Introduction

The term classroom interaction refers to the interaction between the teacher and learners, and amongst the learners, in the classroom. Earlier studies of second language (L2) classroom interaction focused on the language used by the teacher and learners, the interaction generated, and their effect on L2 learning. More recent studies have begun to investigate the underlying factors which shape interaction in the classroom – e.g. teacher and learner beliefs, social and cultural background of the teacher and learners, and the psychological aspects of second and foreign language learning – providing further insights into the complexities of classroom interaction.

Background

L2 classroom interaction research began in the 1960s with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of different methods in foreign language teaching in the hope that the findings would show the ‘best’ method and its characteristics. The methodology adopted was strongly influenced by first language (L1) classroom teaching research which was motivated by the need to assess objectively the teaching performance of student-teachers during practical teaching. Various classroom observation instruments have been proposed to capture the language used by the teacher and the interaction generated (see Chapter 16). These interaction analysis studies revealed that classroom processes are extremely complex and that a prescriptive approach to ascertain the ‘best’ method would be fundamentally flawed if the descriptive techniques are inadequate. Research efforts therefore turned to coping with problems of description (Allwright 1988), and the focus of classroom interaction studies shifted from prescriptive to descriptive and from evaluative to awareness-raising.