A STUDY ON THE INTERACTION PATTERN OF AN INDONESIAN BILINGUAL CLASSROOM
Nanik Retnowati

Universitas Ibn Khaldun Bogor

Abstract

Bilingual education has provided the evidence to improve not only students^ content knowledge but also their language performance. This ethnography of communication design study is investigating teacher-student interaction pattern in an Indonesian elementary school implementing bilingual education. The aims are to find the pattern and get the description about what the teacher and students are doing in the interaction. Teacher and students^ utterances are the main data which are recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Lemke^s concept on triadic dialog IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) and IRF (Initiation -Response-Feedback) is used to identify the interaction patterns. Each element of the pattern was analyzed using Flanders Interaction Analysis Categori (FIAC) and speech act approach to classroom discourse analysis. The study found three pattern- namely IRF,IRE, and Non-IRF/IRE. Teacher was doing many acts in Initiation such as questioning, suggesting, and instructing. Students^ positive and negative responses are realized in different acts. Feedback was performed ranged from once to seven times feedback in one unit analysis which implies a meaning negotiation process. This study also features an illustration on teacher-student effort in achieving both content and language knowledge in a specific discourse type, a bilingual classroom. The findings exhibit that teacher-student interaction is systematic. Further study should try to make a controlled experiment for optimal interaction which can be applied by language education practitioners in any different setting.

Keywords: bilingual education, classroom interaction, interaction pattern

Topic: Education