WILLIAM W. WILEN
Kent State University

The primary focus of this article is to review the current literature on instructional conversations and describe how it can be implemented in ESL classrooms. Information on instructional conversation is drawn primarily from three reports issued over the past three years by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning whose headquarters is at the University of California, Santa Cruz. These reports operationalize the theory, research, and practice of this instructional method (Tharp and Gallimore 1991; Goldenberg 1991; Rueda, Goldenberg and Gallimore 1992).

There is a saying well-known to educators that can be interpreted to express the extent students are interactive with the teacher, content and each other in the classrooms "Tell me, I forget; show me, I remember; involve me, I understand." Teachers tell students by presenting information through one-way communication. Students are expected to passively absorb what the teacher, text, or audiovisual aid, such as the television, has to offer. Lecture and demonstration are labels characterizing this instructional approach. Teachers show students by using examples and illustrations and, more importantly, for students to show the teacher, they use review and drill/practice procedures. In this two-way communication situation students are expected to answer questions that display their knowledge of the basic facts and use of skills. The label of recitation is generally applied to this instructional approach. Teachers involve students by making connections between them and the content, teacher and each other in highly interactive, three-way communication situations. Students are expected to think about what they have read, heard or experienced and use extensive language expression as they respond to questions, make comments or ask questions of their own. Discussion, or the most recent interpretation of this familiar approach - instructional conversation - is the instructional approach used to achieve these communicative-learning goals.

While lecture and recitation, in one form or another, are the instructional methods teachers have relied on at all grade levels in all subject areas since the beginning of time, genuine classroom discussion is a rarity. In other words, teachers have done a lot more telling and have had students show them what they know, more than they have involved them in thoughtful discourse. Although many teachers will argue that they use discussion, research is very clear that the emphasis of their questions is on having students recall basic information within the standard teacher-question students-response interaction format - the two classic characteristics of recitation. While discussion is advocated by practically every educational theorist as the method to engage students' higher level thinking about the content being taught and to use extended expression, few teachers apply it successfully in their classrooms. Why is recitation so popular among teachers? If discussion is so good, why don't more teachers use it? What's so different about instructional conversation and why might ESL teachers be more willing to use them in their classrooms?

The primary focus of this article is to review the current literature on instructional conversations and describe how it can be implemented in ESL classrooms. Information on instructional conversation is drawn primarily from three reports issued over the past three years by the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning whose headquarters is at the University of California, Santa Cruz. These reports operationalize the theory, research, and practice of this instructional method (Tharp and Gallimore 1991; Goldenberg 1991; Rueda, Goldenberg and Gallimore 1992). A summary of the Goldenberg (1991) report can be found in an ERIC Digest issue published through the Center for Applied Linguistics (Instructional Conversations 1992). Additionally, two other articles by the report authors elaborate on how staff development was used to implement instructional conversations (Goldenberg and Gallimore 1991; Saunders, Goldenberg and Hamann 1992). Collectively the reports and articles suggest a well-conceived theoretical base for instructional conversations and procedures as to how they can be implemented in ESL classrooms. Research support is in the developmental stage. The strength of these reports and articles, though, is that the information provided on instructional conversation has evolved from the collaborative effort of university consultants and classroom teachers working together in one school district with language minority children over the past several years. Specifically, the reports are based on a team effort in an almost exclusively Latino metropolitan Los Angeles elementary school populated with largely bilingual and/or limited-English-proficient students. The team teachers taught first and second language learning lessons. The ideas and practices of instructional conversations work because they are reality-based.

What is Recitation?

In order for ESL teachers to be able to fully evaluate the potential of instructional conversations for their classrooms, an understanding of why recitation is so heavily used and why discussion is infrequently used is important. The commonality of recitation and discussion is that they both have as their purpose involving students in interaction to achieve educational goals. Teacher questions and student responses also play an important part in both methods. Further analysis indicates, though, that they are worlds apart. As the most dominant form of oral discourse in classrooms, recitation is characterized by the very familiar teacher initiation-student response-teacher evaluation interaction pattern (Bellack 1966; Stodolsky 1981). Teachers dominate this interaction cycle with their questions and students dominate with their answers. The cycle is completed when the teacher follows students' responses with acknowledgment or praise. Recitation is used by teachers primarily to review material to see if students know it. The emphasis is on recalling facts requiring memory-level thinking. As an instructional method, though, recitation with its high frequency of questions, is very effective in achieving learning gains related to factual information (Good and Brophy 1991).

