Short Teacher Responses in the EFL Classroom: A Corpus-Approach Assessment

Abstract

Teacher’s positive feedback in the form of immediate succinct response is an indispensable motivational factor crucial to students’ oral production and classroom participation. The present study was intended to assess the range and authenticity of teacher responses used by a number of Russian teachers of English in everyday classroom interactions. The study adopted theCorpus Approachas a reference tool to verify the research data against a Corpus-driven evidence that isto examine and assess the authenticity of the most frequent responses given by the study participants (21 practising EFL teachers working in Orel, Russia, most of whom are graduates of Orel State University, andwhose teaching experience ranges from 11 to 25 years). The results indicated that the phrases the teachers used in the classroom differed from those native speakers use in similar authentic environment. The analysis revealed that the teachers did not resort to clear and concise positive reinforcement often enough to stimulate the students’ engagement. In addition, a finite list of highly authentic TRs was recommended for more frequent use in ordinary EFL classrooms and among would-be English teachers. Overall, both teachers in the field and trainee teachers need to be more informed on how and in what particular way to encourage their students’ classroom participation.

Potenciando la producción oral en inglés: estrategias y herramientas en el aula

“…La ausencia de una buena metodología para la enseñanza de esta lengua (Castro-Crespo et al, 2020), la cual es importante para lograr el objetivo de comunicarse en inglés, y si el docente no la posee no será factible. La motivación con que perciba la lengua el alumno (Keselman & Yakovleva, 2021)Russia, most of whom are graduates of Orel State University, andwhose teaching experience ranges from 11 to 25 years, es imprescindible que se sienta cómodo en el aula y así poder participar de manera efectiva en el idioma meta. La falta de preparación por parte de los estudiantes en los aspectos generales de la lengua como en su comprensión y producción oral y escrita (Suárez-Cretton et al, 2020), hace que vean el aprender un idioma extranjero como algo muy complicado, porque consideran que no son buenos y es por ello que se ha visto conveniente cambiar la enseñanza de un currículo de contenidos por competencias.…”