Facilitator talk

Facilitation is often proposed as an alternative to the teacher-fronted classroom. However, whilst teacher talk has been linked to the use of the IRF pattern, interactional patterns for facilitator talk have proved to be more elusive. Through the use of naturally-occurring classroom data this paper attempts to define facilitator talk. But, since the facilitative classroom requires that the instructor gives more responsibility to the learner, this implies a freer pattern of interaction in which who says what to whom and when is less constrained. Consequently, facilitator talk cannot be tied down to any one single pattern of interaction. Yet despite this constraint, the paper highlights certain interactional devices which could be described as facilitative.