Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

The Newcastle University research output collection, currently available on ePrints, will shortly be moving to a new open repository platform, Figshare. To prepare for the data migration we have paused adding new content to ePrints, and will resume once the new repository is launched. During this time you will continue to have access to ePrints (but no new content will appear). We will share updates here when available.

Classroom interaction: possibilities and impossibilities

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Paul SeedhouseORCiD

Downloads

Abstract

Recent communicative approaches have suggested that one goal of English language teaching should be to replicate ‘genuine’ or ‘natural’ rather than ‘typical’ or ‘traditional’ classroom communication. This article argues that such a goal is both paradoxical and unattainable, and that there are serious flaws in the assumptions underlying the communicative orthodoxy concerning ELT classroom interaction. It also argues that it would be more satisfactory to take an institutional discourse approach, where classroom discourse is regarded as an institutional variety of discourse, in which interactional elements correspond neatly to institutional goals.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Seedhouse P

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: ELT Journal

Year: 1996

Volume: 50

Issue: 1

Pages: 16-24

Date deposited: 17/04/2008

ISSN (print): 0951-0893

ISSN (electronic): 1477-4526

Publisher: Oxford University Press

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/50.1.16

DOI: 10.1093/elt/50.1.16

Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric

Share