Communicative orientation in the language class and the effect of activity types on interaction

This study explores the nature of oral interaction in language classes in English and Turkish secondary schools in order to reflect upon the effect of different communicative orientation in two different contexts. That is, it focuses on quantitative and qualitative differences that may exist between the ways that teaching and learning of the spoken language are handled pedagogically in language classrooms in both contexts by analysing oral interactions between teachers and students. Another major aim of this piece of research is to investigate the influence of different inputs (activities) on the nature and the quality of interaction. This thesis presents a detailed examination of the theoretical and empirical literature to provide a basis for the current research study. Year 9 and Year 10 classes were observed using a systematic observation scheme - the Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) Observation Scheme (Allen et al., 1984). The participants were foreign language teachers and non-native speaking students. The findings of this research study provide evidence that some activities intrinsically lead to more communicative interactions in language classrooms. This study also shows that language teaching and classroom interaction have some differences as well as similarities, despite classroom culture differences, in the two countries. The results of this research study, however, should be seen as suggestive rather than conclusive since they are derived from a relatively small sample.