Keywords

Classroom Interactions in a Chinese Language Class: Focusing on Teacher Talk

In Japan, active learning is a keyword in the new curriculum guidelines of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). In the said guidelines, active learning is defined as an independent and collaborative learning process that largely depends on how well teachers build interactions with students in the classrooms by acting as a coach or a facilitator (Yanita et al., 2016). Under these circumstances, modern curricula in the university where the research subject works have been shifting from teacher-centered to learner-centered instruction. As part of this process, teacher talk time is reduced in favor of student talk time. However, there has been little research on what kind of interactions occur in the classroom, and how teachers' leadership identity influences their classroom teaching, particularly in the field of Chinese language teaching. The present chapter describes classroom interaction focusing on a teacher's leadership identity and the way it influenced their teacher talk in a Chinese language classroom at the university. Data were collected through video observation and a semi-structured interview. The discourse from the teacher talk was transcribed and analyzed objectively. The author identified problems in teaching and discussed how teacher talk can be utilized to establish a more learner-centered environment. Furthermore, possible constraints and recommendations for promoting active learning in a language classroom in Japan were also discussed.

Literature Review

Collaborative Leadership in the Classroom

In recent decades, the traditional view of the teacher leader as the primary actor responsible for improving student outcomes has been challenged through the application of collaborative leadership practices in the classroom (Egitim, 2021; Woods, 2021). Collaborative leadership is perceived as a collective and co-constructed act of leading where everyone involved has the freedom and safe space to lead in the classroom (Woods, 2021). Since it is an open and dynamic leadership approach, active learning forms its premise. Teachers practicing this type of leadership take a facilitative role and hold learners accountable for their leadership (Rubin, 2002).

In Asia, the traditional educational philosophy of Confucianism has emphasized for thousands of years that a teacher should be a person who can spread the doctrine, impart professional knowledge, and resolve doubts (Paramore, 2016). Meanwhile, Confucianism also emphasized the dignity of the teacher and the obedience of the student. Therefore, in countries influenced by Confucianism, the teacher is seen as the main source of knowledge and authority, while the students are passive recipients and should be obedient to the teacher (Egitim, 2021; Matsuyama et al., 2019). Undoubtedly, these traditional educational philosophies influenced the leadership identity of many CFL teachers and, consequently, their pedagogical and classroom management ideas. In Japan, as mentioned above, active learning has been advocated in various educational settings. Language teaching and learning should also be a collaborative process where students and teachers work together, share leadership roles, and make decisions together to accomplish the needs and aspirations of the classroom. However, there is little research on how teachers specifically behave in the classroom and what kind of interaction takes place between teachers and students, especially in the field of Chinese language education.

Teacher Talk in Language Classrooms

Teacher talk is considered an important aspect of foreign language classroom interactions as it assists teachers to build collaborative teaching–learning activities. According to Sinclair and Brazil (1982), teacher talk refers to the language produced by teachers addressed to the students in classroom interaction. It is applied by teachers to manage learning activities in the classroom including giving directions, defining activities, and checking students' comprehension. According to Moskowitz (1971), teacher talk has 12 categories, and this chapter is interested in discovering which teacher talk category is most often used in CFL teaching–learning activities, how teachers perceive their talk, and why they adopt such teaching strategies. We hope that this article can become a reference for research on teacher talk in the field of Chinese language education.

FLINT System

Analysis and observation of classroom interactions and teacher talk have been conducted since the 1970s, the Foreign Language Interaction (FLINT) system was developed as a coding category instrument by Moskowitz in 1971. It gives objective feedback about classroom interaction to foreign language teachers and helps set a learning climate for collaborative learning (Brown, 2001). The FLINT system has two categories of speech behavior: teacher talk and student talk. Due to limited space, the present chapter only focuses on the former.

Teacher Talk Categories

According to the FLINT system, teacher talk has 12 categories, they are divided into two types of speech: indirect influence teacher talk (IITT) and direct influence teacher talk (DITT). IITT leads learners to a warm classroom atmosphere and encourages students to participate and learn through classroom interaction (Brown, 2001). The IITT is described as follows:

  1. (1)

    Deals with feelings: in a non-threatening way, accepting, and agreeing with students’ feelings, understanding the past, present, or future of students’ feelings.

