Analyzing classroom teacher-student consultations: a systemic-multimodal perspective

This study explores the multimodal and linguistic contours of the individual feedback consultation classroom curriculum genre (Amundrud, 2015), which is comprised of five stages: Opening, Conferring, Advice, Scoring, and Closing. This genre was found through the examination of audiovisual classroom observation data collected from two separate Japanese tertiary EFL courses. Examination of 49 consultations collected from both courses found the stable, social, and goal-oriented use of this genre by teachers to ascertain problems with student work and provide feedback. Through the systemic-functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of classroom discourse (e.g. Christie, 2002; Eggins & Slade, 1997; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hood, 2011; Kress et al., 2005; Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2007 & 2008), these consultations were examined for the use of spatial position,gaze,gesture,and language. This study extends prior work on classroom spatiality (Lim, 2011), refines metafunctionally-based systems for describing gestures(e.g. Lim, 2011; Martinec 2000), and develops a novel system for describing and analyzing the interpersonal content of gaze. It also develops upon prior work in SF-MDA on the language contextualization of gesture (e.g. Lim, 2011; Liu & O'Halloran, 2009). Regarding the linguistic content of individual-feedback consultations, this study also makes a number of contributions. For instance, it found 10 stratally and metafunctionally consistent pedagogic strategies that occurred in different stages of the consultation genre, such as pedagogic strategies of corrective feedback that utilized resources of heteroglossic Engagement in APPRAISAL. However, its main contribution is the finding that while teacher-student consultations comprise a significant portion of class time in both courses, their pedagogic potential was underexploited due to a lack of an informing explicit, language-oriented pedagogy.From this analysis, it makes suggestions for the improved usage of in-class xiv consultations that would enhance their pedagogic value for current and future language teachers and their students.