Investigating Teacher Reformulations in EFL Classroom Interaction: An Ecological Perspective

ABSTRACT

As one of the major feedback strategies in language classrooms, teacher reformulations have garnered intense interest from researchers in the field of second language teaching and learning. However, scant attention has been paid to teachers' self-reported intentions and students' perceptions of teacher reformulations. This study aims to identify the intentions of a teacher’s reformulations and the factors influencing how his students perceive these reformulations from an ecological perspective. Drawing on classroom interactions and semi-structured stimulated recall interview data from a Chinese college EFL teacher and his students, this study found that the teacher reformulated students’ utterances for three reasons: (1) bridging the gap between the interlocutor students and the other students in the classroom, (2) providing emotional support for the interlocutor students’ interactive participation, and (3) reinforcing students’ linguistic and content knowledge. However, these intentions might be perceived differently by students. A variety of contextual and individual factors shaped their perceptions. This study emphasizes the necessity of an alignment between teacher reformulations and students’ perceptions. Pedagogical implications are discussed based on these findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Affordance
• classroom interaction
• ecological perspective
• nested ecosystems
• teacher reformulations

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. It is their patience and valuable insights that helped us improve our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Project 211 was a national project initiated by the Chinese Ministry of Education to provide special funding to top universities in China to help them raise their research capabilities and rank among the top world-class universities.

2. A teacher reformulation episode (TRE) is defined as the section of an interactional conversation that includes a student’s utterance and the TR of this utterance.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the the Philosophical and Social Science Research Project of Department of Education of Hubei Province [21Q024]; National Social Science Foundation of China [20AYY015].

Notes on contributors

Zaibo Long

Zaibo Long is an Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Languages in Wuhan University of Science and Technology, China. He holds a doctoral degree in applied linguistics. His research interests include language learner and teacher psychology, and classroom interaction.

Jinfen Xu

Jinfen Xu is a Professor at the School of Foreign Languages in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Her main research interests include instructed SLA and teacher development. She has published more than 190 research articles in many leading academic journals in China and foreign journals as well.