be used as a comprehensive foundation of classroom data incorporating classroom audio and video recordings, written artefacts, and observation coding data Such data can be analytically examined using a suite of software tools drawn from Corpus Linguistic techniques, which seek to understand classroom practices and pedagogies from a new perspective

In brief, the aim of present study is thus three-fold:

• To propose and present the SCoRE approach, a corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse in terms of developing a computerized corpus of classroom data with an accompanying suite of analytical software tools that will allow researchers to retrieve, examine and understand classroom discourse with quantitative and qualitative methods to integrate multiple perspectives from different approaches;

• To demonstrate how the SCoRE approach can be applied in empirical studies by providing analyses of the patterns of classroom interactions, using qualitative techniques drawn from discourse and interaction analyses, and a range of computational corpus tools Such analyses

will be used to corroborate, illustrate, supplement, and extend the findings from other perspectives, as shown in Figure 1.1 above

• To provide classroom discourse data, which will form the baseline for school intervention and professional development, and answer research questions generated from (1) classroom observations, (2) methodological interests (e.g., Systemic Functional Grammar, Interactional Sociolinguistics, etc.), and (3) priority curriculum domains across grade levels and streams (e.g., Science-based classroom learning, text-type orientation in English, etc.)

1.4 Methodology and Specific Objectives

It is noted that the exercise of analysis of classroom interactional data as speech genres and discourses, we need both empiricist approaches to interaction or behavior (thus linguistic or paralinguistic features) and functional-communicative approaches of classroom language as conversation (Rojo, 2000) In this respect, we need a comprehensive methodology, which can effectively make use of the computer technology of corpus tools to facilitate the description, analysis and evaluation of classroom discourse from other approaches

In brief, the present study focuses on two levels: a theoretical/methodological level and a content level The theoretical/methodological level focuses on the identification of the nature of a corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse, its purpose and goals, as well as issues for designing and engaging this

approach The content level centers on various applications of the SCoRE approach

to language studies and pedagogical studies of classroom discourse

These two aspects, the technical implementation of the approach and the practical applications of the approach in language studies and pedagogical practices, demonstrated in the thesis here, are expected to prove that the SCoRE approach is a better method to classroom discourse research, as it can provide a richer, more complete picture of educational phenomenon, and offer the opportunity for convergent validation of findings from large database with multiple perspectives and dimensions from different schools and traditions

In terms of the overall aim, the study also specifically addresses:

identification of the feasibility of a corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse In addressing this aim, a list of common approaches is reviewed in relation to the education research in local and global settings

demonstration of the application of this approach to successful research practice In addressing this aim, analyses of linguistic features are examined to investigate patterns of classroom discourse strategies which facilitate or hinder learning

In relation to the project aims indicated above, the research here seeks to explore:

the patterns of classroom talk in a corpus of lessons, which illustrate how teaching and learning in the classrooms are organized with disciplinary variations;

how classroom talk and associated activities are used to help students to reconstruct and demonstrate knowledge through interaction patterns;

the role of classroom talk in engaging students in learning

As discussed earlier, with the availability of a corpus of education discourse, especially the collection of a large quantity of classroom interactions, researchers can conduct large-scale empirical investigations of classroom discourse in an integrated approach In this way, some educational applications can be carried out from the following several perspectives

Multimodal classroom corpus for general education research: Aligning the digital audio/video recordings of the classes to the accompanying transcriptions and classroom codling data makes it possible to conduct in-depth classroom research on knowledge acquisition and pedagogy Materials drawn from these annotated classroom recordings can be used in professional development and material development for a very long time

Data source for contrastive analysis across languages and disciplines: The corpus samples major curriculum subjects mediated in four official languages in Singaporean primary and secondary schools A corpus-based investigation of linguistic variation within or across class sessions and disciplines can find the

the development of effective teaching materials and classroom activities as well as the use of teaching aids

