A Study of the Variability of Teacher' Interaction Patterns in Team Taught and Non-Team Taught English Language Classrooms

The English language classroom has been shown to have a distinctive interactive pattern which operates between teachers and learners: Initiation-Response-Feedback, or IRF. This ritualized teacher-controlled communication pattern seems to be particularly suited to the Japanese cultural context. However, can a teacher modify his/her interaction strategies in the classroom to fit such instructional patterns as team teaching? Or do the teacher's interaction strategies remain the same regardless of external changes? In the present study, two classroom discourses were observed and analyzed in terms of teacher-learner interactions to investigate whether there was the variability in teachers' interaction patterns. It is hoped that the result of this study will contribute toward raising English teachers' awareness of interaction modifications in classroom settings