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Abstract
The present study is based on the analysis of teacher discourse in two different CLIL
educational contexts: secondary and tertiary settings. Specifically, this research deals with the
subject of teacher repetitions since it is generally believed that repetition is a key feature of
CLIL classrooms, given the added complexity of learning concepts through another language.
Using a Conversation Analysis framework (Tannen, 1989) this paper draws on classroom
video-recordings and transcripts from four sessions, with different teacher profiles across the
content and language continuum. The preliminary results show that repetitions are indeed
present in both settings, especially with a pedagogic function. However, the study also reveals
that there are differences in the types of repetitions and in their functions depending on the
teacher profile and classroom methodology.
1. Introduction
1
There are also a significant number of CLIL programmes run by different regional governments.
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At the tertiary level, however, the situation is much more heterogeneous, given the autonomy
that Spanish universities enjoy in order to design their undergraduate and graduate degrees
and to offer courses or entire programmes in a foreign language (usually English). In brief,
high education centres are aware of the importance of attracting students, now seen as
potential “customers” (Wilkinson, 2004). Thus, to do so, teaching through English is viewed
by educational authorities as a differentiating force and an added value in any forward looking
university (Dafouz and Núñez, in press). Hence, over 30 institutions in Spain are currently
offering their “bilingual degrees” at the undergraduate level in fields ranging from Business
Administration to Tourism, International Law, Telecommunications or Engineering. By and
large, these bilingual degrees are taught by content specialists with a command of English;
however, unlike the official requirements in secondary education, university professors do not
need to certify their level of English nor do high education institutions need to follow a
common syllabus.
The structure and features of classroom discourse vary according to different parameters such
as the subject being taught, the age of the students, the language of instruction or the teacher
profile, to name a few. Some general features of classroom discourse are related to teacher
discourse/talk, since it is a well-known fact that teacher talk dominates approximately 2/3 of
classroom time (Chaudron, 1988; Mehan, 1985). In addition, research has also shown that the
most common exchange pattern in classrooms is IRF, (i.e. Initiate, Response, Feedback),
following Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and that questions are usually formulated by teachers
rather than students. Within the question taxonomy, Long and Sato (1983) refer to
knowledge-checking questions as display questions whereas those to which the teacher does
not have the answer are known as referential questions. According to Tsui (1995), display
questions generate interactions that are typical of pedagogic or didactic discourse, while
referential questions generate interactions typical of social communication (Creese, 2006).
Focusing specifically on CLIL contexts, some recent studies have analysed the role of IRF
exchanges. Dalton-Puffer, for example, refers to this pattern as activator of “the students’
existing reservoir of knowledge” (2007: 18) which leads to trigger learning through forging
connection between old and new knowledge. Nikula (2007) compares IRF exchange patterns
in CLIL and EFL classes concluding that in CLIL contexts this structure is less rigid and that
teachers and learners have the opportunity of engaging in a different type of dialogue, giving
learners more space for interaction.
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In the analysis of second/foreign language classroom discourse, the role of repetitions has also
been the focus of a good number of studies. As far as teacher repetitions are concerned, these
usually have the dual function of enhancing comprehension, while concurrently providing the
learners with more opportunities of becoming aware of L2 features (Pica, 1994; Richards and
Lockhart, 1994). In the acquisition of a second language, Tomlin (1994) argues that repetition
is a social act with cognitive consequences. With repetition, the teacher helps the pupil to
understand the sentence produced, and this, in turn, has the cognitive consequence of helping
the learner to transform “input” in the L2 into “intake”.
As far as bilingual contexts are concerned, Llinares’s (2003) study shows that self-repetition
is one of the three most common functions in the language of the teacher, especially in low-
immersion contexts, where instructors feel the need to reinforce the message to make sure that
the learners understand.
Some comparative studies in CLIL classroom discourse have focused on EFL/CLIL contexts
(Nikula, 2007) or native/non-native teachers (Llinares and Romero, in press). However, to our
knowledge, there is no research that contrasts CLIL teaching practices at secondary school
and university levels. In this particular paper, thus, we are interested in comparing the
functions of repetitions in two different educational contexts (secondary and tertiary
education) in order to identify differences or similarities in teaching practices, as well as the
conceptualisation of teacher and learner roles.
1. What is the role of repetition in the secondary and tertiary CLIL classrooms analysed?
2. What types of repetitions are used by the teachers in these contexts?
3. In what type of classroom register do these repetitions occur?
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The set of data that form this paper are a subset of a larger pool which has been collected
since 2006 under two research projects2.
Table 1 summarises the characteristics, participants and subject topics of each context.
The secondary school data consist of videotaped classroom sessions with second year students
of history with Spanish as their native language. The data presented here comes from two
groups in different schools working on an end-of-topic discussion of the same history topic
from the curriculum (“Feudal Europe”). Both teachers, native speakers of Spanish, are history
specialists but one of them is also an English specialist who has always worked as an EFL
teacher before becoming a CLIL history teacher (classroom A). The teacher in classroom B is
a content specialist with high competence in the target language. The subjects from the
university context were also videotaped and belong to two different settings: a) second year
English Philology students with Spanish as their native language, and b) second/third year
Aeronautical Engineering students with English as a Lingua Franca3. Both university teachers
are native speakers of Spanish, the main difference between them being that teacher in
classroom C is a content specialist with working experience as an EFL instructor, whereas
teacher in classroom D is a content specialist with no experience in teaching through a foreign
language.
