Abstract

HITOTUZI, Nilton. Teacher Talking Time in the EFL Classroom. profile [online]. 2005, n.6, pp.97-106. ISSN 1657-0790.

Classroom Research may be simply defined as ongoing and cumulative intellectual inquiry by classroom teachers into the nature of teaching and learning in their own classrooms (Cross and Steadman, 1996, p.2). This paper reports on a piece of classroom research, aiming to support the hypothesis that most of the talk in my English-as-a-foreign-language elementary and intermediate classrooms was done by the teacher, presumably implying a more teacher-centred approach. In terms of the percentage of teacher talk, the results indicate that the discrepancy between the amount of teacher talk actually done in these classrooms and that which was hypothesized as being in conflict with a learner-centred approach was notably high. This appears to imply that, although I talked more than the learners on some occasions, my lessons were much more focused on them rather than on me, the teacher.

Keywords : Classroom research; teacher talking time; learner-centred approach; English as a foreign language; teacher-centred approach.

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