Empirical model of classroom practice: The effectiveness of many commonly used practices has not yet been empirically demonstrated A searchable database of classroom interactions can be useful data bank for empirical investigations on techniques that facilitate various kinds of student-student and student-teacher interactions, on activities that facilitate literacy development and knowledge acquisition, and also on learning gains associated with various types of instruction

Valuable resource of teacher training aids: With the abundance of sample classroom interactions collected and annotated, training teachers could become aware of effective practices demonstrated in the database, and eventually develop a good practice appropriate for their own teaching Similarly, practitioners, policy-makers and researchers gain an understanding of how to develop reflective, evidence-based practice to improve student learning outcomes and facilitate teachers’ professional development toward continuous improvement

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

This thesis consists of seven chapters In this chapter I have introduced the background to the present study, its purpose, rationale, overall aim and specific objectives as well as the significance of this study In addition, this chapter also

briefly outlines the theoretical framework and research methodology employed for subsequent chapters

Following on from this introductory chapter, the related literature is reviewed

in Chapter Two, which forms the theoretical background to this study The review looks at the theoretical development in the last two decades for the studies of educational discourse In particular, some popular approaches to classroom discourse are reviewed with a summary of some representative classroom-based research in this respect In addition, it also looks at some of the key empirical studies related to the present work

Chapter Three, focusing on the technical perspective of the proposed approach, defines the design of the SCoRE approach and discusses the issues of the corpus building, data collection method, corpus annotation and web-based query Theoretical considerations in relation to the various issues in compiling the corpus are presented with practical solutions and technical details whenever possible As this part of work sets the technical foundation of the corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse, it is of great importance to the subsequent chapters

on potential applications of the SCoRE approach to studies on language in and for classroom and pedagogical practice of and for teacher development

Turning to the application of the SCoRE approach to studies of language in and for classroom, Chapter Four demonstrates how such a corpus-based integrated approach can be used in analyzing classroom discourse from multiple perspectives

In line with the theme of corpus-based integrated approach to language in and for

classroom, I look into the relationship between linguistic features of classroom interactions and students’ engagement levels Studies on engagement have been a topic of educational psychology for long However, it has never been studied with a corpus-based approach Taking Biber’s MF/MD analysis (1985, 1986 & 1988) and cluster analysis, I first identify the conversational types in the corpus of classroom interactions, and then further look at the relationship between linguistic features and student engagement levels in terms of linguistic features of teacher talk

Chapters Five and Chapter Six present the application of the SCoRE approach in pedagogical studies While Chapter Five is focused on the relationship between teachers’ regulative discourse and students learning, Chapter Six examines teacher-student interaction patterns with the results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses Pragmatics, speech acts specifically, in classroom, is a frequently-seen research topic in conversation analysis, but Chapter Five presents how it can be integrated with corpus linguistics tools to look at large amount of data for generalization purposes Similarly, Chapter Six demonstrates how large collection of interaction patterns, initiation-response-evaluation/feedback (IRE/F) in particular, can be used in support of traditional qualitative analysis integrated to a corpus-based approach

With the discussion and analyses in the above-mentioned three major perspectives, namely, technical, linguistic and pedagogical, Chapter Seven concludes the thesis with the summary of some aspects of the SCoRE approach to classroom discourse, and the implications of the approach and findings, both in general terms

and with respect to education research Finally it concludes this thesis with suggestions and recommendations for future research

1.6 Summary

This chapter starts with discussion on the issues in the field of studies on classroom discourse, and then leads to the motivation of proposing a corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse This is not coming from nowhere, but a demand from the advance of the education research in recent years With the need of

a corpus-based integrated approach, this chapter also presents the feasibility of implementing an approach of such a kind to the study of daily classroom practices The chapter concludes with the introduction of the objectives of this study and the organization of the following chapters

The next chapter, Chapter Two, reviews a list of common approaches to classroom discourse and also some key empirical research related to this study

