Previous studies showed that written classroom corpora benefit
preservice language teacher training, and suggested that spoken classroom
corpora may further improve teacher training when written transcripts and
recorded classroom instructor speech are combined. Our study seeks to probe
how classroom corpora might help preservice teachers give lessons and
interact with students in English. We observed the English language spoken
by 25 Japanese college students seeking certification as English language
teachers. We used a pre-post design. In the pretest, each participant gave a
brief practice lesson using materials from a junior high school textbook. Four
other participants took the part of junior high school students. After the
pretest, the participants transcribed and annotated their own speech using
classroom discourse tags. The transcriptions were used for introspection and
instructor critique. Then the participants received lectures on how to control
the classroom and to communicate with students. In the posttest,
participants gave another brief practice lesson to the same audience as in the
pretest. After the practice lessons, participants responded to a survey that
included introspective questions on their teaching performance. We compared
the number of spoken tokens, disfluencies, and feedback interactions found in
the pre and post practice lessons. In the posttest, participants produced more
spoken tokens and follow-up interactions, and improved self-awareness. The
results suggest that preservice English teacher training using classroom
language corpora may help non-native preservice teachers by enhancing their
language fluency in mock English lessons, interactive skills, and follow-up
interactions. Transcribing spoken language may help teachers identify their
strengths and weaknesses.
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