AN ANALYSIS OF FOCUS STRUCTURE IN INSTRUCTION COMMUNICATION BY TEACHERS IN THE CLASSROOM

This study examines the aspects of oral communication in teaching and learning processes in the classroom. Instructions are part of teacher’s oral communication with students in the classroom during the teaching and learning process. Clarity and appropriateness of tone in the teacher s instructions are important to control the classroom and to deliver content to students effectively. This study identifies the teacher s instruction tones by comparing part of suppression or focus in speech. The respondents comprised of students from Year 1 to Year 5 at Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Batu, Batu Pahat, Johor. The study involves Bahasa Malaysia, Mathematics, Science, Kajian Tempatan dan Pendidikan Islam teachers. Incidentally, this paper clarifies the oral communications in delivering instructions by the teacher in the classroom. Definite utterances are recorded during the teaching and learning sessions. Praat system and focused structure model by Van Valin (2005) are used to determine the processes. Consequently, the results show that the teachers use focused structure techniques namely sentence focus, predicate focus and narrow focus in delivering instruction while teaching and learning process occur.