In the first part of the chapter, a review is presented of the most relevant contributions to the significant body of research that now exists on the study of classroom discourse The intention is to alert the reader to the various approaches that can be adopted for analyzing classroom discourse, and to review their relative merits and shortcomings Essentially, any understanding of the task of systematically observing, analyzing and understanding classroom practices and objectives requires

a proper selection and mastery of particular tools This part sets the background of the proposed corpus-based integrated approach to classroom discourse

In the second section, a review is presented of some concepts, methods and tools in related empirical studies of classroom discourse from different perspectives and research traditions, such as lexical choices in classroom talk, diglossia use of regional variety of English in classrooms, linguistic factors on students’ engagement levels in class, and teacher-student interaction patterns as well

2.2 Common Approaches to Classroom Discourse

There are different methodological tools for examining classroom interaction and discourse These methodological tools include conversation analysis, genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, mediated discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches Notably, each of them focuses on some specific dimensions of discourse in education settings In what follows, I would like to look briefly at four types of representative approaches, namely, interaction analysis approaches, discourse analysis approaches, conversation analysis approaches and corpus-based approaches, in terms of their historical and intellectual development in relation to the other approaches I will also examine where these approaches stand on these fundamental questions of text and context, considering in what way they can benefit classroom-based education research with a large collection of data

2.2.1 Interaction Analysis Approaches

Interaction analysis approaches to classroom discourse are commonly centered on quantitative approaches for analyzing interaction with a series of observation instruments, or coding systems, which are used to record what the observer deems to be happening in classroom From these recordings and the ensuing statistical treatment, classroom profiles can be established, which, it is argued, provide an objective and scientific analysis of classroom discourse According to

Brown and Rodgers (2002), over 200 different observation instruments now exist, and there seems to be a consensus on the main features of observation instruments First, they use some system involving ticking boxes, making marks, recording what the observer sees, often at regular time intervals; second, they are reliable, enabling ease of comparison between observers and generalizability of results; third, they are essentially behaviorist, assuming a stimulus/response progression to classroom discourse; finally, they have been used extensively in teacher training, particularly for developing competencies and raising awareness

Following Wallace (1998), Walsh (2006) divides the interaction analysis approaches into two groups on the basis of the observation instruments used: system-

based approaches and ad hoc approaches

By system is meant that the instrument has a number of fixed categories that have been predetermined in different classroom contexts There are several advantages to using a fixed system: the system is ready-made, and there is no need to design one from scratch; because the system is well-known, there is no need for validation; any system may be used in real-time or following a recording; comparisons between one system and another are possible

Some classical systems have been extensively used in interaction analysis of classroom discourse Among them, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) developed a much more sophisticated discourse model of classroom interaction, and it is now more commonly described as: initiation, response, feedback (IRF) It is termed “the essential teaching exchange” by Edwards and Westgate (1994: 124), and has been

adopted and adapted to suit for different research agendas and education settings (Frohlich, Spada & Allen, 1985; Spada & Frohlich, 1995; to list just a few) As such,

it represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the processes of classroom interaction

It is now generally recognized that system-based interactional approaches to classroom discourse can only provide a partial picture of reality, based as they are only on what is observable or measurable (Nunan, 1989; Wallace, 1998; Kumaravadivelu, 1999) Three main limitations are summarized here The first objection is that any patterns of interaction that occur have to be matched to the categories provided; the results are predetermined and cannot account for events which do not match the descriptive categories (Van Lier, 1988: 43) Second, no allowance is made for overlap; the categories for observation are discrete System-based observation instruments make the assumption that one speaker turn occurs at a time, obliging the observer to make snap decisions about how to categorize utterances as they occur Inevitably, inaccuracies and reductions will ensue and the complexities of classroom interaction will be lost forever Finally, highly structured observation instruments may be suitable for quickly generating large quantities of numerical data However, it is likely that less structured, yet tailor-made instruments will be better adapted to coping with the constraints of a particular context

In contrast to these limitations, ad hoc approaches offer the construction of a

more flexible instrument, which may, for example, be based on a specific classroom

problem or area of interest Ad hoc, as the name suggests, involves designing a