Classroom Discourse Analysis : A Case of ESL Reading Class

More than the recognition, perception, and interpretation of written materials, reading has been dubbed as our bridge to other skills that are necessary for academic success. Subsequently, one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of output of the students is through Classroom discourse analysis, which is an aspect of classroom process research (Jiang, 2012). This paper, therefore, aimed to determine teacher’s questioning vis-à-vis students’ reading strategies in the case of an ESL reading class in one of the private schools in Zamboanga City, Philipenese through classroom discourse analysis. As a qualitative endeavor, it made use of classroom observations with the aid of an audio recorder to enable the analysis. A total of 131 exchanges were generated in a 45-minute discussion, with roughly 25 minutes allotted to the said discourse, and the rest for other activities. Teacher-Pupil-Teacher (TPT) captured as Teacher-Student-Teacher (TST) in the case of this paper, is the recurring sequence during the whole duration of the discourse. Discourse analysis that was done to an audio recording transcript of a reading class observation revealed patterns that are primarily present in some, if not most, discourse analysis (DA) research literature. Interestingly, it, however, uncovered the following: for teacher’s way of questioning (in this case, echoice and epistemic), epistemic questions (mostly, rhetorical for this matter), were made reference(s) by the students in answering questions. Consequently, the lesson or activity became, to some extent, communicative, because of the above mentioned points.

a topic; formal, this refers to distant connections based on understanding of generalizations and mindset, and; abstract, involves hidden factors and thematic consideration.
Faulty or inaccurate constructs usually resulted from the absence of schema or the inability to activate it (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, in Carrell, et al, 1998 in (Landry, 2002).Further, benefits from either being more prepared for a text or the text itself could be modified for easier comprehension are expected of the readers (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, in Carrell, et al, 1998; however, it is arguable whether text modification aids in the long term or forces learners to use immature strategies for reading (Landry, 2002).
Dichotomous views on schemata have to be considered as well. On one hand, a strong view perceives schemata as something that influences the opinion of the readers prior to reading a text or selection (Landry, 2002). Van Djik (1981) puts schemata as higher-level complex knowledge structures (p.141) that operate as what Anderson (1977) termed "ideational scaffolding". On the other hand, weaker views state that schemata are structured background knowledge on a topic leading to predictions of discourse; independently, messages are perceived in a particular manner determined by the following: person's history, interests, gender, excreta (Anderson et al., 1977). Moreover, Bartlett (1932) viewed memory as constructive and mental representation was built from current discourse and background knowledge; hence, memory is developed from organized pieces by way of schema's nature as an active feature. Furthermore, fixed or flexible schemata are a way to account for interpretation and production of discourse ( (Brown & Yule, 1983) in (Landry, 2002).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This paper is aimed at discovering patterns of interactions in an ESL reading class accounting for the teacher's questioning strategies, and as well as learners' reading strategies as disclosed through discourse analysis.

METHODOLOGY
The paper subscribed to qualitative design of research specifically, discourse analysis. A single case of a highschool reading class was the unit of analysis of the paper; permissions were importantly sought from the principal and consequently, of that of the teacher handling the reading class. An audio recorder was utilized to record the conversations during the reading class. Similarly, the researcher also took observational notes in order to record the explicit behaviors of the learners during the event.

