Exploring the Assumptions that Underlie Knowledge Elicitation in Classroom Interaction

From a conversation analytic perspective, this paper explores the assumptions underlying the elicitation of knowledge display, in particular relation to an elicitation method. It begins with the classification of elicitation methods into the opening up and limiting methods, depending on whether teachers open up the opportunity to answer to all students, or limit it to one at a time. Based on the premise that teachers have certain expectation about the cohort’s access to a required answer and that this expectation is tied to how the answer is elicited, the paper focuses on evidencing the correlation between teachers’ answer anticipation and the use of an elicitation method, particularly, the opening up method. The examination of 12 video-recorded Korean primary school EFL classes suggests that the opening up method is used, conveying varying levels of teachers’ answer anticipation, expressed on a continuum of ‘only a few, possibly none of the cohort, can answer’ anticipation at one end and ‘all can answer’ anticipation at the other. This suggests that the opening up method is the default mode of elicitation reflective of all levels of answer anticipation, which is contrasted to the limiting method skewed toward one end of the continuum.