Thomson Classroom Discourse Competence

Current Issues in Language Teaching and Teacher Education
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-8233-0375-6
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 8, 279 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in English Language Teaching /Augsburger Studien zur Englischdidaktik

In language learning contexts, the role of the language teacher is a particularly crucial one: it is the teacher who, through and with their use of (the foreign) language, has a significant influence on the extent to which language learners are linguistically/cognitively activated, and thus determines whether processes of language learning are initiated and promoted, or perhaps even impeded or prevented. Thus, it is of utmost importance for language teachers to acquire a high level of classroom discourse competence (CDC) - a professional competence that goes far beyond the notions of FL proficiency and communicative competence. Located at the intersection of theory, classroom research and practical approaches to (E)FL teacher education, Classroom Discourse Competence: Current Issues in Language Teaching and Teacher Education offers university students, trainee teachers, in-service teachers and teacher educators a comprehensive conceptualization of CDC (Part I). Furthermore, the chapters in this book explore facets of CDC (Part II) and present good-practice examples of CDC development in the context of pre-service teacher education (Part III).

Dr. phil. Katrin Thomson ist seit 2017 als Akad. Rätin am Lehrstuhl für Didaktik des Englischen an der Universität Augsburg tätig. Ihre Promotion schloss sie an der Universität Jena ab, und nach dem Referendariat arbeitete sie an den Universitäten Münster und Wuppertal. Von 2020 bis 2021 vertrat sie die Professur für Fachdidaktik Englisch an der Universität Regensburg.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thomson, Katrin

Leseproben

Conceptualizing Teachers’ L2 Classroom Discourse Competence (CDC): A Key Competence in Foreign Language Teaching

Katrin Thomson

Existing models of FL teachers’ professional competence mark L2 competence as an important component of language teacher professionalism – along with the different types of professional knowledge as defined by Shulman (1986, 1987). Target language proficiency as such, however, does not automatically enable language teachers to professionally perform the complex discoursal tasks required of them in the L2 classroom. FL teachers also need to develop if interactional and communicative processes in classroom contexts are supposed to be effective and promote student learning. In this chapter, I will first revisit existing conceptualizations of language teachers’ professional competence in order to explain the rationale for expanding and revising those so as to mark CDC not simply as an additional but arguably the most crucial competence in foreign language teaching. I will then present my conceptualization of CDC and – synthesizing the issues discussed here – conclude this chapter with a definition of CDC.

1 Introduction: (Language) Teachers’ Professional Competence

The past ten or so years have seen a marked shift from conceptualizing, assessing and evaluating towards defining and researching – especially within the academic fields of general pedagogy and education (cf. König 2014: 22), but also increasingly so in individual subject domains such as TEFL. This ever-growing interest in teachers’ professional competences is, for instance, reflected in scholarly discussions about how ‘professional competence’ can be defined and conceptualized. Aiming to systematically capture those factors and aspects that shape and influence teachers’ professional competence, generic competence models have been developed (e.g. Baumert/Kunert 2006, Blömeke 2011, Blömeke et al. 2015). These are based on two general notions: (1) ‘Professional competence’ is a highly complex, multidimensional construct. It develops gradually and along a continuum. (2) Teachers’ cognitive resources (i.e. different types of knowledge), affective dispositions (i.e. teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, values etc.) and skills (i.e. teachers’ abilities to strategically and adequately use their intrapersonal resources in specific classroom situations) need to be considered as core dimensions of teacher professionalism (cf. Baumert/Kunter 2006: 481).

There is widespread consensus that teachers’ plays a crucial role in gaining professional competence. Thus, in seeking to further define teachers’ complex professional competence in the school subjects they teach, much attention has been directed to conceptualizing and researching teachers’ and its subtypes. In the scholarly discourse in Germany, Shulman’s (1987) taxonomy with its distinction between content knowledge (CK, ), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK, ) and general pedagogical knowledge (GPK, ) has proven to be most influential in the past few years (see Fig. 1).

Teachers’ Professional Knowledge (based on Shulman 1987)

Here, Shulman’s work has prompted researchers of various academic disciplines to specify (and test) these different knowledge repositories. With regard to TEFL and EFL teacher education, the research projects by Roters et al. (2011), Roters et al. (2013) and Kirchhoff (2016, 2017) are particularly noteworthy as they have made a major contribution to gaining a more precise understanding of what constitutes EFL teachers’ professional . Research along these lines is increasingly developing in Germany (cf. Legutke/Schart 2016: 13).

