say it with more interest everyone, "Can a fish swim?"

thanks to mighty-min for this pic (courtesy of flickr)
Please do not take this pic for granted. It marks my first venture into uploading images to my blog. The image of the fish doesn't appear as I imagined it would, but I am pleased to get a picture up on my first try using "hello".

In this post I want to say something else about the transcript that has been the focus for analysis in my tute groups this week. My comments have been informed by students' questions about what should be of interest in a transcript analysis of classroom talk, or talk at home.

For me, the transcript was interesting because it captured just the ordinary activity of one teacher in a classroom literacy lesson. It was only a snippet of the lesson and wasn't chosen by me because there was something extraordinary about it. Rather, I think that what makes the transcript interesting is it "ordinariness". Unpacking the interaction that constituted that tiny bit of the lesson gives us an insight into how students and teachers go about their lessons on a daily basis. That makes it interesting.

At the same time, what is revealed when we focus more closely on this ordinary and day-to-day activity is a marvellous and complex social world. For example, many of you noted the apparently seamless way in which the teacher moved from talking to one student (Bob), to engaging in talk with everybody (certainly the transcript suggested that all students spoke after the next utterance by the teacher). How did students know that they could all speak at once? And, how did we, as analysts of their talk, know that it was what the teacher wanted (since teachers often don't want everybody to speak at once)? Evidence is provided by looking closely at the transcript. Over the course of talk that followed the teacher's interactions with Bob the teacher did not ask for the class to be silent or for one student to speak. Thus we must take it that the chorus response from the class was what was wanted. Otherwise the teacher would have stopped it.

As regards the complex social world that I alluded to earlier ... students appear to know, without the teacher directly stating it, when they can and cannot speak out. The teacher, at the same time, appears to use students' responses to shape the course of the lesson. Since lessons involving many people come about, as this one has, the work of an analyst of interaction is to show how.

My suggestion for the final assignment is that you just take some everyday classroom talk and examine it very closely. Your analysis may reveal what makes it appear so seamless and ordinary.