  2. (2)

    Praises and encouragement: praising and giving confidence to students. Encouraging students to continue and telling students what they have said or done is valued.

  3. (3)

    Jokes: providing jokes without anyone’s expense. Make intentional joking, kidding.

  4. (4)

    Uses students’ ideas: accept the students’ ideas, including clarifying, using, interpreting, and summarizing the ideas.

  5. (5)

    Repeats student responses verbatim: repeating the specific words from students after they participate.

  6. (6)

    Asks questions: asking questions to the students about the material being learned in which the answer is anticipated.

The DITT aims to involve students directly in the teaching and learning activity, it is a kind of teacher-led talk (Brown, 2001). The categories are described as follows:

  1. (1)

    Gives information: giving information, ideas, and facts about the material being learned.

  2. (2)

    Corrects without rejection: revising students’ mistakes or errors with positive responses.

  3. (3)

    Gives directions: giving directions, requests, or commands that students are expected to follow.

  4. (4)

    Direct pattern drills: giving statements in which students are expected to repeat precisely or to make substitutions (substitution drills). Giving statements in which students are expected to change from one form to another (transformation drills).

  5. (5)

    Criticizes student behavior: rejecting the behavior of students.

  6. (6)

    Criticizes student response: telling the student his or her response is not correct or acceptable.

The FLINT system considers that good teacher talk is characterized by the following specific points: less teacher-led DITT; IITT is often used to encourage students to participate in the teaching and learning process; the atmosphere in the classroom is warm and the teacher often smiles and jokes and finally that the teacher skillfully uses students' ideas and responses verbatim (Moskowitz & Hayman, 1976). This model helps not only set a learning climate for a student-centered approach, but also helps develop interactive language teaching since it gives researchers and teachers a framework for observing classes, evaluating, and improving the teaching (Brown, 2001; Putri, 2015).

Empirical Findings of Previous Studies

In the field of language education, to evaluate whether teaching is successful or not, it is becoming increasingly important not only to evaluate teaching effectiveness but also to conduct research that empirically observes and analyses actual teacher and student interactions to find out what is happening in the classroom (Howe et al., 2019; Koike, 1994). Among the interactions, teacher talk is particularly important for organizing and managing the classroom. Through teacher talk, teachers may either succeed or fail in implementing their teaching plans. Therefore, teacher talk is even regarded as a decisive factor in success or failure in classroom teaching (Xing & Yun, 2002).

The studies on teacher talk started in the 1970s. Concerning the amount of teacher talk, research has established that teachers tend to do most of the classroom talk. According to research results in some classrooms, teacher talk makes up over 70% of the total talk (Chaudron, 1988; Cook, 2000; Kostadinovska et al., 2019; Nasir et al., 2019; Xiaohong, 1998). However, it is evident that if teachers devote large amounts of time to explanations or management instructions, student talk will be restricted, and they will have little opportunity to develop their language proficiency. The amount of teacher talk varies according to the content of the class and the students’ language proficiency. No standard defines the acceptable amount of talk time for a particular type of class. Therefore, it is not only the amount of teacher talk but also important to investigate what kind of teacher talk was given in the classroom.

Regarding the type of teacher talk in the classroom, pioneered by Flanders (1970) and Moskowitz (1971), many scholars across the world have conducted research on types of teacher talk. Their studies discussed the interaction pattern in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms and investigated teacher talk from a broader perspective (Mitani, 2002; Nisa, 2014; Sundari et al., 2017; Walsh, 2011; Yanfen & Yuqin, 2010). In the above-mentioned previous studies, Nisa (2014) investigated the interaction type in EFL-speaking classrooms at the university level. The results showed that the reason for a large amount of teacher talk is because of the mass use of given information in the classroom. It indicates that the teacher spent most of the time lecturing. Sundari et al. (2017) also analyzed interaction patterns in an EFL classroom, and the results showed that the categories of asking questions and giving directions were frequently used by the teacher. Mitani (2002) analyzed her classes using the FLINT system, and the results showed that the amount of teacher talk was observed to be higher than the amount of student talk. Interactions were dominated by the teacher who delivered information through question-and-answer activities. She stated that to increase student talk time, it is necessary to incorporate student interaction and shorten the explanations of sentence structure items.

