Languages; *Teacher Student Relationship IDENTIFIERS *Teasing

A study investigated the use of teasing as a teaching technique in a first-year college-level Russian class at a major university in California. The instructor is a native Russian speaker, and the class consisted of nine undergraduate students. A review of literature on teasing reveals its dual nature for conveying both a literal message of insult and a "metamessage " of playfulness. It was found that in this classroom context, teasing was used as a strategy for error correction, but only for pragmatic errors, not grammar or pronunciation. Six segments in which the teacher teases one or more students in order to make a pragmatic point are examined, and a structure is identified in the sequences: a problem (an utterance whose pragmatic form or message content is problematic); corrective teacher feedback; the target response to the feedback; audience response; and follow-up. It is concluded that, as playful enactments of serious activities, the teasing sequences described here offer an ideal space for language socialization. Through participation in them, students are engaged in naturalistic interactions in the target language that require them to attend not only to grammatical form, but also to the social and affective dimensions of language. (Contains 17 references.) (MSE) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document