The Reading class observation
Previously, important concepts were put forward in the light of the subsequent analysis. The reading class observation was done at Southern City Colleges. Audio recorder was used in order to capture the conversation that was to be transcribed in order to discover patterns, hence, phenomenon, eventually, that might have occurred In brief, a total of 131 exchanges were generated in a 45-minute discussion, with roughly 25 minutes allotted to the said discourse, and the rest for other activities. TPT, or Teacher-Pupil-Teacher (Teacher-Student-Teacher, in the case of this paper) is the recurring sequence during the whole duration of the discourse. Teacher dominated the discourse. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) as cited in Jiang (2012), established that TPT is a regular sequence in the classroom discourse.
In recapitulation, the teacher had an assigned reading which is a novel by Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho, titled Brida. One (1) week time, as evident in the transcript, was allocated to the students to read the said novel. The instruction was that a discussion would be done after the students read the novel, and active participation was quite expected as always.
In the course of this analysis, themes and concepts would follow and be given explications (along with the excerpts from the transcript) and these were grounded on the observed phenomenon. An important highlight of this analysis, which is very crucial to every language teaching, and specifically, teaching reading, is the art of questioning employed by the teacher. Strategies, if there were any being employed by the students, would be determined as well, though meaning is always constructed subjectively by those who engaged in the discourse, researcher who analyzes discourse also brings his own subjective interpretations and meaning constructions to the discourse s/he analyzes.
At the beginning, the teacher set the mode before proceeding with the discussion. It was necessary because it could serve as some sort of an activation of the previous knowledge for the reason that the students might have forgotten what's to be done on that day or the other way around. However, it would be logical enough that even if the teacher did not do that, students still have to be responsible with the task they were assigned with.

Teacher's questions in the discussion
Basically, the reading teacher, during the event was asking questions that were really geared toward the context of the discussion. Comprehension questions were the dominant questions of the teacher, as evident in the transcript. Cognitively, in Bloom's Taxonomy, comprehension questions basically encompass understanding usually of the facts and ideas by organizing, describing, interpreting, translating, and stating (general concepts). Teachers can check comprehension by asking their students open-ended questions, having them justify answers, or by collecting summaries (Landry, 2002).
In the same way, in teacher talk or teacher speech simplification is said to make input or language addressed to learners more accessible (Lynch, 1996); hence, it is generally lexically and syntactically less complex (Vivekmetakorn & Thamma, 2015). Furthermore, questions are utilized to check students' comprehension and encourage interaction between students and teachers or among themselves" (Ibid).

Teacher:
Okay… Brida…. So, anyone? Who could give me… ahm… a little bit of an overview of what… ahm, Brida is…. Actually is? So… anyone? Who could give me a little summary of it? Or what is the gist of the novel by Paulo Coelho, Brida…. Okay… anyone? Okay Jenny… At the beginning of the discourse, the teacher started to ask question (s) eliciting an overview, summary or the gist of the selection from the students. Consequently, a student answered and provided a direct answer to the question. At this point, it was hard to determine whether the student read the selection or the other way around. However, in the transcript the student mispronounced the word "quest" and as well as "magus", having pronounced it as "magnus". It might suggest that the student did not comprehend the selection and rather relied on the available summary of the story. Conversely, this concurs well enough with Cohen et al (1979) that inessential unknown vocabulary words disrupt comprehension unless the reader recognizes that they can be ignored. Strategy is an integral part of learning, more relevant than specific linguistic knowledge. How readers solve problems is a better focus than looking at what is problematic for them (Cohen et al. 1979 in (Landry, 2002).
In each episode, the teacher directed the discussion by remarking on student responses and asking supplementary questions. Each question set off a question-answer-comment cycle. At the beginning of the first episode, the teacher set the context by repeating the question several times. This focused the students' attention and let them know (from their previous experiences with this teacher) that they were expected to know the answer. For the numbered 18 of teacher's turn, it was clear that the teacher was kind of revealing (asked a question but answered it anyway, though it may not be necessarily the direct answer), Long and Sato (1983) developed the classification of questions. In the said classifications, questions are categorized into echoic and epistemic questions. The former are mainly questions that ask for the repetition of an utterance or a confirmation that the utterance has been interpreted as intended, and these are utilized for comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests. The latter, on the other hand, are questions that serve the purpose of acquiring information (Long & Sato, 1983in Vivekmetakorn & Thamma, 2015.