As previous studies have shown, teacher talk plays a major role in making classes teacher-centered and lecture-based. This raises the questions of why teachers use such teaching strategies and what role teachers’ leadership identities play, and how they perceive their own talk time in relation to their position in the classroom (Egitim, 2022). Egitim (2021) showed that the formation of teachers’ collaborative leadership is not easy, requiring teachers to recognize their own mistakes and self-reflection, but this self-reflection is what will help them grow. By investigating why teachers tend to lecture and how teacher talk influences their classroom practices and student performances, we hope to encourage teachers to understand themselves and reflect on their own leadership identity, which will ultimately lead to improved teaching and learning outcomes. Heretofore, regarding teacher talk and teacher identities, there is no related published research that has taken place in the field of CFL teaching. There may be external factors that influence teacher talk in a different context, therefore, studying further the use of teacher talk by Chinese teachers in a CFL classroom interaction can be considered beneficial research setting.

Research Questions

There are two research questions to be addressed in this research:

  1. 1.

    What are the characteristics (time length and types of talk) of teacher talk in a CFL class?

  2. 2.

    What is the teacher’s perception of her talk?

Method

Participants and Class Overview

The research was undertaken at a Japanese university. Based on the internal regulations of the university, the educational goal of the university's foreign language program is to develop students’ global and intercultural competence through foreign language education with an emphasis on fostering students’ independent and autonomous learning skills. To fulfill the said objectives, the university promotes active learning, through various educational initiatives such as student-centered instruction. Hence, language teachers are required to state explicitly what active learning methods are used in the syllabuses of the subjects they are responsible for.

The subject of this analysis, Chinese as a second foreign language class, was an elective compulsory class. In this university, the second foreign language class is compulsory, however, students can choose either Chinese or German. Every year, approximately 350 students take these classes. These students are divided into seven classes, with each class having approximately 50 students. These Chinese classes are for beginners to learn Chinese from zero, therefore, the teaching language used by the teacher is almost exclusively Japanese. The course is offered in both spring and autumn terms and lasts 15 weeks each. The lesson recorded in this study was the sixth-week lesson of the beginner class, and the teaching content was a review of the Chinese Romanization system (Pinyin) and the study of indicative pronouns. The observed class consisted of 49 students who studied CFL as their second foreign language. The observed teacher was a female, native Chinese teacher who taught Chinese in Japanese universities for more than 20 years. Despite the teacher’s attempts to promote active learning practices through a student-centered approach based on the university's educational objectives, the process has proven to be difficult.

This study was conducted as part of the university's efforts to develop and improve teaching practices in the classroom. Before the class was video recorded, the purpose of the study was explained to the teacher. Following this process, informed consent forms were signed by the teacher. The participants were also given the freedom to withdraw from the study at any given time. Upon analyzing the data, the video recordings were destroyed as part of the Human Subjects Protections Act based on the university's ethics code.

Data Analysis

The present study was designed qualitatively in the form of a case study by Yin (2018). A 90-min Chinese language class was video-recorded and then transcribed. The analysis was carried out according to Knoblauch et al. (2013), as follows. Specifically, the videotape was played back, and phenomena were categorized every three seconds in turn. The transcripts were coded by the author using the 12 categories of teacher talk based on the FLINT system. The frequency and time length of each category of teacher talk was calculated. Although the class lasted 90 min, there were approximately 19 min of time when neither the teacher nor the students spoke (e.g., the time dedicated to their writing practice), hence, the data analysis for that period was omitted. In addition, there were also teacher utterances outside the teacher talk categories of the FLINT system during the actual interaction in the class. For example, the teacher talked a little about herself saying, “My eyesight has been getting worse lately”, which was not related to the content of the class, and thus, the analysis of that part of speech was also omitted.

