Sinclair and Coulthard

As a student, you'll know what it's like to interact with different teachers in different classes. Each teacher might have their own strategies for getting the attention of the class, getting the students engaged, and eliciting input from everyone.

Sinclair and Coulthard explored this phenomenon of classroom discourse and came up with some significant theories which we'll be exploring in this article.

This article will:

• Introduce Sinclair and Coulthard's original discourse analysis model
• Discuss the Initiation - Response - Feedback (IRF) model
• Provide some examples of IRF discourse in the classroom
• Highlight the main criticisms of Sinclair and Coulthard's model and the criticisms of using IRF as a framework for teaching.

Let's get into it!

Sinclair and Coulthard Summary

In the 1970s, Sinclair and Coulthard created a model to analyse and explain the discourse that took place in a classroom between the teacher and the student. Their theory was that most interactions followed the same pattern - initiation of discourse by the teacher, a response from the student, and, finally, some form of feedback from the teacher. From this observation, they proposed the IRF model. Today, the IRF model is used as a framework for teaching and as a way of analysing discourse in the classroom.

Sinclair and Coulthard’s Model

Sinclair and Coulthard’s model was created in 1975 and revised in 1992. It is a hierarchical model used predominantly for discourse analysis in classrooms.

The model is an adaptation of Halliday’s (1961) rank scale model for discourse analysis.¹ Halliday created his model to show how all language is grammatically interlinked, with the hierarchical aspect highlighting the relationship between morphemes in a sentence.

Sinclair and Coulthard took the hierarchical and rank part of Halliday’s model and adapted it to apply to discourse that takes place in a classroom, particularly between the teacher and the students. The model initially comprised five ranks: lesson, transaction, exchange, move, and act. However, in the 1992 revised version, lesson was removed, leaving 4 ranks.

Visual representation of Sinclair and Coulthard's hierarchical model.

Sinclair and Coulthard said that,

In simpler terms, acts combine to form moves, moves combine to form exchanges, and exchanges combine to form transactions.

Let’s take a look at each rank in detail.

Acts

These are speech acts and are the smallest form and lowest rank of discourse. Examples of speech acts include directives (commands), interrogatives (questions), and markers (eg. ‘okay…’ ‘now…’).

One or more acts are used to initiate discourse and create a ‘move’.

Moves

There are five different types of Move:

• Framing moves – these usually come first and are used to structure a lesson

• Focusing moves – these usually follow framing moves and are used to draw the student's attention to the structure of the lesson.

• Opening moves – these direct the students and encourage them to participate in the discourse.

• Answering moves – these are usually responses from the students.

• Following-up moves – these are typically committed by the teacher and are follow-ups to the student's responses.

A combination of different acts and moves comprise various types of exchanges.

Exchanges

According to Sinclair and Coulthard’s model, there are two main types of exchange: boundary exchanges and teaching exchanges.

Boundary exchanges

These exchanges are typically comprised of framing and focusing moves and are used to set the context and intentions of a lesson.

The act and the framing and focusing moves combine to create a boundary exchange.

A boundary exchange can be used to get the students' attention.

Teaching exchanges

These exchanges focus on the main content of a lesson. The three main teaching exchanges are: informing, directing, and eliciting exchanges.

Sinclair and Coulthard state that a typical classroom exchange consists of an initiation from the teacher, a response from the student, and, finally, feedback from the teacher. From this observation, they coined the term Initiation - Response - Feedback (IRF) to describe the main exchanges in a classroom and create their IRF model.

Not every exchange has to contain an initiation, response, and feedback, however, and some exchanges only contain one or two of these aspects.

Here's a handy chart explaining the characteristics of each exchange.

Transactions

A transaction is the name given to the combination of acts, moves, and exchanges.

Initiation - Response - Feedback IRF Model

The Initiation - Response - Feedback (IRF) model is the name given to the simplified version of Sinclair and Coulthard’s discourse analysis model. It looks at the most common form of exchange in a classroom, the eliciting exchange, which goes like this:

Teacher - Initiates discourse

Student - Gives a response

Teacher - Provides some form of feedback.

Sinclair and Coulthard's research significantly influenced our understanding of how teachers and students communicate, and their original discourse analysis model provided the basis of the IRF model. Since then, several theorists and educators have added to and adapted the IRF model.

Today, the IRF model is used as a teaching framework (ie. how to structure a lesson and initiate a response from students), as a way of analysing discourse, and as a way of exploring power relations in the classroom.

Sinclair and Coulthard classroom discourse - IRF

Let’s look at an example of an IRF exchange in the classroom. The following extract is taken from the book Exploring Classroom Discourse Language in Action (2011) by the linguist Steve Walsh:

Let’s break this discourse down following Sinclair and Coulthard’s model.

• The teacher initiates the interaction with the discourse marker ‘so’ - this is the act (speech act).

• They then ask, ‘can you read question two, Junya?’ - this is the opening move from the teacher as it encourages the student to engage in the discourse.

• The student responds by reading the question - this is considered the answering move.

• The teacher then replies with ‘Right, yes.’ - this is the teacher’s feedback and is regarded as the follow-up move.

• The teacher then initiates further discourse by asking another question, and the process starts all over again.

These acts and moves create an eliciting exchange - this is the teaching exchange that follows the complete IRF model.

Criticisms of Sinclair and Coulthard’s theory

Francis and Hunston (1992) highlighted a key flaw with Sinclair and Coulthard’s model.² They noticed that their model fails to recognise the presence or importance of para-linguistic features in discourse, such as hand gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact.

As a teaching framework, the IRF model has been criticised for several reasons.