Why is Recitation so Popular?

Recitation has persisted in classroom because of the continuous need for the teacher to reaffirm academic and managerial authority. The teacher initiation-student response-teacher evaluation interaction pattern helps control the development of the topic, the allocation of turn taking with students, and the evaluation of their responses. During recitation, the teacher holds most of the speaking rights and controls the flow of talk often with groups of 25-35 students, many of whom are reluctant learners (Wilen 1991). The major problem with recitation is that it results in limited opportunities for students to think, explore ideas in depth, express feelings and, most importantly for ESL classrooms, to use language. A steady stream of teachers' low level questions, for which they already know the answers, and students' often one to two word responses results in a highly controlled, anti-intellectual and anti-expressive classroom atmosphere. Another problem is that ethnographic research has shown that culturally different students from the majority culture sometimes have difficulty in participating in the teacher initiation-student response-teacher evaluation interaction pattern (Wilen and White 1991).

What is Discussion and How is it Different from Recitation?

Cazden (1988: 53), in her analysis of classroom discourse, noted that the recitation interaction pattern is a default pattern - "that happens unless deliberate action is taken to achieve some alternative." One alternative is discussion and a particularly viable alternative for ESL classrooms is the instructional conversation form of discussion. The interaction pattern or discussion is different from recitation because it is more varied with the flow of questions, answers and comments moving from teacher to students, from students to teacher and between students. In this way discussion assumes more of the characteristics of a conversation. There is naturally less teacher talk and more student talk. The pace is slower with both teacher and student utterances becoming longer because more thought and language expression is involved. Questioning is also different because students also ask questions. The questions are more open and divergent at the higher cognitive levels with answers that are generally not predictable (Wilen, 1990).

The strength of discussion over other methods is its potential to encourage students to reflect on an issue or problem, for example, and use oral expression to transform thoughts into words. While some methods can stimulate thought (including lecture) and others can stimulate oral expression' (such as recitation) few methods combine both essential attributes of effective instruction. As an instructional method, discussion is designed to encourage students' critical thinking and is conducted by a leader(s) who usually is the teacher but may be a student(s). But the essential ingredient in discussion is the interactive nature of conversation because it literally links the discussion components together. Conversation gives discussion character because it transforms a method that can be mechanical and controlling into a cooperative venture of a teacher and students mutually sharing thoughts and feelings (Wilen 1990). In addition, discussion as an instructional method is very effective in achieving a wide variety of general learning outcomes particularly those associated with general subject matter mastery, problem solving ability, moral development, attitude development and change, and communication skills (Gall and Gall 1990). It is one of the most versatile teaching methods.

Why isn't Discussion Used by More Teachers?

One very large study involving 1000 elementary and secondary classrooms across the United States conducted by Goodland and his associates (1984), concluded that genuine discussion was used for 4-7% of the time. Gall (1985), in his review of the literature on discussion concluded that the infrequent use of discussion in classrooms was due to several key factors: emphasis of the school curriculum on the acquisition of facts and skills; large size of teachers' classes which make the accommodation of discussion more difficult; teachers' reluctance to deal with issues, attitudes, and values that might upset the community and teachers' fear that their authority and control over instruction might be relinquished during discussion. Another major reason he listed was echoed by others: teachers' and students' lack of training in the techniques of discussion (Gall 1985).

