SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
TEACHER TALK PAPER
By
Name : Dion Wildan Praditya
SRN : 0713042024
Subject : Second Language Acquisition
ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM
ARTS AND LANGUAGE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY
THE UNIVERSITY OF LAMPUNG
2010
CHAPTER I
Introduction
1.1 Definition of Teacher Talk
What is teacher talk? The definition is very simple and self-evident. Teacher talk means that teachers address classroom language learners differently from the way that they address other kinds of classroom learners according to Ellis (1994). They make adjustments to both language form and language function in order to facilitate communication. These adjustments are referred to as “teacher talk”. Teacher talk is very important for both classroom teaching organization and students’ language learning in the process of foreign language learning and second language acquisition, because teacher talk is an instrument of implementing teaching plan.
For foreign language learners classroom is the main place where they are frequently exposed to the target language. The kind of language used by the teacher for instruction in the classroom is known as teacher talk (TT). For this term, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics defines it as “that variety of language sometimes used by teachers when they are in the process of teaching. In trying to communicate with learners, teachers often simplify their speech, giving it many of the characteristics of foreigner talk and other simplified styles of speech addressed to language learners” (Richards, 1992: 471).
Having studied the SLA for many years, Rod Ellis (1985) has formulated his own view about teacher talk: “Teacher talk is the special language that teachers use when addressing L2 learners in the classroom. There is systematic simplification of the formal properties of the teacher’s language… studies of teacher talk can be divided into those that investigate the type of language that teachers use in language classrooms and those that investigate in the type of language they use in subject lessons.” He also commented “the language that teachers address to L2 learner is treated as a register, with its own specific formal and linguistics properties” (Ellis, 1985: 145).
In this paper, it is the oral form of teacher talk instead of written form that is under this investigation. It refers to the language that teachers use in language classrooms rather than in other settings. From the definitions, firstly we can see that teacher talk in English classrooms is regarded as one special variety of the English language, so it has its own specific features which other varieties do not share. Because of the restriction of the physical setting, special participants as well as the goal of teaching, teacher talk has its own special style.
Secondly, we can see that teacher talk is a special communicative activity. Its goal is to communicate with students and develops students’ foreign language proficiency.
Teacher talk is used in class when teachers are conducting instructions, cultivating their intellectual ability and managing classroom activities (Feng Qican, 1999: 23). Teachers adopt the target language to promote their communication with learners. In this way, learners practice the language by responding to what their teacher says. Besides, teachers use the language to encourage the communication between learners and themselves. Therefore we can say teacher talk is a kind of communication-based or interaction-based talk.
The next chapter will provide the example of teacher talk recorded by the writer.
CHAPTER II
Content
This chapter provides the examples of teacher talk that the writer managed to record. The participants in these videos are the teacher and the student.
There are two videos with duration approximately four minutes each. Some actions from the videos are not transcripted for being has nothing to do with respond from the student. A space between conversations refers to this situation.
Video 1
Teacher : Assalamualaikum Wr. Wb. Selamat pagi anak-anak…
All students : Walaikumussalam Wr. Wb. Selamat pagi bu guru…
Teacher : Hari ini kita akan belajar membaca dan menulis huruf hijaiyah, siapa yang udah bisa baca huruf hijaiyah?
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Huruf hijaiyah itu huruf yang kita baca waktu tadarus Iqra’
Some students : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja…
Teacher : Iya, bener sekali. Sekarang bu guru tulis dulu huruf-huruf hijaiyahnya di papan tulis, terus kita baca bareng-bareng ya...
All students : Iya bu guru...
Teacher : kita baca bareng-bareng ya. A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha...
All students : (.....)
Teacher : kita baca bareng-bareng ya. A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha...
All students : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Teacher : Iya bagus, kita ulangi lagi. A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha...
All students : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Teacher : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha…
All students : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Teacher : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha…
All students : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Teacher : Sekarang bu guru ajak satu-satu ya…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Coba Windu ikutin abis bu guru. A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha …
Windu : (…..)
Teacher : Coba Windu ikutin abis bu guru ya… A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Windu : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha …
Teacher : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Windu : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha …
Teacher : Bagus… Sekarang Dwi ya… Yang lain coba tenang dulu…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Dwi... Sekarang ikutin bu guru ya... A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Dwi : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Teacher : Sekali lagi... A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha
Dwi : A, Ba, Ta, Tsa, Ja, Ha, Kho, Dha …
Video 2
Teacher : Nah, sekarang kita belajar nulis huruf hijaiyahnya ya...
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya tiang ini dibaca A...
All students : A…
Teacher : Coba dibuat ya…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya perahu terus ada satu titik dibawahnya dibaca Ba…
All students : Ba…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya perahu, sama kaya Ba tadi tapi punya dua titik dibawahnya dibaca Ta…
All students : Ta…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya angka lima kebalik terus ada satu titik dibawahnya dibaca Ja…
All students : Ja…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya angka lima kebalik tapi gak ada titiknya dibaca Ha…
All students : Ha…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya angka lima kebalik terus ada satu titik diatasnya dibaca Kho…
All students : Kho…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Yang bentuknya kaya huruf c kebalik terus dibaca Dha…
All students : Dha…
Teacher : Coba dibuat…
All students : (…..)
Teacher : Wah, murid bu guru pinter-pinter ya…
CHAPTER III
Discussion
This chapter will discuss about the videos that has been transcripted, which was recorded by writer. From what we can see on the videos, it is true that when a person talks to a toddler, they automatically use different kind of language variation, which is called by teacher talk. It is universal. Meaning, every adult in the world will do the same to their own toddler. But, the participants in these videos do not include the baby’s mother. Do they actually have different kind of teacher talk?
