Teachers whose lessons are based on communicative language teaching (CLT) (Richards & McCarthy, 2006) or similar approaches are often discouraged from engaging in too much teacher talking time (TTT) for the fear that otherwise, the result might be a lecture. Nevertheless, some of them may not be aware of what or how to critically cope with that. For example, a simple internet search reveals many articles offering teachers exactly this advice, sometimes with specific percentages about the proportion of lesson time that should be taken up with teacher talk. 
 

CLT and Task-based Learning (TBL) (Nunan, 2004) are two methodologies that generally regard TTT as something to be kept to a minimum. The first one has strong leanings towards centering students and many activities using that methodology promote student-student interaction. Likewise, the latter heavily focuses on the interaction between students. In these methodologies, the amount of TTT might equate to a lack of learning opportunities for learners; hence lessons may be regarded as less effective if TTT is deemed high (Paul, 2003:76 (Esfandiari & Knight, 2013:20-21). However, limiting teacher talk runs the risk of  'underestimat[ing] the value of the teacher as both a source of input and an interactional pattern' (Thornbury, 2006:225). In light of these points, this paper proposes a reflective analysis concerning when and how to make sound use of TTT, as the sole reduction of TTT does not amount to an automatic improvement of productivity in a lesson (Hitotuzi, 2005:105)
 

In this paper, we address a series of research questions regarding what teachers think about the amount of TTT they engage in. We draw on qualitative data from an online survey and the transcripts of follow-up interviews of survey participants who consented to a short, semi-structured interview with one of the researchers. In both the survey and the interviews, our main interest is how the participants themselves view the amount of time they spend talking in lessons. We ask them how much they believe their teachers talk during their lessons and whether they are happy with that amount. In addition, we are interested in whether specific lesson stages influence the amount of importance TTT has for the practitioner-participants. We also explore what might have contributed to the formation of the participant's views, including initial teacher education or continuing professional development activities.

This paper will provide an introduction to the rationale behind the use of Conversation Analysis (CA) (Sacks et al., 1974) to explore language classroom interaction for readers new to the field. CA is the systematic analysis of talk produced in everyday human interaction, that is, talk-in-interaction (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). Since its origins in 1960s, the field has expanded tremendously: from telephone calls to video recordings in Multimodal CA (Mondada, 2018) and has made great impact in the way we explore classroom discourse from an interactional perspective.

This paper will first present an overview of the historical development of language instruction comparing both cognitive and socio-interactionist perspectives. It will then introduce CA to readers and will explain its main analytic concepts before exemplifying the kinds of practices that become visible through this approach, such as the temporality of gestural productions and the practices teachers deploy to promote participation. The paper will end with more current perspectives by introducing two teacher training frameworks which have emerged from the application of CA to classroom discourse. 

This article describes connections between positioning theory and willingness to communicate in the context of English language learning. The author analyses the cues in research interviews, adopting the perspective of positioning theory. Interviews were carried out with 8 students during 2020 and 21, for the purpose of researching EFL students' willingness to communicate (MacIntyre, Clement, Dornyei, & Noels, 1998). In this study the interviews are reviewed to explore the patterns of communication between the interviewer and the students in the light of positioning theory. The originators of positioning theory, Van Lagenhove and Harré (1999), identify the following components in any interaction: position, speech and other acts, and storyline. Coding the teacher's cues as “structural", “contextual" or “social" reveals that students are empowered by the use of contextual cues, which build on the students' responses to questions, and social cues, which create friendly feeling (Hazari, Lock, Cass and Beattie, 2015). When the interview transcripts were analyzed according to these cues, the facilitating purpose of “researcher talk", which appeared to dominate the interviews, emerged clearly. This research study shows how positioning theory can help us to understand the dynamics of interaction between a teacher-researcher and students outside class. The author suggests that positioning analysis yields insights which are also helpful for understanding interactions in the classroom. The article concludes with suggestions as to how teachers can leverage this knowledge to understand classroom interaction as well as 1:1 interactions between teacher/researchers and students.