Learning how to conduct discussion is absolutely essential because it is a difficult method to implement in the classroom. Klinzing and Floden (1990: 175) in their review of the literature on learning how to moderate discussions concluded that the "… difficulty of using this method may explain the scarcity of good instructional discussion." They go on to explain that one of the problems is that discussions are highly complex in comparison with other methods because students play a greater role in determining the instructional content and process. While it appears that the problems with using discussion in the classroom can be overwhelming, successful discussions are being conducted in some classrooms because teachers have been taught to organize and facilitate successful discussions. Effective staff development programs are essential in increasing the probability that teachers will develop the necessary disposition, knowledge and skills to use discussion. In turn, they can pass these on to their students. The primary reason why the instructional conversation form of discussion has such potential to be an effective instructional method is because of the design of and extent of inservice preparation.

What are Instructional Conversations?

Instructional conversations, as described in the reports, are "...discussion-based lessons geared toward creating …opportunities for students' conceptual and linguistic development" (Goldenberg 1991: 8). Goldenberg (1991: 1) elaborating on instructional conversations states they "... focus on an idea or a concept that has educational value as well as meaning and relevance for students. The teacher encourages expression of students' own ideas, builds upon students' experiences and ideas, and guides them to increasingly sophisticated levels of understanding." He suggests further that conversations that encourage thought might be particularly beneficial for language minority students since many do not receive opportunities to reflect and use higher level language expression at school. "By providing students with opportunities to engage in interactions that promote analysis, reflection, and critical thinking, instructional conversations suggest a way to help redress the imbalance of a curriculum that is heavily weighted towards skill and knowledge acquisition" (Goldenberg 1991:6). Support for movement away from formal exercises and drilling was voiced by Trim (1992) when he identified, as a significant trend in modern language teaching methodology, the need to encourage dialogue between teachers and students as a means to pursue students' concerns and feelings. Garcia (1986: 721), in his review of the research concluded that. "... effective second-language learning is best accomplished under conditions that stimulate natural communicative interactions and minimize the formal instruction of linguistic structures, such as memorization drills and learning grammatical rules".

What are the Theoretical Roots of Instructional Conversations?

The theoretical roots of instructional conversations come primarily from the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky (1978) who emphasized the essentialness of language in intellectual development and how language is naturally "taught" in the home and community. This natural instruction includes the teaching of higher-level cognitive and linguistic skills. Another major tenet of Vygotsky's philosophy is that instruction should be focused on assisting and supporting students to move from one developmental zone to another. The "zone of proximal development" is the range of knowledge and skills that students can learn with assistance from their teacher. The teacher's role is to continually challenge students within their zones to move to understanding and eventually to function independently. This is where instructional conversation plays an important part because the teacher helps students construct understandings, concepts, solutions to problems, and other important ideas (Goldenberg 1991; Tharp and Gallimore 1991).

The report authors' commitment to Vygotskian theory is evident in their definition of teaching: "assisting performance through a child's zone of proximal development" (Tharp and Gallimore 1991: 7). They also identify a variety of ways drawn from behavioural and cognitive science for teachers to assist performance:

1. Modeling : behavior is offered for imitation.
2. Feeding back : information is provided on performance.
3. Contingency management : application of the psychological principles of reinforcement and punishment.
4. Directing: requests for specific action.
5. Questioning : assisting the learner in producing a mentaloperation.
6. Explaining : providing direct explanations.
7. Task structuring : structuring a task into or from components (Tharp and Gallimore 1991).

What are the Essential Components of Instructional Conversations?

Instructional conversations are comprised of instructional and conversation elements which serve as the basis for applying this method in language classrooms:

Instructional elements -

1. Thematic focus : basis for the discussion.
2. Activation and use of background and relevant schemata: preparation of students to understand new knowledge and preparation for the discussion.
3. Direct teaching : use of alternative teaching methods (such as lecture and recitation), if necessary, in the context of the theme to assist students' understanding.
4. Promotion of' more complex language and expression : use of a variety of questioning and non-questioning techniques to promote thinking and language development.
5. Promotion of bases for statements and positions students are regularly encouraged to explain, support and defend their statements, hypotheses, positions and arguments.

