Classroom interaction: possibilities and impossibilities
Open accessAbstract
Recent communicative approaches have suggested that one goal of English language teaching should be to replicate ‘genuine’ or ‘natural’ rather than ‘typical’ or ‘traditional’ classroom communication. This article argues that such a goal is both paradoxical and unattainable, and that there are serious flaws in the assumptions underlying the communicative orthodoxy concerning ELT classroom interaction. It also argues that it would be more satisfactory to take an institutional discourse approach, where classroom discourse is regarded as an institutional variety of discourse, in which interactional elements correspond neatly to institutional goals.
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Peer interaction has always been praised in the architecture of the language classroom.
“Peer interaction has always been praised in the architecture of the language classroom (Seedhouse, 1996).”
From Teachers’ Classroom Interactional Competence: Scale Development and Validation (2023) · cites this paper as Seedhouse, 1996
Cited by
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On-line interactions as a resource to raise pragmatic awareness
Eisenchlas, S. A. (2011) · Journal of Pragmatics · doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.08.013 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Teachers’ Classroom Interactional Competence: Scale Development and Validation
Tajeddin, Z., & Kamali, J. (2023) · Language Teaching Research Quarterly · doi:10.32038/ltrq.2023.35.01 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Seedhouse, P.
- Affiliations
- Aston University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Seedhouse, P.
- ORCID
- Seedhouse, P.
- Venue
- ELT Journal
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1996-01-01
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 16-24
- ISSN
- 0951-0893 (ISSN-L)
- 1477-4526
- OpenAlex
- W2086527332
- Cited by
- 154
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 12.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- ELT Journal (publishedVersion)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Discourse Analysis in Language Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Keywords
- classroom interaction, communicative language teaching, institutional discourse, classroom discourse, English language teaching
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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