Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences

Abstract In TBLT research, there is a noticeable lack of attention to the use of tasks with whole classes. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating the discourse of whole-class task-based teacher-student interaction compared to other types of teacher-student interaction in EFL classrooms in a primary school in China. A total of 223 pedagogic sequences from 16 EFL lessons taught by Chinese teachers to Grade 1 to 5 primary school student were recorded, transcribed, and coded as tasks or non-tasks using the four defining features of tasks proposed by Ellis and Shintani (2014. Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition research. London: Routledge ). The analysis revealed that 95 sequences were task-based, 44 were non-task-based (i.e. they contained none of the four task features) and a further 84 sequences were also non-task-based but contained some but not all the four task features. In terms of the discourse features of task versus non-tasks sequences, task sequences had a higher ratio of teacher talk to student talk, a higher frequency of IRF exchanges, a lower frequency of teacher-class interaction, a lower frequency of teacher-initiated exchanges, a higher frequency of FoM exchanges and a lower frequency of FoFs exchanges, and a higher frequency of both display and referential questions. Overall, the findings provide process-oriented evidence for the distinctiveness of task-based teacher-student interaction.