Foreign Language Classroom Interaction: Does it Promote Communicative Skills?
Classroom interaction is an essential element in developing communicative skills. In a foreign language context like Burkina Faso, the classroom appea.
- Pub. date: August 15, 2020
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Classroom interaction is an essential element in developing communicative skills. In a foreign language context like Burkina Faso, the classroom appears as the only setting that provides an opportunity for English language learners to practice their communicative skills. In the classroom, teachers create opportunities for interaction between students and their peers, between students and teachers, and between students and teaching materials. Although those interactions are expected to promote English language acquisition, they sometimes seem insufficient. In this paper, the author examines the interactions between teachers and their students. The author seeks to understand the extent to which they can be conducive to communicative skills. The methodology used to collect this data is qualitative, mostly based on classroom observation and interviews. The participants are high school classroom teachers and their students. The results unveiled that the nature of the interaction was determined by the control and elicitation techniques used by teachers which often limited the opportunities to communicate.
Keywords: Classroom interaction, language acquisition, communicative skills, English as foreign language
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