Look at Ur’s list of patterns of interaction below.

Decide whether each interaction is either more student-centred or more

teacher-centred. Justify your answers.
1. Group work 6. Student initiates, teacher answers
2. Closed-ended teacher questioning 7. Full-class interaction
3. Individual work 8. Teacher talk
4. Choral responses 9. Self-access
5. Collaboration 10. Open-ended teacher questioning

Hello dear professor and mates:

Taking previous opinions into consideration, I agree in most of Kristi Marie and Leticia Daicy’s classification regarding
the Ur’s list of patterns of interactions. However, I also consider there are two interactions that can belong to a combined
form as follow:

1) STUDENT-CENTRED: 2) TEACHER-CENTRED. 3) TEACHER AND STUDENT-CENTRED:

 Full-class interaction
 Individual work
 Collaboration
 Group work
 Self-access
 Teacher talk  Open-ended teacher questioning
 Choral responses  Student initiates, teacher answers
 Closed-ended teacher questioning

The first classification is STUDENT-CENTRED because learning environments that follow a student-centred approach are
provided with discourse activities where interactions take place in positive and comfortable spaces. A learner needs:
Individualization to analyze, imagine and create their own activities. Interaction by collaborating and working actively in
groups where they learn and teach each other. Integration to incorporate what they have learned with previous knowledge
and built new meaning. (Moffett & Wagner, 1992) For instance, in Self-access, students select autonomously what they
want to learn and how to learn it by deciding whether they work individually, in pair or groups (Ur, 1996:228).
The second classification is TEACHER-CENTRED because when these typical interactions occur in a more teacher-
centered language classroom, it is observed that he is the leader and authority of the classroom, he stands in the front of the
class and monitors the students’ work while the obedient and passive learners complete the given tasks and follow rules
(Ur, 1996:228) For instance, in Teacher talk there is no initiative in the student, he remains passive and in silence paying
attention to what the teacher is saying while the teacher is the active person who is giving the whole speech (Ur, 1996:228)
The third classification is TEACHER AND STUDENT-CENTRED because both teacher and student participate actively
in the language classroom, interactions are fairly equally in terms of teacher’s dominance and student’s activeness. (Ur,
1996:238) For instance, in Student initiates, teacher answers both teacher and students are thinking, talking and interacting
each other. Although the teacher decides who asks, there is a balance in participation when a student asks a question and
the teacher answers it (Funiber, 2016:5).
Mates, what do you think about my new TEACHER AND STUDENT-CENTRED category? Do you agree with me?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

 MOFFETT, J., & WAGNER, B. J. (1992). Student-centered language arts, K-12. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook
Publishers Heinemann [cited by TEAL, 2008].
 UR, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [cited by Funiber, 2016].
 GARRETT, T. (2008). Student-centered and teacher-centered classroom management: A case study of three
elementary teachers. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 43(1), pp.34-47.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITED SOURCES.

 TEAL (2008) Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy, in TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 6: Student-Centered Learning.
California. American Institute for research, pp.1-3.
 FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on
Practice, Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 04-05.
Greetings to you all:

Having in mind your previous appreciations and regarding Ur’s list of patterns of interactions, I completely agree with
Kristi Marie when she explained the learner’s role in student-centred activities stating that: “Students are the ones
producing the language; they work together or individually… shifting the focus to them and their learning process”. I think,
that a student-centred approach is the most effective to support classroom talk in a language environment. For instance, the
interactional view sees language as communication and vehicle for social transactions between individuals (Funiber,
2016:10) this view is presented in student-centred classrooms when learning process involves relevant content to the
students’ lives taking into account their personal interests, allowing them to be active users of the target language by
interacting with their classmates and teacher to understand, and connect knowledge in order to create meaningful
interactional communication in social contexts. (McCombs & Whistler, 1997). Likewise, the role of the teacher is to
motivate students to be curious, to discover and to learn from each other; the teacher is in charge of designing authentic,
real-life tasks to encourage students’ participation (Weimer, 2002).
Moreover, a student-centred approach could be the most suitable to encourage second language acquisition. Having the
opportunity to use the target language frequently will help the learner to communicate effectively; it is argued that one
learns to speak by speaking (Swain, 1985:248). Bearing this in mind, it is appropriated to mention a hypothesis in which
learner talk is essential: “Scaffolding”, it deals with the collaboration between SL acquirers when one of them helps the
other to produce spoken interactions in the desired L2 and this output is beyond the level of competence in the target
language (Hatch, 1978). This principle can be adapted to all kind of content (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc)
showing that a shift in teacher and students’ roles will benefit the learning process in terms of classroom interactions when
“learner talk” increases.
Finally, I invite you dear classmates to continue this debate with these questions:
 To encourage effective interaction in a language classroom, what do you think is the most suitable approach?
Student-centred, teacher-centred or a combination of both?
 To promote “learner talk” in your classrooms, do you focused on more student-centred or more teacher-centred
activities?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

 FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Introduction”, in Methodological Approaches, Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 10.
 HATCH, E. (1978) Discourse analysis and second language acquisition, in “Second language acquisition: A book
of reading”. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House.
 MCCOMBS, B. & WHISTLER, J. (1997). “The learner-centered classroom and school: Strategies for in-creasing
student motivation and achievement”. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. [cited by TEAL, 2008].
 SWAIN, M. (1985). “Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output
in its development”, S. Gass & C. G. Madden, pp 248 [cited by Funiber, 2016].
 WEIMER, M. (2002). “Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice”. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITED SOURCES.

 TEAL (2008) Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy, in TEAL Center Fact Sheet No. 6: Student-Centered Learning.
California. American Institute for research, pp.1-3.
 FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on
Practice, Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 17.
Hello again dear all:

Now, replying to Helen Brenda Kerr and Katherine Haug’s comments, I understand your points of view regarding my
first post. However, I still keep classifying "open-ended teacher questioning" and "student initiates, teacher answers" as
being both teacher-centred and student-centred. Let me tell you the reasons.
This debate is about deciding whether each interaction is either more student-centred or more teacher-centred all in regards
of Ur’s list of patterns of interactions. First, we must keep in mind the term classroom interaction as the “Spoken interaction
between teacher and student” (Funiber, 2016:4) so the classification must be related to classroom talk which is just one
factor involves in classroom management leaving aside other factors such discipline, corrective feedback, among others.
Second, if we focus on classroom interaction following Ur’s useful summary of patterns, she also uses a code to classify
the forms of interactions based on how active the teacher and students are in their participation. Items are classified from
the most teacher-dominated (1) to the most student-active (10) as follow:
1) “Teacher talk (TT)
2) Choral responses (T)
3) Closed-ended teacher questioning (“IRF”) (T)
4) Open-ended teacher questioning (TS)
5) Student initiates, teacher answers (TS)
6) Full-class interaction (S)
7) Individual work (S)
8) Collaboration (S)
9) Group work (S)
10) Self-access (SS)” (Ur, 1996:238)
We can observe that both “Open-ended teacher questioning” and “Student initiates, teacher answers” are represented in
classroom talk by the code “TS” which means: “Teacher and students fairly equally active” (Ur, 1996:227). This brings us
to the conclusion that both teacher and students have the same level of participation in spoken interactions so these two
patterns of interactions can be classified as Teacher and Student-Centred.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

 FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on
Practice, Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 04.
 UR, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 227-238.

Leidy Fernanda Velasco Vera I understand why you classify "open-ended teacher questioning" and "student
initiates, teacher answers" as being both teacher-centred and student-centred. At first, I had my doubts concerning
those two patterns. "Open-ended teacher questioning" may also be considered as student-centred if you think about
how active students are and the fact that the teacher is not expecting one right answer and it allows students to be
more creative and it encourages divergent thinking. But it is still the teacher who chooses the topics, the kind of
questions and I think that if it were really student-centred students would be able to ask the questions themselves.
As regards "student initiates, teacher answers" I do not think it can be student centred. As they are used in "guesing
games" as Ur (1996) suggests, students have to ask questions concerning a topic that the teacher may have
previously selected and most probably those questions need to have a particular structure. Therefore, the initiative
on part of the learner may be forced and not spontaneous.
Leidy Fernanda Velasco Vera, I agree that there might be some student-centered interactions in “open-ended
teacher questioning” and “student initiates, teacher answers”, but despite this fact, I believe Katherine is right. In
“open-ended teacher questioning” both student and teacher are equally active, but the one controlling and eliciting
the activity is the teacher, thus the task focuses more on the topic and the answers the teacher wants students to
concentrate. In “student initiates, teacher answers”, students and teacher control the trajectory of the talk, but as
Katherine said, students’ spontaneity may be jeopardized in favor of the way the teacher wants the task to be done.

