Discourse Analysis of the Communicative Approaches Used by The Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the communicative approaches used by pre-service teachers in science teaching. For this purpose, a 7-week training program was developed and applied to raise the pre-service teachers’ awareness of dialogic teaching and communicative approach. Before and after this training program, one lesson of each pre-service teacher was video-recorded. These videos were analyzed on the basis of four classes of communicative approach developed by Mortimer and Scott (2003). In line with the purpose of the study, the discourse analysis method was employed to determine the communicative approach used by the pre-service teachers. Moreover, the pre-service teachers were asked to watch their lessons video-recorded before and after the implementation of the training program and to write which communicative approach they used in these lessons and why they used this approach. The findings of the current study revealed that the pre-service teachers mostly preferred the authoritative approach before the training program; yet, after the training program, besides the authoritative approach, they started to use dialogic interaction-based communicative approach in their lessons. Their reasons for using this communicative approach were also elicited.