Rethinking Teacher Third Turns in Thai EFL Classrooms: An Analysis Beyond Feedback

Abstract

Using Conversation Analysis (CA), the study examines a single Thai undergraduate English as a foreign language (EFL) conversation class to explore the interactional work accomplished through the teacher’s third turns within the initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequence. Focusing on naturally occurring classroom interaction, the analysis is situated within Seedhouse’s (2004) four micro-pedagogical contexts, i.e., procedural, task-oriented, form-and-accuracy, and meaning-and-fluency. Adopting CA’s commitment to local logic, emic rationality, and situated action, the study foregrounds how the interactional work of the third turn emerges moment-by-moment in response to students’ prior turns and displayed understandings. The findings show that, unlike much previous research that prioritized a single pedagogical context, the teacher’s third-turn practices recur across the different contexts examined, while their interactional functions vary depending on local pedagogical orientations. Rather than operating as uniform acts of feedback or evaluation, teacher third turns are shaped by unfolding pedagogical contexts. The study concludes by suggesting that future research adopt collective case analysis to examine the extent to which such interactional patterns recur across classrooms and pedagogical settings.