Writing up your PhD (Qualitative Research) Independent Study notes
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
7
Unit 4 – Your Data Chapters
Task 4.1 (open question)
4.2 The student’s Introduction is basically an overview of the chapter.
4.3 I think it is an Analytical Story
4.4 She refers to previous research through section 6.1, where she discusses alternative views of classroom process
4.5 Below are my annotated versions of the two pairs of paragraphs. In the paragraphs on page 46 she uses the
verbs seem and appear:
At this point the students are seated in three groups. As seen on the video recording, at the beginning, the
teacher does not seem to have the attention of the whole class. He begins to call their attention with
intermittent questions, exchanges with individuals and small groups, while looking around at the class.
His first address to the whole class is made when only one or two students seem to be paying attention,
by looking at him and not talking to other students. The teacher elicits a response from one or two
students. He pauses, addresses them all again looking round. He positions himself in front of the board at
this stage, but also moves between there and the nearby groups. He then pauses again, looks at his
papers. He then addresses the class again with a question, and looks at one student’s file. He pauses
again, then asks them another question and gets an answer from one student. He echoes the student who
answers him and identifies two students. Throughout this phase, the volume of student talk gradually
decreases, and more students look up and appear to pay attention. The first plenary address “OK” seems
to signal that he wants all their attention. At this point he raises his voice, stands in front of the board and
points at the handout. The group falls silent.
This pre-plenary phase is characterised by an “open” expression on the part of the teacher, fairly quiet
addresses using rising intonation, and gaps within and between the addresses to the class. At this stage he
seems to be not quite “on stage” or “off stage” - he addresses the class, looks back at his notes, arranges
his papers, then looks up and addresses them again. He uses what might be termed “brick wall
questioning” - asking questions to a group, many of whom he knows are not listening. It seems that the
purpose of these questions is not to elicit an answer, but more to function as a signal, to gain the
attention of the class. As questions requiring an answer from the whole class, they are unsuccessful, but
they seem to fulfil their function as signals that tell the class to stop talking and listen. During this pre-
plenary phase the students talk together, take out papers and organise objects on their desks. At the point
where the teacher says “OK” (line 32, shown by an arrow on the transcript above), the students fall
silent. The volume of his voice increases at this point, and he positions himself in front of the board.
On pages 52-53 we find a wider variety of hedging expressions. As well as using seem and appear, the writer
used modal verbs (may and might) and the verb suggest (rather than a stronger one like indicate). The word
reminiscent is a sort a hedge, too, because it means “reminding us of something similar but not identical” and it is
made weaker by having the word rather place in front of it.
In this sequence the teacher begins by asking for comments on the style of the paragraphs in the letters.
The students initially respond with comments about other aspects of the letters, such as the references
and the fact that they are from companies. Although he comes back to these points later in the sequence,
he twice brings them back to the theme of paragraph style. This suggests that, although the analysis task
was open, his checking “agenda” is not - he has a particular point to make about that aspect of letter
format, and wants to cover it first. He elicits the answer, the students give their ideas, the teacher gives
them feedback, and then he provides a normative explanation (examples indicated by arrows). So what
we have here is a sequence following a pattern that might be termed IRFI – Initiation, response, feedback
and instruction. This cycle is repeated several times in this particular checking sequence, as the teacher
goes through different points. In each case he begins by asking questions and eliciting ideas, then
evaluates them, then adds some normative statements. At the point where he gives a normative
statement, he sometimes knocks the whiteboard, and may use repetition:
[Data Extract 6.5: Lesson 2 Letter-Writing 1]
So it seems the teacher is using the open-response checking sequence as a framework within which to
provide instruction. He uses a form rather reminiscent of Socratic dialogue to guide the students towards
the learning points, asking them series of questions as he leads up to his instructional discourse. Both his
closed-response and open-response checking sequences appear to operate as frameworks with particular
points that are permeable to additional instruction on language, student questions, normative instruction
and so on. The point of permeability to instruction in all cases is at the end of the IRF cycle. However, as