Through the present analysis I compare the two students’
perceptions of the process of teaching/learning a foreign language and the way they articulate their beliefs and ideologies. As a result of the analysis, I hope to gain some insights into the social practices being
experienced by teachers and students in the FL classroom, from the perspective of students, possibly future teachers of English as a foreign language.
I understand that through a transitivity analysis, I will be able to picture how the subjects interpret the roles of learners as well as the teacher’s roles in the FL classroom, and through a mood/modality analysis, I will have some understanding as to these students’ opinions regarding the process of teaching/learning a foreign language.
As a means of facilitating the comprehension of the analysis carried out, personal and evaluative comments regarding FL teaching/learning are in italics with the modal markers in bold. The processes identified as relating to teachers and to students are in blue, while the main participants (Actor, Senser, Sayer and Carrier/Identifier) are in red.
TEXT 1 (student 1)
1. The teacher began the class by asking students a question about their private lives. He
2. asked them what they had done on the weekend. They did not seem interested in
3. answering such a question. They used short phrases like “nothing special” or “I slept”.
4. According to what I have studied about teaching foreign language, this is a strategy:
5. ask about subjects close to students, subjects they know and interest them. Usually
6. things related to their lives: what happened to them on certain occasions, where they
7. went on the weekend, on vacation, on holiday, what they ate for breakfast, and so
8. on. However, sometimes it seems that students feel embarrassed of speaking about
9. their lives, maybe they don't want themselves to be exposed in front of the classroom.
10. It is a additional element of distress students undergo. In order to get them more
11. relaxed, the teacher himself told the students what he had done on the weekend. He
12. said he had been correcting homework during the weekend.
13. As for the discussion about the qualities of a good conversationalist, students became
14. more aware of the skills necessary for being a good conversationalist. Those qualities
15. are pretty much alike whatever la nguage we are discussing about.
People who wants to
16. be good conversationalists should develop the ability to start a conversation, to keep
17. the stream of communication flowing in a steady way, allowing your partner to speak,
18. taking turns and finally to finish the conversation. People involved in a conversation
19. should be sensitive to the reactions of their partners so as not to be rude or
20. inappropriate. The teacher explained differences of pronunciation between American
21. English and British English. It is good that teachers point out the peculiarities of each
22. main variety of English. It is safer for students not to mix up pronunciations of different
23. dialects because there may be misunderstandings due to phoneme switch, for example,
24. father / farther, which sound very alike in British English. On the other hand, winter /
25. winner sound the same in America.
Transitivity Analysis
Table 1: Process types across participants in text 1
Line Participant Process Process Type
1 The teacher began Material
1 / 2 He (the teacher) asked Verbal
2 They (the students) did not seem Relational
3 They (the students) used Verbal
11 The teacher himself told Verbal
11/12 He (the teacher) said Verbal
13 Students became Relational
20 The teacher explained Verbal
As can be seen in table 1, the teacher is addressed in the text 5 times, being inscribed into a material process and thus, as a doer only once; and 4 times as a person whose role is to verbalize his knowledge or to give commands as to what to do in the classroom. These 4 verbal processes seem to reflect the view that this student apparently has regarding the teaching/learning process. It appears that, for him, this process is still based on a hegemonic and patriarchical system, in which the success in the classroom depends mostly (if not only) on teacher talk.
Students are mentioned only 3 times, not as active participants though. They are addressed twice in relational processes, in which they are ascribed as having some attributes, and once in a verbal process, in response to a question posed by the teacher. It seems that this student sees the FL classroom as a passive setting, where things (maybe also learning) happen very slowly or even not frequently. For him, action does not take place in the classroom.
Summing up, it appears that this student sees social relations and social identities in the classroom as rather traditional and, probably, in agreement with his experience as a student throughout his school life.
Aware of the fact that the university is the educational setting which most accounts for criticism and attempts to change (Bakhtin, 1973), it seems that this student, after 4 years at a more ‘equal’ setting in terms of power relations, has not changed much the way he sees the educational environment. The subject position he assumed throughout his school life has become a hard enough burden to endure and fight against.
Additionally, it seems that the discourse and social practices across his schooling have consolidated such a schema of a student’s identity that this student himself cannot deconstruct and get rid of. If this is so, it provides evidence that social practices influence language, which in turn, reinforces social practices.
Mood/modality analysis
Only propositions are present in text 1. More specifically, the clauses have the mood structure of declaratives functioning as statements of information and situating the readers in the role of acknowledgers.
The personal comments made by student 1 relate to his understanding of foreign language teaching. His text provides many considerations which try to link theory and practice. However, this student does not very much commit himself with his propositions.
Conversely, his discourse is highly modalized, as can be seen in table 2.
Table 2: Modalizations in text 1