Analyses of Non-Native Preservice English Teacher Verbal Interactions on COLT Part B Scheme

This exploratory communication-conscious as well as in-service teachers. In this respect, the English “teacher empowerment” (MEXT, 2014) must also be applied to preservice teachers. Fourteen non-native preservice teachers contributed their teaching practice lesson video recordings to this study over three years for classroom verbal interaction analyses. Six of them taught Year 7 students in junior high schools in Japan on their teaching practice, and the rest taught Year 8 when they had teaching practice. We examined their classroom interactions based on the categories in the communicative orientation of language teaching observation scheme (COLT) Part B proposed by Spada and Fröhlich (1995). Chi-squared tests on the Year 7 group and the Year 8 group showed significant differences in giving unpredictable information (p =.0408), sustained speech (p =.0320), and repetition in incorporation of student utterances (p =.000). However, the test on the other categories such as requesting genuine information, asking for clarification, and making comments did not. These results might indicate preservice teachers improve classroom speech as they teach higher grades, while they need to develop interactional skills for teaching English more communicatively.

Author Information
Noriaki Katagiri, Hokkaido University of Education, Japan
Yukiko Ohashi, Yamazaki Gakuen University, Japan