To strengthen the data from the video observation, the researcher also conducted an unstructured interview with the Chinese teacher, and the narrative analysis method was used to analyze this interview. Questions were given to the teacher related to the teacher talk categories which were most frequently and most rarely applied during the teaching and learning process. The interview section lasted approximately 30 min. The interview was conducted in Chinese and then transcribed into English by the author.

Results

Classroom Observations

The total frequency and time length of teacher and student talk were 650 times and 4,269 s (around 71 min) respectively. The teacher spoke 34 more utterances than the students and the time length of teacher talk was 1,693 s (around 28 min) more than the students’ talk as a whole in terms of time. It was clear that the class was a teacher-led class.

Frequency and time length of the teacher talk are presented below in Table 8.1.

Table 8.1 Frequency and Time Length of the Teacher talk
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Direct Influence Teacher Talk and Indirect Influence Teacher Talk

To find out whether the teacher talk was more DITT or IITT, the classifying results were specified in Table 8.2 according to the categories of the FLINT system.

Table 8.2 DITT and IITT
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The results showed the frequency of DITT was 32 utterances more than IITT. The time length of DITT was about 989 s (around 16 min) longer than IITT. It was found that the teacher used more DITT in the classroom.

Categories of Direct Influence Teacher Talk and Indirect Influence Teacher Talk

Following the FLINT system, the teacher's direct and indirect speech behaviors were further broken down, the details of which are shown in Tables 8.3 and 8.4.

Table 8.3 Categories of Teacher’s DITT
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Table 8.4 Categories of IITT
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According to the DITT categories from Table 8.3, the most time-consuming category was providing information, and corrections. This was followed by giving directions and directing pattern practice. Giving direction was the most frequent category in terms of frequency. The teacher did not use criticizing student behavior or criticizing student response.

In terms of frequency, the teacher used praising or encouragement most frequently and this was followed by asking questions, repeating students verbatim, dealing with feelings, and using ideas of students. In terms of time length, the teacher used dealing with feelings and using ideas of students least frequently. The teacher did not tell jokes.

The Interview with the Teacher

The analysis of the teacher talk revealed that the time length and frequency of teacher talk were considerably more than the student talk with more DITT than IITT. That means the teacher dominated the classroom and involved students directly in the teaching and learning. In response to this point, the teacher said, “I know, I should talk less, and allow the students chances to talk more. The teaching and learning process should be student-centered, I know it. These ideas are always in my mind. I didn’t realize I talked so much more than the students.”

The most frequently used category of DITT was giving information and making corrections. These steps were followed by giving directions. The teacher explained the reasons as follows, “I feel a sense of responsibility as a teacher in this regard. I want to explain things clearly, and I think that if I present students the information directly, they will be able to learn and master knowledge without taking détours. I want them to absorb what I say by correcting them, so they can master the knowledge faster.” In addition, she added:

This may be a special story of Chinese language class, Chinese is particularly difficult to pronounce, because it is a tonal language, there are four tones, and there are also the so-called warped tongue sounds, which are pronounced by curling the tongue tip. As these sounds are not found in the Japanese phonetics system, they are difficult for Japanese students and take time to learn. You have to correct their tonal pronunciation over and over again to help them learn these sounds. We have a large classroom with around 50 students, so correcting their pronunciation individually took a lot of time.

When the teacher was asked why she didn’t do more group work and let the students do their own problem-solving, she answered:

Yes, I have tried to do group work to shorten the time I used to correct them one by one, however, for pronunciation practice, sometimes, group work cannot solve the problem, because nobody knows how to pronounce the correct sound. In such a case, even if I asked students to do group work, sometimes they wouldn’t know how to act in a group, because nobody knows how to pronounce the sound, and remained silent all the time. And to be honest, at the stage of learning Chinese pronunciation, some problems can be solved in group activities (only students) and there are also a lot of problems that cannot be solved in group activities. But again, the more group activities you do, the more student-centered the learning becomes. I understand it.