6. A challenging but non-threatening atmosphere : the successful creation of' a "zone of proximal development" in which the teacher is a facilitator and a collaborator in the discussion.
7. Responsivity to student contributions : the teacher recognizes and builds upon students' levels of understanding and relevant contributions to the discussion.
8. Promotion of discussion : use of few "known answer" questions around the discussion theme.
9. Connected discourse : the lesson is characterized by many interactive and connected conversation turns that build upon and extend previous ones all related to the theme under discussion.
10. General participation, including self-selected turns the use of a variety of techniques to encourage all students to participate; speaking turns are relatively equal (Rueda, Goldenberg and Gallimore 1992).

How Does Questioning Influence Instructional Conversations?

The driving force operationalizing most of these instructional and conversational elements is the questions teachers and students ask and the questioning and nonquestioning techniques employed primarily by teachers to encourage critical thinking and language expression. Brook (1986: 47), in interpreting the work of Long (1982) for her review of research, concluded that because the conversational contest is very helpful in producing fluent bilinguals in developing nations. "... questions may be a crucial input feature fostering development of second language abilities." The authors of the reports devised an instrument to help teachers analyze their use of instructional conversations in the classroom. The IC Rating Scale incorporates a fairly extensive description of each of the ten instruction and conversation elements along with scoring criteria for each. Of particular interest is the extent attention is paid to different types of questions, questioning and nonquestioning techniques since it is assumed these linguistic devices are the backbone of instructional conversations.

According to the authors of the reports, the questions most appropriate for instructional conversations are those that are "discussion generating" and those that facilitate responsiveness to students' current level of understanding. While there are several references to questioning techniques, the only reference to a type of question that teachers should ask during instructional conversations is multiple answer questions, or "... questions for which ... there might be more than one correct answer," and that there should be "few known answer questions." Specific reference to questioning techniques include probing questions, or invitations to students to expand their answers and support their positions, and wait time, or the pause after a question is asked before a student response is given. The nonquestioning technique of using restatements, or a teacher restating what a student has just said, is also suggested as an elicitation technique to promote more complex language and expression (Rueda, Goldenberg and Gallimore 1992). From my point of view, though, it would seem that teachers considering using instructional conversations in their classrooms, need more specific information on discussion generating questions and questioning/nonquestioning techniques that could be employed to increase the probability that students will think and get involved.

What are some Suggestions about Questioning for Teachers?

The general and ESL research literature on questions, questioning and nonquestioning techniques suggests other possibilities that might contribute toward effective instructional conversations. Christenbury and Kelly (1983) proposed using their Questioning Circle idea to suggest a variety of question possibilities. Two of the areas, and their intersections, seem particularly appropriate for instructional conversations because they encourage critical thinking by connecting students' personal reality to the content and further expanding the content to include a broader, more worldly view that they call external reality. Brock (1986) advocated using referential questions, or questions that request information not known to the questioner, in ESL classrooms since her study found that teachers using these questions instead of display (known answer) questions got significantly longer and more syntactically complex student responses. Use of the term "referential" seems better suited than "questions for which there might be more than one correct answer." Correct answer questions are generally low convergent (knowledge) level "right" answer questions which are a primary characteristic of recitations, not instructional conversations (Wilen 1991).

Dillon (1988) and Hunkins (1989) urge that teachers encourage students to generate their own questions during discussions to stimulate their own thinking and involvement. Dillon (1988) argued for substituting multiple alternatives to teacher questions including a variety of statement forms: a teacher stating the thought that occurred to her/him, stating what s/he is interested in hearing more about, stating the relationship between what the student has just said and what a previous student has said, or repeating, paraphrasing or characterizing what a student has just said. In a research study, Dillon (1981) found that nonquestionmg alternatives resulted in more student talk, more student-student interaction, and more student questions. His other alternatives are wait-time, student questions and teacher signals that communicate that the teacher is attending to what the student is saying. A final suggestion is to emphasize the wait time can make an important contribution to instructional conversations - not just the pause after asking a question but, more importantly according to research, the pause after a student has responded before the teacher or another student makes a comment or asks a question. Wait time is one of the most thoroughly researched and influential questioning techniques (Rowe 1986; Tobain 1987). For example, Rowe (1987) found, after teachers had been trained to increase their wait time from 1 second to 3-5 seconds after asking a question and particularly after a student's response, that the lengths of students' responses increased, responses reflected higher level thought, failures to respond decreased, student-student interaction increased, and the frequency of student questions increased. These all appear to be highly desired interaction characteristics of instructional conversations.

