1.1Background
The impetus behind this book project is my experience as a lecturer of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and teacher trainer. Indeed, my work mainly consists in training French-speaking student-teachers to teach EFL in the junior classes of secondary school. This involves spending a large amount of time at the back of classrooms observing lessons and assessing the work of trainees with the help of tutors and giving feedback. A few years ago, my work took on an extra dimension when I was given the opportunity to run in-service teacher development seminars. What has emerged from both my teaching experience with trainees as well as numerous encounters with teachers and educators is the realisation of the major role played by teacher talk in exposing students to the target language, as well as the understanding that, if appropriate, teacher talk could greatly enhance foreign language acquisition.
It is perhaps an oversimplification to state that ālanguage has to come in before it can go outā (Scott & Ytreberg 1995: 23), but the more students are exposed to language, the more likely they are to take it in and reproduce it at a later stage (Sundqvist 2009; Holt 2018). The well-known statement in foreign language circles, āinput before outputā, also applies to classroom language. Setting aside the wide range of listening materials available, the EFL teacher is in many cases the main model students have throughout their time at secondary school. Besides, āteacher talking time (TTT) takes up an impressive 70% of classroom time in general, which makes it a rather āmassiveā type of input for learnersā (Meunier 2012: 6).
It is therefore necessary, I would argue, to opt for high-quality use of English for all classroom functions (see for instance Cullen 1998; Harmer 2007; Gharbavi & Iravani 2014). Yet, after many years of teaching practice visits and in-service courses, I have come to realise that the teacherās classroom speech remains a neglected area and that it could be improved. Based on this intuition, I sought to use corpus linguistic methods in order to analyse in depth, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the spoken language which characterises native and non-native teacher talk. This is the reason why the CONNEcT corpus (an acronym for a Corpus of Native and Non-Native EFL Classroom Teacher Talk) was specifically assembled for the purposes of this study (see Section 3.2, where the design of CONNEcT is looked at in greater detail).
While building a corpus of native and non-native teacher talk will help greatly to inform us about the nature of speech that learners are exposed to, seeking out the teachersā voices through a questionnaire was also seen as important. To this end, 54 francophone EFL teachers, in Belgium, were surveyed as to their dispositions towards various issues relating to teacher talk. The questionnaire included four open-ended questions, the responses to which are indicated in Table 1.1.
Table 1.1Teachersā attitudes towards teacher talk (54 respondents)
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| Was teacher talk specifically dealt with in initial training? | How important is classroom English or teacher talk in your view? | Can teacher talk be learned? | Do you incorporate it into your lesson plans? |
| - never: 75% - hardly mentioned: 9% - as part of the TEFL methodology course: 16% | - very important: 88.5% - of average importance: 11.5% | - yes: 100% - no: 0% | - never: 47.9% - rarely: 12.5% - only when I started out teaching: 10.4% - at the beginning of the school year: 4.1% - at beginnerās level: 3.7% - always: 21.4% |
The interpretation of the responses to Question 1 is self-evident. At the time of the survey, 75% of the respondents had never been told about teacher talk in their pre-service training programmes. These figures could be age-related since the 16% of teachers that had received specific training were all younger teachers, aged between 22 and 30. Strikingly, responses to Questions 2 and 3 may contradict those provided for Question 4: while a huge majority of respondents (88.5%) consider teacher talk as a very critical aspect of English Language Teaching (ELT) and all think it can be learned, 60% of them never or rarely plan it beforehand. Some of the reasons these teachers gave for not planning teacher talk are listed below:
ā¢āMost of the time I improvise my speechā
ā¢āIt just comes naturally as the lesson unfoldsā
ā¢āIt mainly comes through experience; Iāve picked it up through the yearsā
ā¢āI donāt plan it as I want to keep my speech natural, spontaneousā
ā¢āTT is like a jargon which belongs to the classroomā
The responses to Question 4 also indicate that five teachers (10.4%) planned teacher talk only when they started teaching and that only 3.7% feel it is necessary to do so with beginners. The two teachers (4.1%) who āspeakā it at the beginning of term assimilate it with a list of classroom instructions to be handed out to the learners. On the side of the āalwaysā responses, the teachers who do incorporate teacher talk into their lesson plans (21.4%) associate it with the target language being spoken in the classroom.
