Talking like teachers: Teacher and pupil discourse in Botswana primary classrooms

This paper discusses the role of teacher‐talk in Botswana primary schools. There is overwhelming evidence that pupils’ contributions are outweighed by those of their teachers. Even when teachers make a conscious effort to increase the pupils’ opportunities for participation, this is constrained by frontal teaching and teaching through the medium of English. The outcome is that the foreign medium forces the teachers to put emphasis on education as a product rather than a process. The paper advocates the development of a genuinely bilingual model of education in which both teachers and pupils will make full use of their linguistic resources.