This article deals with multi-unit questioning turns used in different genres of institutional interactions. Analyzing in detail a corpus of about 400 multiunit questions from health care interactions, court trials, police interrogations, and social welfare office talks from Sweden and Finland (all in the Swedish language), a number of sequential patterns are established. Some of these sequential organizations revolve around the interplay between declarative and interrogative units. Several interrogatives in a series usually narrow down questions, for example, by suggesting candidate answers to the initial more general questions. However, many multi-unit questioning turns are concluded with an appended generalizing question.The communicative functions of these different question delivery structures are summarized. We argue that the theory must be sensitive to differences between communicative activity types. However, on the general level, we propose that designing a multi-unit question is an attempt at solving a complex communicative task, which typically involves several, possibly mutually conflicting, demands on the speaker. For example, in court trials, the avoidance of leading questions must be balanced against the need for precise answers. At the same time, the use of an appended generalizing unit might be formulated to secure anything that could count as an acceptable response.
This article focuses on assessment deliveries in discussions on progress, i.e. when the teacher reports on his/her fellow-teachers' assessments. In these episodes, the teacher runs the risk of ending up in a complicated situation, essentially since the assessments recurrently are very brief and/or difficult to interpret. To meet these problems, the teacher make use of certain strategies, e.g., adding his/her own comments that often seize upon the gratifying content of the assessment, or involving the pupil to engage in a "sidetrack" of an everyday character. In both cases, the sequence is made to last longer as it, simultaneously, undergoes a "conversationalization".
STUDENT CONFERENCES. It has been suggested that a parent-teacher-student conference should centre on the capacities and good qualities of the student. This article focuses on teacher discourse in situations where the students' answers (in mathematics tests, written assignments etc.) are either entirely or almost entirely correct. The study shows that, in eight cases out of ten, the comments made reflect a "deficiency perspective", i.e. teachers make comments such as There are no mistakes here, No problem with this one, Here you only had one mistake. Judging from the conferences studied, schooling is more a matter of learning how to avoid errors than learning how to do whatever is correct. The risk is that students may develop a fear of making mistakes and learn that their own and other people's errors are to be emphasized. In an educational context, making mistakes should not be seen as a risk. A fear of getting it wrong interferes with development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.