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EDITOR'S CHOICE

Engaging learners: conversation- or

dialogic-driven pedagogy?
Philip Chappell

ELT Journal, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 January 2014, Pages 1–

11,https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cct040
Published:

08 August 2013

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Abstract
‘Conversation-driven’ ELT privileges classroom talk as a primary source of
language learning, yet it is often unclear to what the term ‘conversation’ is
referring. This article reports on an investigation responding to this problem in
which a substantial database of language classroom recordings was analysed for the
types of talk that were taking place. Activities in language lessons that were driven
by conversation were analysed using classroom discourse techniques. Opportunities
for language learning through the language emerging from these activities were
identified, and a type of talk was specified in which learners were engaged more in
exploring issues and possibilities, and less in transacting information and opinions.
This study demonstrates the importance of teachers being aware of the types of talk
occurring in their lessons, which they should be strategically managing. It provides
teachers with a platform from which they can begin to analyse the talk in their own
classrooms.
Issue Section:
Article
This class is so different than my last one. In last term we talk and talk but never
feel to learn much. In your class we talk and think. I mean you make us think and
tell us how to talk and we talk and think and talk. (EFL student, author’s data)

Introduction
The ‘conversation-driven’ movement

Dogme ELT (Meddings and Thornbury 2009) is a movement that began at the turn
of the millennium in response to the perceived misgivings of teachers’ language
lessons relying on materials rather than ‘genuine’ communication. Teaching
materials are presumed to hinder such communication and take the focus away
from learner language. Based on the overriding aim of foregrounding the language
created by the learners during meaningful communicative exchanges, a Dogme
‘syllabus’ is more about this ‘emergent language’ and less about the content of
coursebooks and other materials. Language learning episodes are claimed to have
their beginnings in these social interactions, where there is a perceived or noticed
need to develop the repertoire of a learner’s functional linguistic system. Together,
these claims have generated significant interest among many English language
teachers, yet they have undergone little empirical investigation.

Central to Dogme ELT is its ‘conversation-driven’ methodology (ibid.: 8), which is

also central to the concerns of this article. Notably, the concern is that, if we are
privileging conversation, then what is it exactly that is being privileged? In later
sections of the paper, extracts from language lessons representative of Dogme ELT
are exhibited in order to address this question; first, however, a review of classroom
talk as relevant to the themes of this article is presented.
Classroom talk and genuine communication

Considerable efforts have been made by classroom researchers over several

decades to understand the talk that takes place between teachers and students. A
common finding in most, if not all, of these studies is the preponderance of the
recitation script (Lemke 1990), which is characterized by teacher-led sets of
questions that are often unrelated and require students to respond with factual
answers and known information. The aim is for answers to be predictable and
correct. A typical example is:

Teacher: So [R] you have children? Yes? How many children do you have?

R (student): Five.

Teacher: Five children. Yes. Five children.

An identifying feature of recitation is that it often ends at the teacher’s second turn.
The teacher’s feedback on the student’s response stifles possibilities for further
student talk. Although not always the case, while recitation can be a valuable
pedagogic tool when aimed at specific goals (Wells 1993), if used repeatedly (and
very often it is), it creates classrooms where guessing and remembering superficial
facts and information can become dominant classroom routines.

Conversely, there is talk reflecting ‘natural’ conversation, characterized by

spontaneous spoken language taking place in real time and in a shared context. It is
interactive and therefore jointly constructed and reciprocal. One of its primary
functions is to develop interpersonal relations; accordingly it is often informal and
expressive of our ‘wishes, feelings, attitudes and judgements’ (Thornbury and
Slade 2006: 8). By their nature, natural conversation and classroom talk do not
normally co-exist. Classroom talk is a form of institutional talk, restricted by the
goals of teachers and students and the power relations that determine what kind of
talk is allowed to occur, by whom, and when (Heritage 2005). Clearly, classroom
talk does not meet the above criteria for natural conversation.

The conversation in Dogme ELT conundrum

If Dogme ELT is driven by conversation, yet natural conversation is not usually
possible in the classroom, what kind of talk could best support its aims? Is it the
talk of the strong communicative language teaching (CLT) syllabus, with the
premise that you learn by doing: learners talk to learn rather than learn to talk?
Certainly, many accounts of lessons and actual lesson plans available on teachers’
blogs suggest this is a distinct possibility, at least for parts of lessons. Yet given
what we know about language teacher cognition, it is naïve to suggest that picking
and mixing from a list of methods and approaches really drives classroom planning
decisions, especially those focused on discourse patterns; rather, it is far wiser to
acknowledge the teacher’s own knowledge and beliefs about what constitutes good
teaching and learning practices, and the impact of these on learners in classrooms
(Borg 2003). Thus, challenging teachers’ claims that conversation-driven lessons
result in superior language learning, while at the same time providing them with a
strategy for investigating their own implementation of such teaching, will hopefully
result in greater theorizing about their teaching and more informed talk about talk
in the classroom.

