Rapport Building in Language Instruction: A Microanalysis of the Multiple Resources in Teacher Talk

Abstract

Current guidelines on teacher – student rapport, while providing helpful suggestions, fail to address the question of how rapport building can be achieved in contextualised classroom interaction in which a balance needs to be reached between rapport and instructional tasks. Using discourse analysis informed by a conversation analytic approach and bringing in the notions of face (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and participation framework (Goffman, 1981), this paper examines in close detail how rapport is concretely accomplished in the moment-to-moment interaction of one ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) grammar class. The teacher is found to use various interactional resources that allow him to simultaneously orient to the immediate instructional tasks and the social and interpersonal dimension of the interaction with the students. Microanalysis of one calling-to-attention sequence, two correction sequences, and one summarisation sequence shows that the teacher strategically interweaves rapport building into instruction in order to facilitate the instructional tasks at hand. The teacher also successfully engages students' co-participation in creating and maintaining rapport. This analysis offers insights into the social processes in the language classroom, as well as suggests practical pedagogical implications.

Keywords:

• rapport
• teacher – student relationship
• language teaching
• teacher talk
• classroom discourse