Hello again dear group:

It is exciting that the strategy I used was helpful to foster this debate. After having gone deeper in each of your contributions,
Ángel Timoteo Gómez Uriarte, Kristi Marie Fleck, Leydi Bibiana Celi Daza, Maria de los Angeles Azofeifa Coto,
and Leticia Daicy Plada Sequeira I want to thank you because I really appreciate your interest and the time you spent on
answering my questions, I value each one of your contributions.
I would like to highlight Saira Guadalupe Calix Flores’s input about my third classification where "open-ended teacher
questioning" and "student initiates, teacher answers" can be both teacher-centred and student-centred. You shared Tsegay’s
quotation where he stated that in a student-centred approach, the teacher still have a relevant role inside the classroom
because they are in charge of providing students with all the knowledge and spaces to build their target language (Tsegay,
2015). I find this remarkable because as you said before, the teacher’s role will be essential in both approaches; especially
their spoken interactions. Nunan (1995) identifies the importance of focusing on teacher talk “not only for the organisation
of the classroom but for the processes of acquisition” (p. 189). On the one hand, depending on the way of using the language,
teachers can succeed or can fail in their classroom management; on the other hand, teacher talk is considered the foremost
source of comprehensible input that students receive and based on this, learners will succeed to communicate effectively.
To sum up, I believe that what is really important in any of the two approaches are the decisions we will eventually make
based on some features like the quantity of teacher talk, modifications in our speech, the questions we ask, and the corrective
feedback we give to learners. All in all, how will the "teacher talk" benefit the students' learning process? (Funiber, 2016:
9)
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:
FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on Practice,
Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 09
NUNAN, D. (1995). “Language Teaching Methodology”. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, pp. 189. [cited by Funiber,
2016].
TSEGAY, S. (2015). “Students’ Experience in Student-Centered Learning at Higher Education Institutions in China: A
Case Study” in EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies, Vol.7(2), pp.135-146.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CITED SOURCES.
FUNIBER (2016) “Chapter 1: Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on Practice,
Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 09.

Re: CM: Group 1

by Paula Ximena Vivanco Araujo - Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 12:22 AM

Hello again dear all,

Now, replying to Eukene Alonso Carral's post, I agree that sometimes a teacher-centered classroom can be
beneficial for certain objectives, for example to promote self-confidence through a non-competitive environment for
students who might feel constrained to participate because of their personal characteristics or learning styles in a
learner-centered classroom due to its inherent nature (Burns and Goldie, 2000:9). Additionally, I personally believe
that the point "classroom is quiet" in the chart that Eukene has attached, could be helpful for teachers that are
dealing with discipline problems. It may be easier to control a crowd of inattentive teenagers, for instance, through
the use choral responses, closed-ended teacher questioning or teacher talk rather than by learner-centered
activities.
Nonetheless, I have to say other than those cases, I believe that a learner-centered classroom is the best to
promote second language acquisition. This is supported by multiple authors. For instance, the scaffolding
concept - related to the zone of proximal development theory, about which I talked about in my last post - clearly
shows how collaboration or group work can help weaker students to construct more complex structures by using the
input of stronger learners, which might stick to the weaker students' interlanguage (Funiber, 2016: 18).
Also, Swain's Output Hypothesis, states that "learning takes place when a learner encounters a gap in his or her
linguistic knowledge of the L2. By noticing this gap, the learner becomes aware of it and may be able to modify his
output so that he learns something new about the language." (Swain and Lapkin, 1995: 371). This means that the
more the student has the chance to talk in the classroom, the more opportunities for learning he/she will have, rather
than by just listening to the teacher or answering questions. We can promote learner talk " by putting them
(students) into pairs or small groups and getting them to talk to each other" Scrivener (1994: 59).
In conclusion, as far as I can see, the best way to support our students' learning process of the L2 is to plan a
lesson in which there are more learner-centered activities, and resort to teacher-centered techniques only if it is
completely necessary, as in the cases I pointed out. A learner-centered classroom is the basis of all communicative
approaches to which, due to their proven benefits for L2 acquisition, we should be abiding.
Do you agree with me, dear classmates? Do you think there might be more situations where teacher-
centered activities would be useful? Or do you think a learner-centered classroom is almost always better,
as I do?
References

 BURNS, A. and GOLDIE, A. (2000) The Advantages and Constraints of Teacher-Centred and Learner-Centred
Approaches. A Pilot Study From Business and Management Education. Bristol: Bristol Business School
Teaching and Research Review, pp. 9 Available at
https://www.academia.edu/8788121/The_Advantages_and_Constraints_of_Teacher-Centred_and_Learner-
Centred_Approaches?auto=download [Retrieved: 16 April 2019]
 Funiber (2016b) “Classroom Talk”, in Classroom Management - Techniques and Reflections on Practice,
Barcelona: Funiber, pp. 18.

 SCRIVENER, J. (1994) Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching. (3rd edition –
2011). Oxford: Macmillan Education, pp. 59.
 SWAIN, M. and LAPKIN, S. (1995). Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: A step
towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics, pp. 371.

Re: CM: Group 4

by Kristi Marie Fleck - Sunday, 14 April 2019, 5:43 PM

TASK 1
With student-centered activities, “knowledge is co-constructed by the teacher and students rather than transmitted
directly by the teacher” (Garrett, 2008, p.34). Based on that definition, I believe that the patterns of interaction from
Penny Ur’s list should be separated in the following way:
STUDENT-CENTERED TEACHER-CENTERED
· group work · student initiates/teacher answers
· individual work · open-ended teacher questioning
· collaboration · close-ended teacher questioning
· full-class interaction · choral responses
· self-access · teacher talk

In the teacher-centered activities, the teacher is the main point of focus in the classroom, leading the students to the
answers he/she desires. The educator transmits all of the information and the students repeat that information or
provide the answer that the teacher wants. Open-ended questioning and student initiates/teacher answers seem as
though they should be student-centered, however, I personally see the teacher in these activities as the primary
source of knowledge, therefore making them teacher-centered. In open-ended questioning, students can provide
many correct answers, but the teacher is still the one who determines if those answers are correct. With student
initiates/teacher answers, the students create and ask the questions, but “the teacher decides who asks” (Ur, 1996,
p. 228), thus giving him/her the power or control in the classroom.

In the student-centered activities, the students are the ones producing the language; they work together or
individually to develop conclusions, debate topics, and/or have the freedom to choose what they want to learn or
study, effectively shifting the focus to them and their learning process.

Garrett, T. (2008). Student-centered and teacher-centered classroom management: A case study of three
elementary teachers. Journal of Classroom Interaction,43(1), 34-47.

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Re: CM: Group 4

by Leticia Daicy Plada Sequeira - Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 12:50 AM

Task 1
I completely agree with Kristi Marie Fleck regarding the classification of the activities: group work, individual work,
collaboration, full class interaction and self- access are student-centered activities and closed–ended teacher
questioning, choral responses, student initiates, teacher answers, teacher talk and open-ended teacher questioning
are teacher-centered.
As Kristi stated, in a teacher–centered approach the teacher is more active than the students, making them more
passive.
According to Nunan (2015) “In a learner-centered classroom, learners take responsibility for their own learning.” In
all the above mentioned activities (group and individual work, collaboration, full class interaction and self-access),
students have an active role on their learning as well as they are more autonomous. What is more, these types of
activities make students to be more engaged on learning and promote motivation.
In contrast, when the teacher asks questions to students (open or closed) as well as choral response and teacher
talk, the role of the teacher is more prominent than the students’ one. They do not have any decision on their
learning.
Although the activities where students initiate and teacher answers empowered the learners a little more, they are
not completely student-centered activities as “the teacher answers and it is the one who decides who answers”
Penny Ur (1996:228).

Reference:
Nunan, David “Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages”. Routledge 2015 New York
Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.