Pumping

Pumping is a scaffolding mechanism which is used if a tutor wants the student to contribute more information in the dialogue and thereby be more active. The tutor pumps the student to elaborate an answer by giving positive or neutral feedback (e.g. ‘uh huh’, ‘okay’, head nod) and then pausing for the student to supply more information.

"The tutor pumps the student for more information during the early stages of answering a particular question (or solving a problem). The pump consists of positive feedback (e.g., ‘Right,’ ‘Yeah,’ dramatic head-nod), neutral backchannel feedback (‘Uh-huh,’ ‘Okay,’ subtle head-nod), or explicit requests for more information (‘Tell me more,’ ‘What else?’). The tutor pumps for one or two cycles of turns before the tutor contributes information. Pumping serves the functions of exposing knowledge of the student and of encouraging students to construct content by themselves."

Example (1):

-Explainer: ["So essentially, the way I'd apply negative harmony", 'would be this idea of polarity, you know,', 'between the overtone series and the undertone series,', 'or you know, the one side and the other side.', 'The perfect and the play goal.', 'The feeling of a minor perfect--', '(keyboard music)', "Resolving, it's so moving, you know?", "And it's a good alternative to something like,", '(keyboard music)']
-Explainee: ["It's funny, you know, you doing that", 'makes something in a major key', 'sound like kind of a wistful sad song.']
-Explainer: [Right.] ----> Pumping
-Explainee: ['You know, you changed the feeling of it,', 'what otherwise would, you know, if you were to tell a kid', 'that this is a major song, we should be happy.']