Schemata in Reading
As evident in the transcript of the discourse, it can be inferred that the students in the class mainly applied schemata as a reading strategy when they approached the given text. Aside from that, meaning-making was also clearly found. It was possible that not all of the students in the class did the reading of the selection. Some of them, when asked a particular question, answered profoundly, that is, they were able to state (an) answer(s) but did not seem to really have understood their own response. In the same way, the students seemed to make meanings out of every feedback and/or follow up of the teacher. Readers, as active participants construct meaning (s) from clues that are found in the printed text; hence, to put it another way, meaning is not necessarily found in the texts but the texts have the potential for meaning (Widdowson, 1984in Maarof & Yaacob, 2011. At this point, the students were not actually looking or reading the selection itself, but relied heavily on the unpremeditated narration of some part of the selection by the teacher. In this excerpt, the teacher was asking the students to give or cite an unforgettable quote from the characters. A student tried to answer but ended up just trying to give a guess. Clearly, it can be inferred that the student did not get or might not have read the selection after all. As indicated, the student might have just relied on the context of the story for the answer as the teacher revealed ideas and happenings in the novel. In the discourse part above, it's indicated that it's already the student who was asking a question to the teacher. On the part of the teacher, it was unusual at this point since the student were expected to have known of it, yet the teacher did not answer the question; instead, the teacher had the question answered by another student. The students answered "no". Now, by the same token, the teacher asked the students if Romeo and Juliet died, which was actually totally not included in the story. When the teacher was asked why did she ask the question, she said that it was to know whether the students have it as a link or something that served as their basis for answering, which was quite vague, so to speak. Furthermore, this might be in line with the finding that reading a great deal of different material for different purposes, a reader can "achieve the capacity for creating, refining, and connecting diverse arrays of cognitive schemata" (Grabe, 1986, p. 36 in Landry, 2002. Significantly, a student made a justification of the answer by saying that they [Romeo and Juliet] were mortal while Brida was immortal. Ausubel (1963, 1968in Anderson, Spiro, & Anderson, 1977 in his language, said that, "... new ideas and information are learned and retained most efficiently when inclusive and specifically relevant ideas are already available in cognitive structure to serve a subsuming role or to furnish ideational anchorage" (1968, p. 153).
33 Teacher: Okay, so more than once right so… Another thing that I really wanna ask you about what you have read about the text brida okay so ahm brida thinks that she is a witch right is she yes? Definitely because that is why she wants to learn, with the guidance or with the help of magus teachers of which is one of those is magus… Wicca so what… what was the experience of brida, the most compelling experience that she had during her journey to finding magic to learning magic? With magus, 34 Students: Sir what is compelling 34 Teacher: The one that is very, you know, that leaves you a great impact one that really compels you 35 Teacher: What was the most exciting part of part of her journey, like there are a lot of journeys there are a lot of paths that brida and magus have come across although Magus already knew that he really wanted brida to experience those things so… anyone? Who can give us the most compelling… Anyone? During her journey in finding is she really was her destiny On one part of the discourse, it was obvious that the class was implementing an English Only Policy. Interestingly, based on the transcript it could be noted that students in this class were not really doing well in the English language (although it could only be furthered by a content-specific observation, that is, when its focus is on English speaking skills [of the students]). Not all of the students participated in the discussion; only a few students contributed to the exchange.
Another point was that there were words, though can be considered as basic vocabulary words, were mispronounced, but it's not necessarily a big issue in this analysis; however, mispronunciation and lack of vocabulary are possible hindrances to comprehension. In fact, Alderson (2000) (2016), found that vocabulary knowledge is indispensable for good reading comprehension. Moreover, when problems are present such as unfamiliar words or concepts, good readers "they deal with inconsistencies or gaps as needed" when trying to determine the meanings in the text (Duke et al., 2011, p. 56). Mustapha (1995) puts reading as a multileveled, interactive, and hypothesisgenerating process in which readers construct a meaningful representation of text by using their knowledge of the world and of language.