Research methodology
Data gathering

Data have been drawn from a variety of sources, though this article draws primarily
on audio-visual classroom data from a larger study investigating pedagogic
discourse in an EFL context and a related project (Chappell 2010). In addition,
language lessons which others have made available on internet sites have been used
for the analysis of additional talk or simply as exemplars of self-proclaimed Dogme
ELT lessons.

Data analysis

Lessons that met the criteria for Dogme ELT were selected and subjected to
repeated viewings in order to establish a coding scheme for classroom activity
types and types of classroom talk. Selected lessons from a range of activity types
were transcribed and analysed using principles from classroom discourse analysis,
including speech function and mood grammar analyses (see ‘Speech functions and
mood grammar’ below for further explanation).
Findings
Diversity of classroom talk

To address the conundrum introduced earlier, it is has been fruitful investigating

what is known about the kinds of institutional classroom talk that promote the
development of language for our learners. In doing so, this article draws upon and
applies recent innovations in educational linguistics and classroom discourse. The
following taxonomy (see Table 1) has been developed from a review of selected
literature on classroom talk, with modifications made based upon the language
lessons analysed for this study.

table 1
Kinds of institutional classroom talk (adapted from Alexander 2001, 2008; Lindfors
1999; Mercer 2000)

Type of talk Description

Rote The drilling of language items through sustained repetition.

The accumulation of knowledge and understanding through

questions designed to test or stimulate recall of what has been
Recitation and previously encountered, or to cue students to work out the answer
elicitation from clues in the question.

Telling the students what to do, and/ or imparting information,

often about target language items, and/ or explaining facts or
principles about language, and/or explaining the procedure of an
Instruction/exposition activity, and/or modelling the talk and behaviours of an activity.

The exchange of ideas with a view to sharing information and

Discussion solving problems.

Achieving common understanding through structured inquiry,

Inquiry dialogue wondering (playing with possibilities, reflecting, considering,
Type of talk Description

exploring) and discussion that guides and prompts; build on each

other’s contributions (cumulative talk), reduce choices, and
expedite the ‘handover’ of concepts and principles.

View Large

The first three kinds of talk presented in Table 1 are well known and documented in
the literature on classroom discourse. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a language
classroom in which these kinds of talk are not present, which is, as it happens, the
case for the many hours of language lessons in this study. Arguably, these kinds of
talk have a role in many language teaching contexts, yet it is unarguable that they
should be part of a larger repertoire of talk that contains more exploratory,
information-seeking, and inquiry-based discourse. Transcripts from many lessons
contained at the very least traces of what is being termed here ‘discussion’ and
‘inquiry’ dialogue. As will be shown, this is the crucial area for Dogme lessons: the
area in which informed teachers, it is argued, can make a world of difference for
their learners. At the same time, the balance between the two is one that needs to be
strategically managed to avoid the problem that our EFL student in the opening
epigraph encountered in her previous study period: ‘... we talk and talk but never
feel to learn much’.

Discussion

CLT, in its stronger or weaker forms, makes extensive use of discussion activities,
defined here as the exchange of ideas with a view to sharing information and
solving problems. They are often conducted as small group activities in which the
teacher takes a less direct and more facilitative role, leaving the groups to work
without direct intervention. Talk from one such activity is exhibited below in
Excerpt 1 (all participants are intermediate level, adult students in an EFL setting in
Thailand):

Excerpt 1: Dangerous sports

1 S1: I think a really dangerous sport is a parachuting.

2 S2: Parachuting?

3 S1: Yes. Because when you’re chuting it depend on the the

4 S2: bungy

5 S1: on the what is it called the equipment. Like this if it’s not open you will die.

6 S3: (Nods) uh huh shark

7 S1: If you climb the mountain then the sky [inaudible] is the floor it means we
can stop the [inaudible]

8 S4: On the mountain when you go very high they have less oxygen you cannot
breathe well.

9 S1: Yes yes okay. Right.

10 Well, we just think about how we can stop.

11 When you climbing and [inaudible] you can stop, this is fine you can stop

12 S3: (Laughs)

13 S1: but if you’re jumping, wow [extended vowel] you’re gonna [inaudible] its
mean you cannot finish. Its mean you’re [inaudible] gonna ground.

