This study analyses examples of classroom discourse, one of the most
important influences on students' experience in schools, in EFL classes.
The central idea of the author's enquiry is to compare classroom
discourse in two secondary schools in two European countries, namely
Austria on the one hand, and Spain on the other hand. The focus of the
study is on EFL classes taught by a team of a non-native speaker teacher
and a native speaker assistant. The purposes of this study are to gain
insights into classroom communication, to compare classroom discourse in
two different countries to see whether culturally specific rules of
classroom communication might apply, and to investigate the contact
situation of two different (if existent) communication strategies in
classroom discourse. Therefore, the study aims to answer the following
research question: Do the cultural modes of classroom communication in
EFL classes (taught by a team of a teacher and an assistant) differ from
each other? The data needed for this study were collected by means of
video-recording; audio-portions were transcribed; and the data was
analysed using methods of Conversational Analysis. The author focuses in
particular on turn-taking, the occurrence of the IRE / IRF sequence and
simultaneous speech, as well as restarts and pauses. The analysis shows
how certain conversational structures, such as simultaneous speech or
the IRE / IRF sequence, work in classroom discourse. The results hint at
different cultural modes of classroom communication, the main
differences concerning the presence of the teacher in the discourse, the
degree of smoothness with which the discourse proceeds and the students'
degree of involvement in communication. Furthermore, the data shows that
different communication strategies are indeed used in classes taught by
a team. Interaction with an assistant might increase students' talking
time and might, if the assistant is given enough freedom, also result in
more fluent student d