Regarding the IITT, the results revealed that the teacher used a lot of praise and encouragement to motivate the students. The least used categories were telling jokes, using the students’ ideas, and dealing with feelings. For this point, the teacher said, “The same with the group work, I always tell myself to praise students and give them positive feedback, yes, this is always in my mind. On the other hand, I am certainly not a fun person, I have no sense of humor.” As a teacher, she always compliments her students and always seems to make an effort to respond positively. However, she did not tell jokes and rarely dealt with feelings. The reason for this is her personal character, but also the objective conditions of a large classroom with a lot of students do not seem to allow it. Therefore, she added:

I also want to understand the past, present, or future of the students’ feelings, and positively communicate with them but I found that 90 minutes is too short to deal with 50 students, and I even cannot remember all these students’ names, so to deal with individual feelings is not an option.

Discussion

The teacher talk analysis revealed that this class was more teacher-centered than learner-centered one. The teacher was the center of the teaching and learning process, and the students’ participation was minimal. Within the teacher talk, the time length and frequency of the DITT were both greater than those of the IITT. This result revealed that the teacher used teacher-led interaction, through teaching and correcting students thus having a direct influence, rather than talking indirectly, and encouraging students to participate in the learning process. She was mainly giving information, explaining, and giving corrections. She was more of a knowledge provider than a facilitator. The teacher made no jokes and used few of the ideas brought in by the students.

As discussed in the FLINT system section, according to Moskowitz and Hayman (1976), the FLINT system considers that good teacher talk is characterized by the following specific points: less DITT and IITT are often used to encourage students to participate in learning. The atmosphere in the classroom should be warm and the teacher is encouraged to smile and tell jokes. These smiles and jokes can function as an icebreaker and help the teacher skillfully use student talk (Moskowitz et al., 1976). According to the FLINT system model, the teacher talk in this study has room for improvement.

As the teacher mentioned in the interview, she also wants to create a student-centered environment by engaging students in group work. However, she felt a sense of responsibility as a teacher and her urge made her believe that spoon-feeding information to students can let the students take fewer detours. This revealed that the teacher was aware of the objectives of the student-centered approach, however, she viewed herself as the main knowledge source, and thus failed to recognize the value of sharing her power and authority with the students.

The result of the interview suggested that the teacher knew the principles, yet, when it comes to practice, it was difficult to follow the action. Teacher-centered instruction is a longstanding habit and belief. Egitim (2021) explained that for teachers to overcome the feeling of being stripped of power and authority, they need to change themselves through an introspective process that involves constant critical self-examination and critical self-reflection by revisiting their underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions about language education.

Changing teachers’ beliefs seems unlikely to happen in a short period of time. Constant critical self-examination and critical self-reflection are necessary to recognize the limitations, possible biases, and the privileged position they have in the classroom (Egitim, 2022). In a truly student-centered classroom, it is imperative that the power is handed over from the teacher to the students. In line with the recommendations of Egitim (2021) and Anastasiia et al. (2022), the more students are empowered to make decisions about their learning, the more they will be encouraged to be active learners. Lifelong learning and the ability to think independently cannot be developed in a passive educational environment. Instead of a one-way flow of information transmitted by teachers, there is a need to move towards active learning, where learners can engage and learn proactively. Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to transfer power to the students through learning activities such as discovery learning, problem-solving learning, experiential learning, investigative learning, and group work. However, because teachers are accustomed to the way they teach and the classroom activities they use, it is difficult to recognize the need for reform of their own teaching without conducting their own reflections.

For beginner students, as the teacher said in the interview, handing students the power to make learning decisions may not work at first. Especially in the case of Chinese learning, for Japanese university students, it is a language that is learned from scratch. Students may be surprised (they do not know what to do and how to do it) if they are suddenly given the power to decide everything, as the pronunciation phase of learning that the teacher mentioned in her interview. In such cases, it would be necessary to provide some scaffolding and structure until the students feel psychologically safe, then gradually withdraw from the process, and give them leadership responsibilities. Therefore, for this teacher, the first step would be to gradually eliminate the power distance with the students, it can be done in stages, step by step.