14 So the most dangerous I think is parachuting.

15 S4: Mountain climbing.

16 S1: Yes. And another thing its mean a bungy jump it’s okay.

In this activity, four students are exchanging ideas about dangerous sports. At face
value, it is a typical episode that teachers are likely to be pleased to have occurring
in their conversation-driven classrooms. It is based on a student-nominated topic
capitalized upon by the teacher and turned into a group discussion activity for a
class of 18 students, requiring no materials, and drawing upon the students’
lifeworlds. Without listening in directly or having access to transcripts, and with
the simultaneous talk of four groups going on, teachers would most likely be
satisfied that all students in this group are engaged and contributing. It begins with
one student (S1 at Line 1) initiating the topic of parachuting. At S2’s prompt, S1
then proceeds to provide an explanation of why it is a ‘really dangerous sport’
(Lines 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 13). However, the remainder of the talk, beginning
with S2’s unexpected and unsuccessful attempt to take the floor (Line 4), is simply
S1 continuing his explanation and the others attempting to initiate their own topics
(Lines 6, 8, and 15) with no follow up. Indeed, after S1 concludes in Line 14, he
ignores the topic initiation of S4 at Line 15 and initiates his own second topic (Line
16).

This activity may be considered as fulfilling the aims of an information-sharing

discussion. During the group discussion, all four students have nominated their
dangerous sport, which enables the teacher to subsequently list their nominations,
and those from other groups, on the board. This final phase of the activity (the
teacher calling the class together and switching to elicitation) is a frequent pattern,
or ritual, of this class.

Despite their shortcomings, information-sharing activities are a frequent kind of

activity coded in the data for this study. They generally involve the students
exchanging information, and at times, solving problems. Typical turns at talk
involve stating facts or opinions, explaining or justifying an opinion, and clarifying
a statement. These turns have quite a lot in common with the student responses to
teacher’s initiations in recitation and elicitation. They are presentational in nature,
more ‘final draft’ than ‘first draft’ (Barnes 2008: 5).

The next anticipated phase of the lesson, a well-known classroom ritual, will
involve the teacher nominating each student to present his or her information, or a
spokesperson to do so on behalf of the group. In a sense, they are often preparation
for a recitation activity, and although students are seated in groups, they are rarely
working as groups. In an earlier study (Chappell op.cit.), group discussions were
found to be productive when linked to text-based activities involving listening or
reading, or during focus on form activities.
To present a brief example of a discussion related to a listening activity, consider
the following excerpt (Excerpt 2) from a discussion between two students after
listening to an extract from a radio play based on the famous H. G. Wells science
fiction novel The War of the Worlds. Lek1 and Rin exchange their opinions using a
two- or three-part exchange involving a referential question (where the answer is
unknown to the questioner), followed by a response, and in the second exchange, a
further feedback turn. While this fulfils the criteria for discussion, it displays
striking similarities to recitation, exemplified earlier. The responses seem to close
off opportunities for further talk rather than opening up possibilities for more
inquiry. Both Lek and Rin have produced responses that are ‘final draft’ and ready
to be presented to the class; further discussion is therefore unnecessary:

Excerpt 2: The War of the Worlds (L = Lek; R = Rin)

1 L: What do you think about the kind of program that is?

2 R: I think it a play. What do you think?

3 L: I think about maybe drama.

4 R: (Nodding head) Aah! Aha.

5 L: Drama.

6 R: Drama for radio show.

7 L: Aha.

8 R: OK Fine. Fine ...

Inquiry dialogue

Language learning should be much more than learning transactional language for
relatively brief encounters. Effective language teaching activity stimulates students
to create a vast range of meanings through spoken and written texts by exploring,
sharing, and enquiring about things that matter to them in their lifeworlds.
Learners’ linguistic systems develop as they are cognitively engaged in these
pursuits while at the same time developing the intellectual skills for lifelong
learning. This is the attraction of the Dogme ELT perspective, where classroom
talk is the medium of instruction, the object of instruction, and the primary mode of
communication accompanying learning and teaching activity.

