Communicative Silence in Teacher-Student Interaction: A Conversation Analysis Perspective

The objective of the present study was to analyze communicative functions of silence in teacher-student interaction and how teacher and students would respond to silence in L2 classroom. Within sociocultural view, silence provides multi-dimensional contextual meaning to teacher and students. However, few studies have performed conversation analysis in a real classroom. In order to investigate detailed functions of silence, silence was classified into seven types: Pause I, (Pause I), Pause II, (Pause II), Gap I, Gap II, and Gap III in terms of the relation between the previous speaker and the next speaker in IRF/IRE structure. Two separate English lessons with thirty-one participants (two bilingual teachers and undergraduates) were videotaped for four hours with three video-cameras and then transcribed. The findings showed that Pause I had roles as a sign of difficulty in answering, students’ hesitation or refusal to self-select, and no problem or no question. While (Pause I) allowed teacher time to think about more specific explanation, (Pause II) allowed student time to find proper expression. Gap I was regarded as a sign of waiting for the answer and self-selecting whereas Gap II and Gap III were perceived as signs of asking for help with incomplete answer. These findings suggest that silence has communicative roles in IRF/IRE structure with pedagogical implications in L2 classrooms.