DISCUSSION
With the data generated through the observation transcript, the analysis focused on the questioning of the teacher and as well as the strategy(ies) employed by the students in reading the given selection. Discourse analysis was done to the audio transcript of the reading class observation in order to find out some patterns and describe any occuring phenomenon in the said class.
It was found out that the teacher primarily utilized a combination of echoic and epistemic questions, as put forward by Long and Sato (1983). The former are mainly questions that ask for the repetition of an utterance or a confirmation that the utterance has been interpreted as intended, and these are utilized for comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests. The latter, on the other hand, are questions that serve the purpose of acquiring information (Vivekmetakorn & Thamma, 2015). Specifically, for echoic, comprehension checks, clarification requests, and confirmation checks were evident. For epistemic, the most prominent was rethorical because the teacher predominantly asked for effect only, maybe because of the fact that the students were not, to some extent, answering and just remained silent. Another pattern is about the reading strategy of the students. It is clear that the students mainly relied on the schema (maybe their strategy to approaching the given selection). For this observation, though it is in anyway clear that some of the students seemed to have not read the selection fully as it appeared in the transcript, their strategy, i.e. banking on the epistemic questions (e.g. rethorical) and feedback of the teacher, allowed them to at least make inferences (backed up to some point by the ideas that they got, probably when they read) about the story.
I also have to note that based on my observation, some students' inability to comprehend the text (which is a novel), can be attributed to Structural deficit hypothesis which claims that lack of grammatical knowledge or of processing ability interferes with higher level text comprehension (Stein, Cairns & Zurif, 1984;Bowey, 1986aBowey, , 1986bBentin, Deutsch and Liberman, 1990;Menyuk et al., 1991;Scarborough, 1991in Akbari, 2014. Syntactic awareness is also believed to assist readers in accomplishing their reading comprehension tasks effectively (Ibid.) Akbari's (2014) finding indicates that it may be argued that "grammatical knowledge predicts better comprehension and may be used as an indicator of success in reading"(p.125). However, in this case, further and specific inquiry has to be done yet. I have raised this assumption based on how students answered in the discussion.
In connection with Sinclair and Coulthard CDA, this discourse somehow fitted the model, given that the teacher predominantly did the talking, and it supports the findings of Vivekmetakorn & Thamma (2015) that Initiation-response-feedback interaction pattern (I-R-F) was the most recurring pattern and "teacher's questions served to initiate much of the talk in classroom"(p.63). The predominance of IRF pattern in the discourse certainly means that the discourse was teacher-centered. The class, however, was "communicative" only to an extent: probably because the students, albeit and obviously had little comprehension of what they read, were able to get into play by referencing with the epistemic questions of their teacher to recover and generate ideas and inferences, respectively.

CONCLUSION
This discourse analysis that was done to an audio recording transcript of a reading class observation found patterns that are primarily present in some, if not most, DA research literature. Interestingly, the analysis, however, uncovered the following: for teacher's way of questioning (in this case, echoic and epistemic), epistemic questions (mostly, rethorical for this matter), were made reference(s) by the students in answering questions. This was also true with the feedback of the teacher to each and every raised question; another was that schema served as their strategy to both (probably) approaching the text, and as well as during the discussion. Consequently, the lesson or activity became, to some extent, communicative, because of the abovementioned points.
Furthermore, it is put forward that schemata is relatively important in any reading activities, and appropriate and sufficient schema should be given to the students. Aside from that, it should be noted that questions generation should always be in line with the students' level of understanding. However, the level of the students' understanding is not always the issue and we should not let that cloud our thinking. From the analysis above, it will always be best for teachers to teach reading strategies to students so that they will be guided enough whenever they encounter problems along the way. Students who received instruction on reading strategies along with being taught the reading texts proved to be more proficient readers than those who did not (Sattar & Salehi , 2012). Although the given selection was written perhaps in a manner that can be grasped by layreaders, it is important to note that it's still a novel, and aside from its length, syntactic complexity is always present. Possessing linguistic knowledge at sentential level would not suffice, yet necessary; having enough control over different lengths of texts and ability to deal with them applying appropriate strategies to those texts is what the learners need (Ibid.) Finally, it all boils down to the fact that reading teachers should strike a balance between how to read and what to read when teaching reading to students.