Exploring the Impact of Classroom Interactional Discourse on Preparatory Students’ Oral Production of the Target Language

The current qualitative study aims at discovering the classroom interactional discourse of an English grammar lesson for students at a preparatory level and its impact on students’ oral production of the target language. The ethnographic observation method is employed and a high quality audio-tape recorder is used to gather and analyse the research data. The findings indicate that the “initiation- response- feedback” (IRF) structure is a predominant element during the classroom interactional discourse, and students’ poor oral production during the classroom spoken discourse, as revealed by this study, is attributed to the negative impact of this element among other factors such as the type of teachers’ questions and students’ responses. The study provides some recommendations about the best instructional practices that can be used in the classroom to enhance students’ richer oral production of the target language.