The Importance of Opening Moves in Classroom Interaction

Abstract

The analysis of classroom interaction is very important in teaching learning process in order to reach the learning objectives. The purpose of this study was to describe the types of opening moves used by the teacher through the learning process. The research was carried out in Senior High School. The design of the research was descriptive qualitative. The data were collected by observing and recording the teacher’s utterances during teaching learning process. The data were analyzed based on Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). The result of the study shows that elicitation and bound types were the dominant ones and followed by re-initiation (i), re-initiation (ii), direct, repeat, inform, listing, and check.  One of the opening moves was not applied; it was reinforce. In conclusion, the teacher used all of the types of opening moves but the main focus was in elicitation in the classroom interaction.