Classroom Talk in Bilingual Class Interaction

This study reveals how the classroom talk was in the bilingual classroom interaction. The classroom talk comprises teacher and pupil talk--in which they cover teacher's explanation, teacher's question, teacher's feedback, and modification to teacher's speech; as well as pupil's responses and pupil's questions. The research findings show that the language option used by the teachers in the bilingual classroom interaction was influenced by several factors, such as (1) teacher's linguistic competence, (2) the views on the roles of the two languages in the bilingual interaction (3) teacher's interpretation on the instructional language use prescribed by the school management, and (4) the teacher's educational background. The research findings on pupil talk show that the pupils generally adjusted their language option in responding to questions as the language used by the teachers in asking questions. Although the questions were translated into their mother tongue, pupils still assumed that the questions were actually in English. Similarly, the pupils strived to adjust the language of their questions as the language used by the teachers in explaining.