Student Directed Speech (SDS). How Teachers Adapt Language in the Classroom Context

As in many aspects of language pedagogy, research on classroom communication and specifically on teacher language tends to adapt a deficit-oriented perspective: teachers monopolize classroom time, ask too many cognitively unchallenging questions, don’t allow enough time for students to answer, and structure lessons according to a recurring scheme with minimal and unchallenging increments. The language acquisition potential of teacher language has remained largely outside of the research focus. The present study thus aims to address this desideratum. Drawing on central concepts from interactionistically oriented L1 acquisition and L2 mediation research, as well as the discourse-based construct of written registers of language (“konzeptionelle Schriftlichkeit”, Koch/Oesterreicher 1986) as the goal of language acquisition in school context, it operationalizes the written register of language along four dimensions.The overall aim of the project is to describe the linguistic characteristics of language addressed to students (Student directed Speech, SdS). The central question is to what extent input adaptation can be detected in the teacher's language when teachers address pupils of different grades. Further, teachers' micro-interactional processing of pupils' statements is investigated. Of interest is to what extent teachers act as linguistic models for students when directly addressing students’ own formulations.Data was gathered using a design of descriptive and multiple case studies (Caspari 2016) in three secondary school grade levels. In each level, a double period was videotaped with a total of four biology teachers and four German teachers (two male and two female per subject). Central to the design was the decision to keep the factor teacher constant. In this way, both an intra-individual comparison of linguistic activity in the different grades as well as an inter-individual comparison examining effects of subject and gender is possible.Insights into adaptive language behaviour of teachers can be regarded as a component of basic language pedagogy research, but also have important practical consequences for research on professional competence (Baumert/Kunter 2006: 469).

DFG Programme Research Grants

Co-Investigators Dr. Tim Kühl; Professorin Dr. Julia Schwanewedel; Professor Dr. Thomas Zabka