Bringing lecturing back to life: An interactive perspective into university literature classes

Abstract

Lecturing is often seen as an outdated and tedious mode of teaching in university education due to its monologue-style content delivery. However, some lecturers tend to embrace a more interactive approach to ensure a democratic and participatory learning environment, in which students are encouraged to contribute to discussions, problem-solving or critical thinking tasks. This strategy allows participants to interact and cooperate more equally, which levels the power asymmetry between lecturer and students. In the light of this discussion, the data for this study was collected through audio recordings, interviews, observations, and field notes in the English Language and Literature Department at a state university in Turkey. Seven teaching hours were audio-recorded and transcribed with Jeffersonian transcription codes (1984) for an in-depth conversation analysis of classroom lecturer-student and student-student interaction. The data along with complementary information from interviews and notes were also used to identify the interactional architecture of academic lectures. Representative extracts are provided to illustrate how the strategies are put into use and presented in the interaction. This paper thus offers an insight into the interactive lectures and techniques used to make teaching more interactive and cooperative in content-based classrooms, which would potentially be beneficial for lecturers to develop an awareness of their interactional habits and language alternation practices.

Keywords

• Interactive lectures
• content-based classroom
• higher education
• conversation analysis
• translanguaging

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