For a more differentiated and comprehensive exploration of EFL teachers’ professional , however, other components than Shulman’s categories have to be taken into account as well. This includes, first and foremost, teachers’ (CDC) which is considered here as a key competence of foreign language teachers. Going far beyond the mere notion of teachers’ L2 proficiency, CDC denotes language teachers’ competence “to structure and organize classroom discourse through use of the L2 (and other languages) in FL teaching and learning contexts. Language teachers’ (verbal) actions and classroom discourse tasks, then, are carried out purposefully and in ways that promote student learning. Moreover, teachers’ discoursal practices manifest themselves in classroom context-adapted decision-making, which – among other factors – is based on extensive professional knowledge, pedagogic reflections and discourse awareness.” (Thomson, “Introduction”, this volume). Such an understanding of CDC clearly implies that mastering classroom discourse tasks in the foreign language classroom requires more than just general target language proficiency. There is a pedagogical, i.e. professional dimension to CDC, which however has received too little attention in the scholarly discussion so far.

2 Overview: Existing Concepts, Recent Developments and Current Challenges

2.1 Target Language Proficiency vs. L2 Classroom Discourse Competence – Terminological Issues

In scholarly discussions about FL-related dimensions of language teachers’ professional competence, a plethora of different terms and concepts has emerged. These include, among others: teachers’ ‘linguistic skills’, ‘linguistic abilities’, ‘linguistic competences’ (all in Kuster et al. 2014a), ‘classroom interactional competence’ (Walsh 2006 and ff.), ‘target language proficiency’ (Richards et al. 2013), ‘profession-related language competence’ (Kuster et al. 2014a), ‘classroom discourse competence’ (Thomson 2020a), or with regard to publications in German, ‘ (Hallet 2006), ‘’ (KMK 2019), ‘’ (Bleichenbacher et al. 2016), ‘’, ‘ (both in Roters et al. 2013), ‘’ (Roters et al. 2014) and ‘’ (see Thomson, “Introduction” in this volume) – to name but a few. This variety of different labels is an indicator of a certain terminological and conceptual indeterminacy as regards the question of what language-related aspects actually contribute to teachers’ professionalism. After all, terms such as ‘language proficiency’ or ‘linguistic skills’ on the one hand carry different implications than, for instance, ‘profession-related language competence’ or ‘classroom discourse competence’ on the other: the latter denote context-specific professional competences with a clearly marked pedagogical dimension. This dimension, however, is missing from the first two terms (‘language proficiency’, ‘linguistic skills’), as is the aspect of context-specificity, i.e. the context of the language classroom, including its related learning environments beyond those spatial boundaries. Hence, it would be somewhat problematic to use these terms synonymously or to ignore the professional, pedagogical dimension in teachers’ classroom discourse competence altogether.

This however seems to be the case, for instance, in the in Germany (KMK 2019), where only one reference is made – not to FL teachers’ professional classroom discourse competence but – to the level of L2 proficiency that pre-service teachers are expected to have reached by the end of phase 1: “University graduates have acquired in-depth linguistic knowledge [‘’] and ‘native speaker-like’ L2 proficiency [‘‘’ ’]; they are able to maintain this level and constantly refresh their foreign language competence.” (ibid.: 44; translation KT). Apparently, the underlying assumption here is that, from a linguistic point of view, native speaker-like (or C2+) proficiency in the target language is the determining factor for successful or effective teaching. The quoted passage above also suggests that EFL teachers’ preferably ‘native-like’ L2 language use within classroom settings is apparently no different from target language use in everyday real-world communication – or, if this distinction was indeed implied in the above quote, that teacher candidates would somehow automatically be able to (a) recognize these differences and (b) transform general L2 use into “pedagogically processed” language (Widdowson 2002: 77), i.e. the kind of language that is conducive to FL learning in classroom settings, the kind of language that activates learners, the kind of language “which has been pedagogically treated so that it is made less alien and more accessible to learners” (ibid.: 78).

The importance of this ‘professional dimension’ in teacher talk and teacher-navigated classroom discourse has, by and large, been neglected in teacher education programs and in conceptualizations of EFL teachers’ professional competence as well. More than fifteen years...