Initiation, Response, Feedback? How Does Talk Happen in Classrooms?

The seminal work on discourse analysis was carried out in classrooms, and it is from this that an understanding of structure of the exchanges that make up spoken discourse is drawn. Sinclair and Couithaerd (1975) identified three levels of discourse: the exchange, a turn-taking interactional sequence; the move, or contribution of a participant to the exchange in a turn; and the act, identifiable within the move and playing a specific linguistic function such as questioning or instructing. …