The creation of joint discourse, where students are weaving together each other’s
contributions, relating one to the other, developing ideas in a cumulative fashion is
the work of inquiry dialogue, the final kind of talk presented in this article. The
term ‘inquiry’ calls to mind the act of questioning, a staple of the second language
classroom. There is a considerable body of literature on questioning, especially the
benefits of referential questions over display questions (questions with an unknown
answer, as noted above, versus those with a known answer). However, to move
beyond the type of talk described in the previous section, there is a need to go
beyond the form of questions and look more critically at the function of inquiry. To
do this, another transcript of classroom talk is presented and analysed (Excerpt 3).

In this activity, the teacher and the students are sharing ideas about inventions; the
teacher’s instruction is to ‘think about important inventions that might happen’.
This instruction has followed a brief chat between the teacher and three students at
the start of class about possible careers. The students were expressing interest in the
topic of future inventions, and thus the teacher used this opportunity to start class
with an activity in which talk of a student-nominated topic of interest would ensue.

The talk that follows is notable for its cumulative knowledge-building, in which the
students and the teacher build on each other’s ideas and jointly construct shared and
developing understandings of those ideas, rather than closing off the possibilities
for inquiry. Jane suggests that new forms of energy will be found and Oat builds on
that idea by suggesting ‘sun energy’. After the teacher works with this emergent
language, scaffolding understandings of the concept of energy from the sun, and
the lexical unit ‘solar energy’, the group proceeds to reflect, consider, and explore
the viability of solar energy for the future. The activity is characterized by mutual
respect for those contributing their ideas, and there are several instances of students
offering up ideas for others to ponder over, to play with the possibilities, to reflect
upon, consider, and explore (Lindfors op.cit.).

Excerpt 3: Inventions (T = teacher; J = Jane; O = Oat; B = Bee; A = Art)

1 T: OK then. Let’s think about important inventions that might happen.

2 J: We will find new kind of energy. (Looking at teacher) Energy. Like petrol and
… oil.

3 O: In the last few years uh maybe a new kind of sun sun energy sunlight energy

4 or … nuclear nuclear nuclear energy that can be used instead of oil energy.

5 T: OK. There are two things you said there (goes to whiteboard and writes bullet
point ‘nuclear energy’).

6 Everybody. Oat was talking about energy from the sun.

7 What do we call that?

8 B: Solar cell.

9 T: Solar. Solar energy, yep.

10 Do you think that’s really important for the future?

11 A: Very important.

12 O and B: (Nodding heads) Yes.

13 T: Yes? I wonder why solar energy is so important.

14 B: Because oil is very expensive?

15 A: That’s true. That’s true.

16 B: Maybe because the [inaudible] is very expensive and the government will
promote people to use solar energy.

17 J: But isn’t solar energy is high investment?

18 T: Yeah. Really, any kind of energy is going to be high investment first of all.
19 A: But actually people invent solar energy they they know about solar energy
for a long long time but still not popular …why?

20 O: The energy from the solar is not strong enough to provide …

21 J: No power. Like … not enough power.

22 A: Hm. OK.

23 J: You see a solar car go slow (gesturing) like this.

24 T: Yeah. But maybe when the price of oil keeps going up more people will want
to invest money to develop solar energy.

25 A: And stop more pollution.

26 J, O, and B: (Nodding) Yes (in chorus).

Speech functions and mood grammar

To grasp the significance of the qualitatively superior talk in Excerpt 3 above, it is

essential to understand something of the relation between speech functions and
mood grammar. These two constitute the relation between grammatical form and
communicative function in interpersonal exchanges. This is an important relation,
since the development of each is closely related when language is learnt during use
(Halliday 1984). During interaction, students and teachers are exchanging
information or goods and services through requesting and giving. The teacher
requests information from a student who usually complies and gives it. Similarly,
the teacher requests students to move into small group formation; they will usually
comply and carry out that request.

These functions of social interaction are enacted linguistically through the grammar
of mood, categorizing each turn in an interpersonal exchange as declarative,
interrogative, or imperative. When Lek asks Rin for his opinion about the genre
of The War of the Worlds, he uses an interrogative form ‘What do you think …?’.
Lek gives that information in the declarative form ‘I think it [is] a play’. When the
teacher instructs the students to talk about inventions, he uses the imperative form
‘Let’s think about important inventions that might happen’. These are canonical
function–form matches and appear ubiquitously in ELT coursebooks. When
activities occur that require students to participate in a discussion, these are the
default mood grammar choices for requesting and providing information. Failure to
exchange, that is, failure to take complementary turns at requesting and providing
information or goods and services results in a qualitatively faulty interpersonal
exchange (see, for example, Excerpt 1 above, Dangerous Sports).

