Getting the right answer and getting the answer right

Asking and answering questions-on the part of teachers and pupils respectively-constitutes one of the central mechanisms of classroom interaction. This paper identifies two general interactive strategies, termed preformulating and reformulating, which, it is argued, are used by infant school teachers in the attempt to facilitate such question-answer exchanges, and hence to get the ‘right answers’ by which, from the teacher's point of view, pupil-competence and teacher-effectivity are reciprocally manifested.