ABSTRACT
There is no reason why educationalists should be interested in classroom language for its own sake. But analyses of classroom discourse become interesting when they can be shown to be sensitive to educationally relevant issues. It is important, however, not to expect such educational relevance to lie too near the surface. It would be naïve, for example, to expect comparative studies of different types of teacher–pupil dialogue to reveal that one single type of classroom interaction produces better, faster or more efficient learning than others. Research has never revealed a clear correlation between styles of classroom dialogue and ‘teaching effectiveness’. Nor is this surprising, since all teachers know they have to change their style of teaching according to such imponderable factors as the topic of the lesson and the mood of the class.
