ABSTRACT
The common pattern of interaction between teachers and their students has been called the IRE for teacher Initiates, student Responds, and teacher Evaluates, or sometimes IRF. Questions exert even more control by not only insisting on a response, but also by specifying the topic of the conversation, and often the form of the response. In the most practical terms, the comment acts to keep the student in the conversation. Failure to accomplish this would make the teacher’s job, with that student, very difficult indeed. The responsibility means that children must cross-check their sources and warrants. Children in these classrooms do not deny the communicative function of language, but view the multiple sources of language in the classroom—teacher, books, Internet, students, and their own language—as tools for thinking. Learning these skills requires a community in which they are routinely practiced.
