Classroom Observation: Teacher's Talk

Abstract

The existing study is a classroom-based research in English foreign language
classroom for students of a secondary stage. The study focuses on the teacher trying to
investigate her role as a facilitator of learning English as a foreign language. In particular, the
study focuses on the teacher’s talk (including how much the teacher talks and the kind of
questions she asks). The setting of the study is a secondary school for girls in a rural area in
Anbar province. The method used in collecting data is the class observation notes. The
researcher attended three different classes to observe the class and to collect the data for the
study. The main results of the study show that the kind and repetition of the questions asked by
the teacher play an important role in the process of teaching and learning. In this observation it
was concluded that the teacher's talk control the classroom with considerable participation from
students. The teacher was doing her best to get the students involved in the class discussions by
asking open-ended questions. Students were interactive with the teacher and they replied most of
the questions asked by her, they were actually learning and they showed good reading and
writing tasks and good interaction in the class.