An Analysis Of The Structure Of Classroom Conversation

Conversation is a central activity in social life. The study of conversation has drawn more attention in recent years. There are different approaches to the study of conversation, one of which is conversation analysis. Originated from the 1960s when the American sociologist Sacks, together with Schegloff and Jefferson, started the study of natural conversation, conversation analysis is increasingly understood as providing a major contribution to the analysis of the structure of conversation. It stresses that a great deal of naturally occurring data is collected by recording, and the conclusion should be made through careful observance and analysis of the data.Conversation analysis falls into the category of qualitative research. Just as Levinson (1983: 286-287) claims, "Conversation analysis is a rigorously empirical approach which avoids premature theory construction. The methods are essentially inductive; search is made for recurring patterns across many records of naturally occurring conversations." As a kind of theory and methodology for research, conversation analysis has been widely used in different areas, including the study of talk in institutional settings. In modern society, people spend a large amount of time in institutional contexts such as workplaces, educational establishments and service settings. Most activities in these routine social spaces are carried out with talk as basic means. Therefore, studying talk in such settings will help us to know more about the important role that talk plays in social life. Because classroom conversation falls into the category of talk in institutional settings, it is a valuable research object for conversation analysis.Based on the review of the existent theories, this thesis, which applies the transcribed materials of videotaped classroom conversation as the data, attempts to make an analysis of the structure of classroom conversation from the aspects of overall organization and local organization. It aims at exploring features and regularities of classroom conversational structure. The study shows that the structure of classroom conversation has an obvious start providing the context for the whole...