How Can Teachers be Trained to use Instructional Conversations in their ESL Classrooms?

The good news is that teachers can be trained to conduct instructional conversations, teachers have implemented them in their classrooms and their works; the bad news is that it takes time and effort. One of the problems the authors of the reports found is that there were no explicit models for implementing the instructional conversation form of discussion in classroom settings. Another problem is the teachers generally have not had the learning experiences to acquire the teaching skills required to conduct instructional conversations. Because these problems had to be resolved in order to operationalize the idea with teachers, one of the authors entered into an extended collaborative relationship with a team of teachers in an almost exclusively Latino metropolitan Los Angeles school. The district uses the transitional bilingual educational model. Eighty percent of the district's students begin their academic instruction in Spanish and then make the transition to English generally between the third and fifth grade depending on when they begin school and their progress in both Spanish and English. Over a period of one year the team of K-2 teachers met with the author to learn about instructional conversations, practice implementing them in their classrooms, analyzing videotapes of their performances and discussing ways to improve. The staff development approach that evolved as the author worked with the teachers was based on the principles underlying the idea of' an instructional conversation. In other words, instructional conversations became the means for staff development as well as one of its goals as the teachers slowly developed the expertise to conduct this form of discussion.

What are the Components of an Effective Staff Development Program
on Instructional Conversations?

How can a similar staff development program be organized in which teachers can participate to operationalize the idea of instructional conversations? The authors point out it is not possible to accomplish the goals associated with instructional conversations with "quick-fix" or "one-shot" workshops. What is needed is teachers and consultants working together to "...create contexts in teachers' work lives that assist and sustain meaningful changes (Goldenberg and Gallimore, 1991: 69). It is within this familiar context that teachers can identify and solve problems, engage in careful and extensive examinations of their teaching, and determine the extent of progress. The essential element is that staff development, "... must be grounded in the mundane but very real details of teachers' daily work lives..." (69).

Based on the authors' research on staff development contexts in Hawaii and California, the following guidelines are recommended for teachers to learn how to operationalize instructional conversations:

1. Opportunities must be provided for colleagues and a skilled consultant to meet for an extended period explicitly to learn how to implement instructional conversations in the classroom. These meetings should be focused on teachers' perceived needs directly related to instructional conversations. Goals and a timeline should be established to be the focal point of the group's work.
2. Learning how to implement instructional conversations should be intellectually stimulating and this can be accomplished by acquiring a conceptual understanding of instructional conversation as well as learning associated techniques. Knowing various dimensions of the subject matter content to be discussed in lessons is essential if teachers are to be responsive to students' ideas and students are to derive meaning.
3. Videotaping instructional conversational lessons and providing teachers opportunities to review and analyze their performances is essential for teachers to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. The process of self- and shared-analysis may take as much as one to two years of intensive work (Goldenberg and Gallimore 1991).

Summary And Conclusion

Another well-known saying to educators is, "No one ever said teaching was going to be easy!" This seems especially appropriate for teachers who are seriously considering implementing instructional conversations in their classrooms because of the commitment involved.

Little has changed in the way teachers interact with students in classroom. The forced, controlling and unnatural recitation pattern predominates in classroom discourse. The authors of the reports suggest that a more natural way to encourage students to perform just beyond their capacities is to involve them in instructional conversations. Instructional conversations are discussion-based lessons that create opportunities for students to think critically and develop linguistically. They are, further, dialogues "...between teacher and learners in which the teacher listens carefully to grasp the students' communicative intent, and tailors the dialogue to meet the emerging understanding of the learner" (Tharp and Gallimore 1991: 1). It is through the process of conversation that students assume more responsibility for their own learning as they construct new understandings about the world around them. The teacher's role is to prepare them for this effort: "To truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to teach" (Tharp and Gallimore 1991: 8).

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