The use of invitations to bid in classroom interaction
Jae-EunPark
Kangnam University
Abstract
This study explores the interactional meaning of an invitation to bid in Korean elementary school EFL classroom interaction by adopting a conversation analytic perspective. The study argues that participants use invitations to bid to indicate that a question elicits knowledge worthy of public demonstration. The analysis of thirteen video-recorded EFL lessons revealed that teachers use invitations to bid, fulfilling instructional agenda or demands whether they are set up at the beginning of an activity or arise midway. Students similarly invite themselves to bid, showing their understanding of the meaning that the practice carries. While teachers overwhelmingly accept students’ self-invitations, they may reject them in light of the details of instructional here and now. It is argued that deciding which student population should reply is a matter of negotiation although teachers have the final say, oriented to consequences of turn allocation on the work of teaching in progress.
Based on the assumption that turn-taking for classroom interaction is a modification of ordinary conversation, extant research has revealed how orderly speaker transition is accomplished through the teacher’s control over who speaks next (McHoul 1978; Mehan 1979; Payne and Hustler 1980). When selecting (a) student(s) to speak next, teachers simultaneously specify how it should be done, using three turn allocational procedures (Mehan 1979): an invitation to bid (requesting that students bid to reply, often through hand-raising), which is the main focus of the present study, along with individual nomination (addressing a question to a particular student) and an invitation to reply (opening up the floor to all students to answer).
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