In the videos, we can see that the teacher modify their way of speaking when they are talking to the toddler. All of the participants do. Compared to the way they speak to other adults, the way of their speaking towards the toddler has some criteria:
1. It has shorter, more complete sentences.
2. Some words are pronounced in higher pitch, in order to make the toddler able to repeat the same exact words.
3. The speaking rate is slower.
4. The articulation is precise.
5. Phonological features were simplified.
6. The use of self reference by the teacher participants.
As noted above, teacher talk often involves shortening and simplifying words, with the possible addition of slurred words and nonverbal utterances, and can invoke a vocabulary of its own. Some utterances are invented by parents within a particular family unit, or passed down from parent to parent over generations, while others are quite widely known.
Input plays a critical role in language learning. There is no learning without input.
The language used by the teacher affects the language produced by the learners, the interaction generated, and hence the kind of learning that takes place. The problem is what type and how much of input is appropriate and useful for language learners in classrooms.
In Krashen’s view, learning only takes place by means of a learner’s access to comprehensible input. “Humans acquire language in only one way by understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input. Learning will occur when unknown items are only just beyond the learner’s level. It is explained in detail “i+1”structure. “i” stands for the learners’ current linguistic competence, and “1” stands for the items the learners intend to learn.
The Input Theory also has two corollaries (Krashen, 1985: 2):
Corollary 1: Speaking is a result of acquisition, not its cause; it emerges as result of building competence via comprehensible input.
Corollary 2: If input is understood and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is automatically provided.
The language teacher need not attempt deliberately to teach the next structure along the natural order it will be provided in just the right quantities and automatically reviews if the student receives a sufficient amount of comprehensible input.
By examining the idea of comprehensible input and the two corollaries, one can find that comprehensive and right quantity input is the central concern with which learners are able to learn language. It is the foundation or premise of the occurrence of learning. This provides implications for language teaching: teacher talk should be comprehensible in different forms and in right quantities. But how could teachers know whether their input is enough or not?
How could they make their input comprehensible? Krashen describes two ways: the linguistic resources are insufficient for immediate decoding. Simplified input can be made available to the learner through one-way or two way interaction, with the former including listening to a lecture, watching television and reading, and the latter occurring in conversations. Krashen stresses that two-way interaction is a particularly good way of providing comprehensible input because it enables the learner to obtain additional contextual information and optimally adjusted input when meaning has to be negotiated because of communication problems.
In Krashen’s view, acquisition takes place by means of a learner’s access to comprehensible input. He comments that the input, which is totally incomprehensible to learners, is not likely to cause learning to tack place. Teacher talk, actually serves as main sources of input of language exposure in classroom learning, is more important for foreign language learning, so teachers should make their input comprehensible and in right quantities.
Krashen’s Input Theory and its key notion of ‘comprehensible input’ have been criticized. One major objection relates to the fact that, though comprehensible input may play an important role, it is not in itself enough: understanding is not quite the same as acquiring. One argument along these lines is put forward by Swain (1985).
Her Output hypothesis emphasizes the role of outcome in SLA. She argued that comprehensible input is not a sufficient condition for SLA, it is only when input becomes intake that SLA takes place. Learners can improve their language level through pushing them to produce output actually to say and write things, or through using the language exposed to them in meaningful ways. Swain concludes the role of output in three points.
The need to produce output in the process of negotiating meaning that is precise, coherent and appropriate encourages the learner to develop the necessary grammatical resources, which are referred to as “pushed language use”.
Output provides the learner with the opportunity to try out hypothesis to see if they work.
Production, as opposed to comprehension, may help to force the learner to move from semantic to syntactic processing. It is possible to comprehend a message without any syntactic analysis of the input it contains. Production is the trigger that forces learners to pay attention to the means of expression.
Swain (1985) particularly emphasizes that it is only when learners are pushed to use the target language, in other words, it is only when learners think it necessary to improve and develop the target language level, language output can contribute to language acquisition.
Besides “pushed” language use, Swain (1985) reports two other additional functions of output in L2 acquisition. The first one is supposed to provide learners the opportunity to test their hypothesis about the language, or “to try out means of expression and see if they work”. The second function is that actually using the language “may force the learner to move from semantic processing to syntactic processing” (Swain, 1985:249). In short, the argument put forward by Swain is that immersion students do not achieve nativelike productive competence “not because their comprehensible input is limited but because their comprehensible output is limited”.
On the one hand, students are simply not provided with adequate opportunities to use the target language in the classroom. On the other hand, “they are not being ‘pushed’ in their output” (Swain, 1985: 249).
Other studies conducted by researchers such as Naiman (1978), Strong (1983) and
Peck (1985) provide evidences that more production and more correct production go hand in hand with target language proficiency, which gives support to Swain’s (1985) comprehensible Output Hypothesis. Swain’s Output Hypothesis also emphasizes the importance of feedback. She believes that learners can improve the accuracy of output if they receive feedback from their teachers.
So language teachers, playing very important role during the process of language learning, should manage to push the students to produce the target language, give more opportunities and much more time to the students to practice besides they offer adequate input.
CHAPTER IV
Conclusion
.
In short, questioning and error correction are important aspects of teacher talk and here we need to monitor, not only what sort of questions should be asked, but also how to make effective error correction. Most students learn from their teachers in classrooms. So classroom study is essentially important in teaching and learning process. On the one hand, everything that happens in the classroom happens through a process of live person-to-person interaction. On the other hand, classroom is a place where interactions of various kinds take place, and it affords students opportunities to learn. In most classrooms, the interaction comes between teachers’ asking questions and students’ answering them, which is, therefore, a significant area for us to study.
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