However, analysis of the Inventions excerpt suggests something different is going

on. While this is a rich, dialogic, inquiry-based activity, there are very few
interrogative forms (only two, in fact, at Lines 7 and 10), which are used only by
the teacher. Nevertheless, this is structured inquiry dialogue realized in two
important ways.

The first of these is the preponderance of dialogic inquiry acts: ‘those language acts
whose purpose is to engage another in one’s attempt to understand’ (Lindfors
op.cit.: 31). Their function is not simply to request information, but to request the
service of the other(s) to consider, reflect upon, and indeed, play with possibilities
rather than to request information. This function is realized linguistically in
different ways (see Table 2 on the next page). The teacher’s inquiry act (Line 13) is
an act of wondering; rather than functioning to provide information, it functions to
keep the topic open and ponder possibilities of why solar energy is important. Bee
takes up the challenge (Line 14) and offers a tentative contribution as another act of
wondering (whether oil’s expense is a possible reason), which Art builds upon
(Line 15) by confirming his agreement. As Bee extends her contribution (Line 16),
Jane takes a turn (Line 17) to develop this further by offering the possibility of
solar energy being ‘high investment’. After the teacher agrees with this and builds
upon the topic once more (Line 18), Art (Line 19) offers up another aspect of the
topic for consideration in another act of wondering.
table 2
Inquiry acts as acts of wondering

Utterance Dialogic inquiry act

Extend topic of inquiry > build

Teacher: Yes? I wonder why solar energy is so on other’s contribution
important. (wondering).

Extend topic of inquiry > build

on other’s contribution
(wondering)

Gloss: ‘I wonder if it’s because

Bee: Because oil is very expensive? (rising intonation) it’s expensive’.

Art: That’s true. That’s true. Build on other’s contribution.

Bee: Because the [inaudible] is very expensive and the Extend topic of inquiry > build
government will promote people to use solar energy. on other’s contribution.

Extend topic of inquiry > build

on other’s contribution
(wondering).

Gloss: ‘I wonder if it’s because

Jane: But isn’t solar energy is high investment? it’s high investment’.

Teacher: Yeah. Really, any kind of energy is going to Extend topic of inquiry > build
be high investment first of all. on other’s contribution.

Extend topic of inquiry > build

on other’s contribution
(wondering)
Art: But actually people invent solar energy they they
know about solar energy for a long long time but still not Gloss: ‘I wonder why it’s not
popular ... why? popular after all these years’.
 View Large

The second important aspect of such classroom talk lies not with the specifics of
individual utterances, but with the activity as a whole and its overriding purpose.
Within the framework of genre analysis, the overall purpose of a text can be
determined through an analysis of its rhetorical stages; accumulating what happens
at each stage of the text, one can deduce its social purpose. While the purpose of
discussion activities in the data for this study appears to be to exchange information
and opinions, the purpose of inquiry dialogue is to engage others in exploring and
considering possibilities. The pedagogical implication here is that the objective of
the classroom activity and the kind of functions and forms that will realize that
activity are important features to make explicit to students.

Conclusion and implications

The analysis of the data from this study has provided a rich background from which
to make some useful conclusions about the kinds of talk that provide opportunities
for language learning in lessons based upon Dogme ELT principles. While
classroom talk is a hugely complex area, for second language classrooms it has
been suggested that the balance of the kinds of talk presented in Table 1 should be
skilfully managed by the teacher with a view to minimizing unnecessary rote,
recitation, and elicitation. Discussion activities have their role in classroom
activities, with the purpose of sharing information and opinions. Inquiry dialogue
offers the potential to open up opportunities for language learning, where learners
are engaged and therefore open to new and relevant linguistic features that emerge
during interaction. It stimulates spontaneous spoken texts for teaching and learning,
requiring teachers to be skilled at setting clear aims, modelling the functions and
forms of inquiry acts, ‘idealising’ the process and the possible outcome, and
providing a model for creative imitation (or appropriation) by learners (Chappell
2012).

Importantly, information seeking and sharing in groups can become unfocused and
more akin to learners doing individual work while seated in a group configuration.
This was a regularly occurring theme across the data, underscoring the need for
teacher monitoring and for teachers’ own classroom-based research to see what
kinds of talk are actually going on. Teachers favouring a conversation-driven
approach would do well to at least once record, transcribe, and analyse the talk
occurring in their classrooms for a deeper understanding of the obscured
mechanisms that are ‘driving’ the ‘conversation’.

Note
1
All names of students used in this article are pseudonyms.

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© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved