Pre-Service Efl Teachers’ Interactional Resources for Resolving Troubles: A Micro Analysis

Abstract

Micro-teaching in teacher education has attracted attention for many years because of its convenience in terms of providing a controllable teaching environment and instant feedback for pre-service teachers. However, the gap between real teaching practice and micro teaching specifically for classroom interaction has not been widely questioned by the researchers. Therefore, this study aims to compare classroom interaction in two settings, regarding the use of interactional resources by pre-service teachers (PST) to resolve interactional troubles. The study adopts conversation analysis to investigate the sequential patterns of interactional resources and trouble indicators. Data consists of two sets of video recordings of 40 PSTs: (1) micro-teaching practices at a state university and (2) real teaching practices at a preschool in Türkiye. The data analysis reveals that the significant trouble indicators in real teaching practice are the lack of orientation in the teacher’s instruction, silence, and student’s repetition of teacher’s utterance. However, the student’s wrong answer is the most significant indicator in the context of micro-teaching practice. In terms of interactional resources, while certain interactional resources like embodied action and teacher repetition are present in both contexts, their frequency is notably lower in micro teaching. Moreover, code-switching and simplified instruction occurs in only the real teaching context. This study underscores the significance of classroom interaction and Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC) by elucidating differences in trouble indicators and interactional resources between micro-teaching and real teaching, aiming to increase PSTs' awareness of CIC to create more learning opportunities for learners in TEYL context.