In general, from the survey, the non-native EFL teachers seem to lack awareness of their own understanding of teacher talk or fail to define clearly what it is. What also comes out, though, is that most participants acknowledged its importance. As one respondent stated: āNever before had I been given the opportunity to reflect on the importance of teacher talk. I do realise now that it should be given more attentionā.
Adding to these survey findings, we also need to consider that the proportion of non-native speakers teaching in EFL contexts has risen dramatically over the past three decades, with estimates ranging from 80% (Timmis 2002; Canagarajah 2005; Moussu & Llurda 2008) to even 90% (Bolitho 2008; Freeman et al. 2015; Maharjan 2017). Another reason for investigating EFL teacher talk is related to its very definition and its dual aspect. Walsh (2011b) draws an important distinction between classroom language and teacher talk. Within the context of a classroom, classroom language ā or classroom English, depending on the language in which we are working ā works on different levels. It refers to both the language we are trying to teach and is also the means of getting there. Allwright and Bailey (1991) qualify classroom language as being both the vehicle and destination of language learning. It is where we are going and how we are getting there. Walsh (2006a: i) points this out in a similar way:
Classroom language involves both student talk and teacher talk. In her book Classroom Observation Tasks, Wajnryb (1992) shares the same view by stating that there is the teacherās classroom language and the learnerās classroom language. Put differently, classroom language is the language (within our context, English) that takes place in the classroom, āthe actual language that is used by both teachers and students during the lessonā (Cullen 1995: 3). If we then further categorise classroom language into the teacherās classroom language (or speech) we then come on to teacher talk.
Teacher talk is therefore much more specific: it is about how teachers use language in their teaching in order to facilitate and promote learning, to help co-construct new meanings, new understandings, knowledge, and, in a language classroom particularly, skills (Walsh 2011b). In an interview Cullen (2011) gives a similar definition while stressing the interaction process: āteacher talk would just simply be what the teacher says in the classroom, and, of course, what the teacher says is in response to what the learners say tooā. This definition, as will be seen in Section 3.2, highlights both the input and, more importantly, the interaction processes needed to facilitate and promote learning (Lynch 1996; Walsh 2011b).
This dual aspect constitutes a major challenge to EFL teachers, especially ā yet not exclusively ā to teachers whose mother tongue is not English. It also implies that the teacherās classroom language ought to be representative of the target language which learners are trying to acquire while at the same time facilitating language acquisition (Andon & Eckerth 2009). This also means that āteachers of English need to know about and use areas of English that are both similar to and different from those required by the general user of Englishā (Spratt 2012: 1).
The reasons for the investigation of teacher talk which we have mentioned so far also feed into what the present volume will attempt to analyse. They also fit into the exploration of professional knowledge initiated in the 1980s. The term āReflective Practitionerā was coined by Donald Schƶn (1983), and following a close examination of āthe knowing-in-practiceā of competent practitioners, Schƶn observed (1983; viiiāix): ācompetent practioners often reveal a capacity for reflection on their intuitive knowing in the midst of action and sometimes use this capacity to cope with the unique, uncertain, and conflicted situations of practiceā.
Schƶnās observations have given rise to a continuous flow of literature on the reflective teacher (see, for example, Schƶn 1987; Richards 1990a; Wallace 1991; McCarthy 2008; Walsh 2013; Zwozdiak-Myers 2013; T. Farrell 2018). Since then, the idea of reflective practice has no doubt established itself in most teacher education programmes. In McCarthyās own words (2008: 564ā565): āthe teacher [is considered] not as consumer, but as researcher, as reflective practitioner, as someone more actively involved in their professional development and in what happens in their classrooms. That is the challengeā. This raises the question:
The basic concept of the teacher as researcher, acquiring professional knowledge through reflection on his/her language performance, lies at the heart of the present book. Furthermore, while the focus on the learner and learner-centred teaching ā with which I entirely agree ā dates back to the 1990s, this book bears witness to the more recent recognition of language teacher identity (Barkhuizen 2017). As individuals, and as much as their learners, teachers can greatly influence class...
