Regulative discourse in Singapore primary English classrooms

Liu, Y., & Hong, H. (2009). Regulative discourse in Singapore primary English classrooms: Teachers' choices of directives. Language and Education, 23(1), 1-13. doi:10.1080/09500780802152812

Background

The authors highlighted that research had predominantly focussed on an ‘instructional discourse’ in Singapore classrooms where teachers and students interacted about subject knowledge. Few studies had examined ‘regulative discourse’, which largely framed how subject knowledge or competences were transmitted in the classroom.

Aims

The authors explored what choices teachers made of directives (asking students to do something), for what regulatory purposes and how they positioned students.

Sample

The data comprised 32 lessons (20 lessons in mixed-ability classrooms, and 12 lessons in high-ability classrooms), constituting about 23 hours classroom talk of Grade 5 Singapore English classrooms. Eight teachers conducted the lessons.

Method

The authors identified a typology of teachers’ directives at three different levels, namely syntactic forms, strategy realisations and pedagogic purposes by using a corpus linguistic approach. Pedagogic purposes were categorized into mainly two types: implementing classroom procedures or the agenda (procedural directives), and disciplining students (disciplinary directives). Actual directive tokens were classified into three syntactic forms: imperatives, declaratives and interrogatives, indicating the varying degrees of forcefulness/directness. Within the syntactic forms, the directive tokens were subdivided into different types of strategy realisations.

Findings

The results demonstrated that the teachers used a large amount of direct rather than indirect requests, whether for procedural or disciplinary purposes, and deployed a limited repertoire of strategy realisations in the classroom interaction. There was also limited linguistic variety in the directives. The strong regulative discourse with the use of authoritative directives gave students little opportunity to participate in reciprocal interactions and to assume different roles. This indicated that the regulative aspect of education took predominance over its instructional discourse. The regulative practices also reflected the identity of the source of control and the cultural tradition in Singapore, where teachers were regarded as the authority of knowledge.

Implications

The authors highlighted that for successful participation in the classroom instructional discourse, students needed to be cognizant of how they were positioned in the classroom in terms of power relations, how different degrees of power relations could be realized by linguistic choices, and how to respond appropriately. Teachers also had to be aware of the regulative role teachers’ directives could play in framing classroom practices and regulating students’ behaviours and identities.

Original article retrieved from Taylor & Francis.