Classroom Interaction

                           In the above picture, we see a teacher as she supervises and interact with a student as she works on a problem.This kind of interaction is called teacher-student interaction.

                                  In this picture the students are working together to complete a particular task. This kind of interaction is called student-student interaction. It is hardly found in the classes in Shillong.But it is time for the traditional system of interaction to change. The teacher must only supervise the students work and let them work on their own. This kind of interaction will enhance the students' ability to work with one another and rely on each other for the completion  of a particular task.

This picture shows a group of students who are working individually for their own group. The students work independently to complete a particular task and contribute their individual work to the group.The teacher is not seen anywhere near the group. Probably s/he must be supervising other groups to let the group work on their own.

When one looks back at how classroom interaction was carried out, one would find that the traditional way of interaction in which the teacher is the active participant whike the students are the passive listeners. The students are hardly given the opportunity to take part in classroom interaction.This will lead to poor development of not only the students' social skills but their listening and speaking skills as well. No doubt the other skills like reading and writing are developed but there is a need to help the students gain a certain level of competency in the use of the other skills. Hence listening and speaking have been ignored by the teachers as  the much needed student-student interaction for purposeful communication has been found to be missing in the classroom. 

              Classroom interaction aims at language learning by giving more emphasis on the experiences of the students.Therefore classroom interaction should be learner-centred. The students should be supervised in such a way that their experiences will become valuable resources for language learning. In this way, the students will be motivated and their independence to use the target language will help them gain  self-confidence as the anxiety level of learning a new language is reduced. Moreover, this will also help in creating good learning environment which will shed away  the students' shyness and adapt to the new environment .

                Therefore, it is time that the teachers realize the need to help the students interact with each other for purposeful  communication. If the students are allowed to work on their own under the supervision of their teacher ,there will undoubtedly be an improvement in the way the students interact with each other in the target language both inside and outside the classroom which will help them become communicatively competent which is, after all, the goal of language learning.