1. The IRF interaction pattern in
classroom observation
By: Ivan Aguilar

2. Presentation objective:
• Participants will be able to explain how
teacher’s feedback responses affect
students’ learning.

3. To start
• Get in pairs
• Decide who is A and B
• A: Ask questions to B in order to keep
him/her speaking for as long as possible.
• B: Answer A’s questions and try to
remember at least four of the questions A
used to keep you speaking
• Keep the questions for later discussion

4. THIS PRESENTATION
This presentation is a brief report on the use
of the IRF classroom interaction pattern
during class observation.

5. CLASSROOM INTERACTION
“the patterns of verbal and non-verbal
communication and the types of social
relationships which occur within classrooms.
The patterns of classroom interaction may
be a part of studies of classroom discourse”
Taken from: Dictionary of language teaching and applied
linguistics, Richard-Schmidt

6. THE IRF INTERACTION PATTERN
The IRF interaction pattern stands for Interaction-Response-
Feedback. It is the minimum kind of interaction that takes place in the
classroom. Most of the time, this pattern consists of a question initiated
by the teacher, a response given by the student, and feedback
provided by the teacher.
• INITIATION: Where did you travel?
• RESPONSE: I traveled to Cuzco.
• FEEDBACK: Good! (We will focus on this third turn!!)

7. THE CATEGORIES
TYPES OF FEEDBACK
EVALUATIVE FEEDBACK Indicates that the learner’s T: What’s your favorite sport?
(POSITIVE)=EFP response is acceptable. S1: Soccer
(Accepts, evaluates, and T: Good, I like soccer too.
comments).
EVALUATIVE FEEDBACK Immediate oral feedback T: Who is Elaine?
(NEGATIVE)=EFN which aims at mistake S1:She’s my /dauter/
correction. (Recast, T: daughter (showing
Elicitation, Metalinguistic correction)
Clue,)
REPETITION=REP Repeating what the student T: what do you do on the
said. weekend?
S1: I clean my house.
T:Ok, you clean your house
INTERACTIVE=INT A strategy to expand or T: what do you remember
modify students’ answer about the story?
S1: She took her sister to the
hospital?
T: And then, what did she do?

8. GATHERING OF INFORMATION
a. Samples were taken during whole class
setting.
b. Samples were collected only when the
teacher initiated the exchange.
c. Samples were collected during a month
observation. Some samples were
rejected since they were based more on
contextual clues than teachers initiation.

9. FIRST RESULTS
PERCENT
Eval. Feed. + 36%
Eval. Feed. - 30%
Repetition 8%
Interactive 26%
100%

10. OTHER FEATURES DETECTED
a. 26% of the teacher’s questions were
addressed to the whole class.
b. 18% of teachers’ positive evaluative
feedback were followed by extended
comments.
c. 30% of students reponses consisted of
silence or single word responses.

11. WHAT THEORY SAYS ABOUT THE TEACHERS’ FEEDBACK
“The feedback from the teacher enhances
learners’ acquisition of language. This IRF pattern
supports and promotes interaction more effectively
if the teacher utilizes the third turn to provide
further opportunities for interaction rather than
using evaluative comment (Antón, 1999;Hall,
1998; Hall & Walsh, 2002; Ohta, 2001; Walsh,
2002).”

12. SOME IDEAS FOR THE THIRD TURN
• Avoid echoing or repeating what your
students say:
Not so good Improved
T: What did you do last T: What did you do last
night? night?
S1: I went to the movies. S1: I went to the movies.
T: You went to the T: Good. How did you
movies. Good. You went like the movie?
to the movies.

13. SOME IDEAS FOR THE THIRD TURN
• Avoid helpful sentences completion.
Not so good Improved
T: What do you think T: What do you think
about smoking? about smoking?
S1: Smoking is S1: Smoking is…
…(pauses)
T: (wait time) How can
T: (immediately)A bad you say it in a different
thing, yes I agree way?

14. SOME IDEAS FOR THE THIRD TURN
• Using clarification requests.
Not so good Improved
T: What did you do on T: What did you do on
mother’s day? mother’s day?
S1: I gift my necklace my S1: I gift my necklace my
mother. mother.
T: Good! A necklace is T: What do you really
beautiful. mean?

15. SOME IDEAS FOR THE THIRD TURN
• Avoid extended comments. Redirect it
intervention to the class.
Not so good Improved
T: Where would you like to T: Where would you like to
travel? travel?
S1: I’d like to travel to Cuzco. S1: I’d like to travel to Cuzco.
T: Yes Cuzco is great. I T: Great! What are two things
traveled there last month. It you would like to do there?
was beautiful. I stayed in a
nice hotel and I tried its typical Or
food. Next time, I’ll visit T:Great! Does anyone else
Mancora. like Cuzco? Why?

16. SOME IDEAS FOR THE THIRD TURN
• Your idea…
• Prepare an IRF interaction pattern to show
your own suggestion. Think about the
questions used at the beginning of this
presentation or other concepts like
“reciprocal teaching”. Your idea…
T:
S1:
T:

17. Conclusions
• By monitoring how we react to our
students’ responses, we can reduced our
talking time and make classroom
interaction more interactive.
• Your conclusion