With regard to telling jokes, the teacher mentioned that she was not a fun person. They may be influenced by traditional notions of the teacher’s position in the classroom. For teachers in such a social context, keeping order is more important than being humorous in the classroom. According to Kawamura and Musashi (2008), enjoyment and quoting students' statements are considered to be related to the retention rate of learning. In classes where strong bonds and trust between teachers and students are established, students tend to enjoy their learning experience, and thus, their motivation and knowledge retention increase (Kawamura & Musashi, 2008). Furthermore, research shows that student satisfaction increases when teachers use or reinforce students’ words to arouse students’ interest in lessons (Kawamura et al., 2015). Whether you have a sense of humor or not, being a teacher requires you to make an effort to understand your students, sometimes quote what they say, use their ideas, make pleasant comments, and intentionally create a relaxed classroom environment. A relaxed environment will stimulate students’ willingness to talk, participate, and motivate them to learn.

Administrative Issues

As discussed in the previous section, constant critical self-examination and critical self-reflection are necessary to improve teaching, however, it is not sufficient. Large class size and workload are also challenges to teachers’ use of effective instructional strategies. The teacher said that she wanted to listen to and correct the pronunciation of 50 students one by one, but as she dealt with each student individually, the 90-min class quickly came to an end and the lesson content became very monotonous. To implement successful collaborative learning, pedagogy change must take place at various levels, a 50-student class is not appropriate in the pronunciation stage for Chinese language learning. Changing this situation in the short term is not easy. If this situation cannot be changed, it will be necessary to rethink instruction strategies and class activities. For example, there is a need to design more interactions between the students and the learning materials, such as video recordings, learning websites and so on. The use of online materials for pronunciation learning will be essential. In this modern age, it is becoming more and more important to use Information and Communication Technology to engage students in learning outside the classroom. However, managing technological tools outside the classroom is not an easy endeavor. Therefore, necessary instructions should be provided in teacher training manuals to show how these tools can be effectively used outside the classroom.

As the teacher said she tried to do a lot of group work in her class, but her attempts would fail due to logistical reasons. For group work, the first important step is to develop tasks that match the students’ language proficiency. If a task is beyond students’ ability, it will naturally result in the group being unable to solve the problem. As mentioned in the previous section, teachers were asked include active learning elements when they write their syllabuses. Most teachers rushed to incorporate group and pair work activities into their classes without actually knowing what active learning actually means. Active learning does not automatically start once groups or pairs are formed. It requires teachers to create a psychologically safe learning environment by providing structure and scaffolding. As a result, students would gradually feel comfortable participating in activities.

The major of this Chinese teacher is literature; for the teachers who do not major in pedagogy, they may not be equipped with the knowledge of educational theory and pedagogy. For those teachers, whether it is task-making, or the development of online learning materials discussed in the previous section, it is sometimes difficult for a single teacher to do so. Educational training and teacher training within universities are necessary.

Conclusion

The study examined both teacher talk and teacher leadership identity in a CFL classroom in Japan. The problems in this class are by no means an individual phenomenon, but rather a phenomenon that is probably common in many CFL classrooms. To improve the teaching in these classrooms, teachers’ constant critical self-examination and critical self-reflection, and ongoing action-based research that allows for an objective view of teaching are necessary. Focusing on continuous feedback that targets problems can be a tool for curriculum development. At the same time, conducting this kind of action research can provide a deep understanding of teachers’ teaching styles and an awareness of how they will grow toward greater effectiveness as teachers. Moreover, systematic faculty development within universities would also be necessary to address the problems perceived by teachers. Not only is there a perception that the teacher is the authority in the classroom, but the students are also used to teacher-centered teaching, therefore, it will take time and effort to change this situation. The findings of the research are expected to be beneficial and contribute to the improvement and effectiveness of the CFL teaching and learning process. The author recognizes that this study only investigated the talk of one native CFL teacher in one class meeting. Accordingly, future researchers should include more participants such as those with different gender, teaching experiences, cultures, and educational levels to attain richer data.