Clarification requests as a method of pursuing understanding in CLIL physics lectures

Abstract

Using multimodal conversation analysis, this article examines how students strive to resolve non-understandings through requests for clarification during teacher-fronted physics lectures taught in English in Finland. The findings provide new insights on the sequential environments in which students launch the requests (i.e. between or during teacher’s explanation turns) and how different problem categories (e.g. language, conceptual, textual) are made relevant and oriented to in the requests. Moreover, the findings show the role of different textual objects (e.g. inscriptions on the board) in the formulation and resolution of the clarification requests as well as the relevance of students’ note-taking to both their proximal and distal goals of trying to understand the instruction. Overall, the clarification requests are shown to influence in different ways the teacher’s instructional process and offer valuable feedback to the teacher about the success of his explanations, i.e. how students understand them and whether he can proceed with his instructional agenda. Finally, the findings shed new light on how the integration of language and content is oriented to and accomplished by participants during teacher-fronted lectures in content-based lessons taught in a foreign language.

Keywords:

• Non-understanding
• clarification request
• classroom interaction
• CLIL
• conversation analysis
• multimodal resources

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and our editor, Olcay Sert, for their insightful and precise comments that helped us refine the focus of the paper and clarify its contribution to the field.

Notes

1. ‘143. Let us now examine the following kind of language-game: when A gives an order, B must write down series of signs according to a certain formation rule. The first of these series is meant to be that of the natural numbers in decimal notation. – How does he get to understand this notation? – First of all, series of numbers will be written down for him and he will be required to copy them’. (1953, 56).

2. Sert and Walsh (2013) and Sert (2015) examine students’ claims to lack of knowledge in whole-class interaction. Our study complements theirs in that it focuses on students’ non-understandings.

3. Some of the students are more avid note takers than others when it comes to the physics concepts, but they all record the formal statement of the target physics law in their notebooks. This suggests that they share a sense of what instructional content to prioritise for future review.

4. In the physics lessons, the students formulate their orientation to the upcoming exam by asking the teacher whether the subject matter ‘will be on the test’ and when the test will be given.

5. In the latter case, Liisa may be showing a normative orientation to being a good student who should be able to follow the lesson content.

6. Notice how Leena claims understanding by nodding during the teacher’s explanation (l. 91).

7. The talk is inaudible for the transcriber but based on Ilona’s mouth movements, she most likely asks Neea about amplitude.

8. Similarly, Solem (2016b) notes that in full class interactions with secondary school students ‘the teacher’s ratification of the students’ contributions is contingent on the timing of the initiatives’ (745). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for drawing our attention to Solem’s observation.

9. An anonymous reviewer suggested that Ilona’s acknowledgement did claim understanding. However, there is no evidence for an understanding claim in her turn, such as ‘oh (okay)’. The teacher’s subsequent action appears to support this analysis. Arguably Ilona’s clarification request may have located a problem of hearing or note-taking instead of a conceptual problem since the teacher did not write the definition of ‘amplitude’ on the board.