Facultad de Educación – DUAD

Discourse Analysis – Module 2

Professor Arnold Sierra Morales.

Study Guide 2
How do I design classroom conversation that helps students think deeply about the
readings and the subject I teach?
Every day, we interact with our students in teaching/learning scenarios. We use
our discourse to make learning occur, therefore it’s very important to understand its
importance and analyze it.

Our goal for Module 3 is to understand the importance of classroom interaction and
how to foster meaningful interactions.

How often do teachers analyze patterns of communication in their everyday

practices? This analysis may lead to a better understanding and improve
professional practices. Thus, our objective is to transcribe and analyze an actual
classroom interaction.

1. Make a transcription of an actual classroom interaction.

There are two possibilities to make the transcription:

- If you’re teaching, make a video or audio recording of part of a lesson that involves conversation,
and then transcribe it (it shouldn’t be more than 2-3 minutes).
- If you are not teaching, you can go on YouTube and transcribe a portion of a class that involves
conversation (it shouldn’t be more than 2-3 minutes).

2. Once you have a transcript, identify the interaction patterns.

First, identify each exchange as an IRE or IC communication pattern.
Describe:
- What types of Communicative Actions (explaining, directing, initiating,
etc.) occur?
- Does the interaction correspond to IRE or IC? Justify.

3. Analyze the interactions.

Answer the following questions based on your transcript.
- How can these questions be rephrased to elicit more extended responses?
- Did the conversation reach its full potential? If not, how might you change the activity
or facilitate the discussion to expand the students' conversation?

4. Once you have analyzed the transcript in terms of IRE and IC

exchanges, reflect upon the following:
If you are a teacher: What kinds of classroom conversations do you have
with your students? What is your role in each kind of conversation? What is
the students’ role?
If you are a student: What kinds of classroom conversations do you have
with your teachers? What is your role in each kind of conversation? What is
the teacher’s role?