Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

HISLAM AND CAJKLER 301Filming was followed by interviews recorded between the observer-researcher andtrainee, while watching the recording of the lesson. Immediately after the lesson, thevideo was left with the trainees to identify episodes for discussion in stimulated recallinterviews (SRI).The SRIs were partly modelled on the Leicester SPRINT project (Study of PrimaryInteractive Teaching, reported in English et al., 2002; Moyles et al. 2003) in whichVSRDs (video-stimulated reflective dialogues) were used by tutors and teachers whoacted as co-researchers in the analysis of classroom interaction. On completion of theSRIs, and after a further teaching experience, the four trainees were brought together fortwo hours of Group Review using semi-structured interviews. These explored theirgrammar teaching, asking how they had learned grammar, how they had worked with thegrammar objectives, and what they had learned from other teachers.Each researcher viewed the video evidence independently, transcribing grammarevents in each lesson. We then met, watched the videos and agreed upon the wording oftranscripts. Finally, structured recall and group interviews were transcribed and revisitedso that we could highlight common themes. Below, we report the criticalincidents that trainees identified as particularly important or formative, the episodesdiscussed in SRIs.5.1 Case Study 1: LindaLinda worked on nouns and adjectives, using elicitation routines that depended onmeaning-related understandings of what words do, as the following exchange aboutadjective-noun combinations illustrates:Linda:Pupil:Linda:Pupil:Linda:Pupil:Linda:Pupil:Linda:Pupils:Linda:Did anyone say Bad Bill? We’ve got Simon and Bill – what kinds of wordsare they?They’re names.They’re names, that’s right. Can we use another word?Freaky Fred.Yes, but what sort of name is it?Nickname?Yes, well the whole thing [pointing to Bad Bill] would be anickname,wouldn’t it? What sort of....?A proper noun?Yes, thank you very much. So, this bit here [pointing to the word ‘Bad’] iswhat kind of word?(indistinct noise)And this word here is what we use to describe that noun. And when wedescribe a noun, there’s name for it. A describing word is a ? Anyoneremember from last week?