How Did the Interactions Between Teachers and Students Change Over a Year?: A Case Study at a Junior High School in Akita

<p>As a part of a research project to support subject teaching of young English teachers who work in small rural schools where there are limited opportunities to learn from experienced teachers of the same subject, this study focused on the interactions between teachers and students in English classes. The study examined how the interactions changed in three lessons over a year by adopting the revised version of CARES-EFL as a framework for interaction analysis. The results of the study revealed that the ratio of use of English by the participant teacher, which was pointed out as one of the issues to be addressed in an after-class discussion with other educators, increased by more than 20% and in some cases the teacher used the mixed languages (i.e., Japanese and English) to make herself understood, while familiarizing students with English expressions. In addition, the assistant language teacher’s utterances changed from those merely presenting models for oral repetition or oral cues for a game-like activity, both of which are considered specific to language classrooms and not authentic in daily life, to more authentic ones by asking topic-related questions and changing them according to the students’ level of understanding. On the other hand, the amount of the interactions initiated by the assistant language teacher and that of the interactions initiated by the students were pointed out as an issue to be improved in the future. The study also showed some limitations of CARES-EFL and its revised version in analyzing classroom interactions.</p>