2
Data from the secondary school context comes from a research project financed by the Comunidad Autónoma
de Madrid and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (09/SHD/017105; CCG06-UAM/HUM-0544; CCG07-
UAM/HUM-1790). Data from the university context belongs to a project funded by the Comunidad de Madrid
and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (CCG07-UCM/HUM.2602).
3
There were 13 different nationalities represented in the course (Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish,
German, etc). Thus, English is viewed as a lingua franca in this context rather than a foreign language.
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The instrument of analysis for this study draws on Tannen’s (1989) model of self- and allo-
repetition (including also repetitions with variation and paraphrases). In addition, we combine
this taxonomy with Llinares (2003) in her distinction between allo-repetitions that function as
pedagogic feedback and allo-repetitions that function as interactional feedback. While
pedagogic feedback refers to the use of positive or negative evaluation in teacher repetition,
interactional feedback is used to encourage learners’ participation and turn-keeping. Examples
of both types are included in section 4. Finally, we bring in Christie’s (2002) distinction of
two main registers in classroom discourse: regulative and instructional. This register
difference will enable us to identify whether repetition appears more in the organizational part
of the classroom, when the teacher is giving out instructions on how to proceed (i.e. regulative
register), or whether, by contrast, repetition occurs more frequently when the teacher wants to
focus on the content, establish a dialogue with students, and encourage their contributions (i.e.
instructional).
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4. Results
Classroom A-Example 1:
TCH: Who were around the roads? No? I’ll give you a clue: Robin Hood
STU1: The rebels
TCH: The rebels. Excellent!
Example 2:
TCH: Yes, but the question was they did not have the same good things in rural areas as they
had in cities. Can you explain that?
STU1: They have less salary in a… rural area than in the city.
TCH: They “had”, past. Right?
Another interesting difference between the two secondary school teachers is the use of
interactional feedback. Although the most frequent type of feedback used by both teachers is
pedagogic, the content/language expert shows fewer instances of interactional feedback.4 As
shown in example 3 below, the use of interactional feedback by the teacher in classroom B
seemed to encourage the students to adopt a more active role in the interaction, allowing for
student-initiated turns (see STU2 below) and thus facilitating the learners’ active participation
in the construction of knowledge through the foreign language:
Classroom B-Example 3:
STU1: Eh … also that … eh … Middle Ages … eh … there were a lot of invasions and now
no.
TCH: There were a lot of invasions… interesting…
STU1: We can stay in our homes without … without being afraid.
STU2: We can … we can … travel.
4
We have also collected data from two classes of history on the same topic with students working in the L1
(Spanish). It was interesting to see that the Spanish L1 history teachers used interactional feedback more
frequently than the CLIL teachers.
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Classroom C-Example 4:
TCH: So, let’s see. What do you think are the elements of fiction? You remembered when
we started the course and we started with the poetry we were discussing the most important
elements of poetry; so, what are the elements of fiction? For example, just tell me one.
Basic elements of fiction.
STU1: The characters.
TCH. The characters. The characters. Another element. Almudena, another element.
STU2: The narrator.
TCH: The narrator, good. The characters, the narrator, more.
STU: The prose?
TCH: The prose, the fiction itself. Eeh, what do you mean, the style?
STU3: XXX (inaudible)
TCH: Ok. All right, the style, like fiction by definition is written in prose, right. Helena?
STU: The th themees
TCH: The themes, all right.
Regarding feedback in allo-repetitions, the data shows that both pedagogic and interactional
feedback is used, with pedagogic feedback being more frequent than interactional. This
finding reveals that by repeating students’ contributions, the instructor aims to make the
subject content clear and accessible while at the same time confirms the validity of students’
input. This type of feedback is sometimes accompanied, although to a lesser extent, by
evaluative comments (e.g. good, all right).
By contrast, in Classroom D (content teacher), allo-repetitions are less frequent since the
teacher does not elaborate the session on students’ contributions but rather adopts a lecturing
style. Overall, teacher D uses self-repetitions to hold the floor while concurrently thinking
what to say next. As example 5 displays, the teacher-student exchange is triggered by the
student’s question of some part of the explanation. The teacher uses self-repetition in the first
instance (and your question was, what was your question) to encourage the student’s
participation. The examples of repetition that follow alternate allo-repetition (the velocity …
the velocity of…?) with self-repetition. While allo-repetition serves the teacher to clarify
problems of content comprehension, by echoing the student’s difficulty and providing an
answer, self-repetitions, which are very frequent in teacher D, seem to act as cohesive devices
that help the speaker to organise his speech and the hearer to follow better. In other words,
self-repetitions, as in case classroom C, enable the teacher to underline key ideas and ensure
that the students understand the main concepts.
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Classroom D-Example 5:
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Given the qualitative nature of this study and the limited sample, findings need to be
interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, this paper has yielded some interesting results
regarding teacher interactional practices in CLIL contexts, specifically in the use of teacher
repetitions. In secondary and tertiary CLIL classrooms, repetitions are used by teachers as a
strategy to reinforce the understanding of subject content (instructional register). In addition,
this qualitative analysis has served to identify a higher number of allo-repetitions over self-
repetitions in both educational levels, and the predominance of pedagogic feedback over
interactional feedback.
Interestingly, there are differences in the presence of interactional feedback, however, these
are more related to the teacher profile and experience than to the educational context. The use
of this type of feedback in the classrooms observed has shown a more active involvement of
the students’ role in interaction and seems to offer more opportunities for language learning
(Llinares, 2003). We believe this type of interactional practice might also have positive
effects in the CLIL students’ construction of content knowledge.
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