Teacher Discourse and Student Participation in English and Igbo Reading Comprehension: A Comparative Classroom Study

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines classroom interaction in reading-comprehension lessons conducted in English and Igbo. Its purpose is to examine the discourse features employed by teachers in lesson delivery in both languages and to determine how these features enhance active participation among students. It further examines the similarities and differences in these discourse features across the two languages, with attention to their distinct linguistic characteristics. Ten class sessions were conducted in each language, amounting to twenty sessions in total, using comprehension passages translated from English into Igbo so that the same content was administered to the students in both languages. The classroom interactions were subsequently recorded and transcribed orthographically for analysis. The Igbo classroom interactions were rendered into English in two ways, literally and conventionally, to illuminate the linguistic distance between the two languages in naturalistic classroom use. The study adopted Sinclair and Coulthard's (1992) model of discourse analysis, which provides a structured framework for examining classroom interaction at multiple hierarchical levels. Social constructivism served as the theoretical framework for the study. The findings indicate that the discourse features employed by the teachers, including bound initiation, checks, and clues, contributed to active student participation in both English and Igbo reading-comprehension sessions. Furthermore, the discourse features identified were found to serve similar functions across both languages. However, the Igbo interactions were linguistically distinct from the English ones, marked by greater verbosity, circumlocution, and cultural influence on language use.