Explainer moves

Diagnostic query

An utterance by which ”the speaker is testing whether a listener knows a piece of information by asking them to supply the information”. The speaker, normally the tutor, already knows the answer. They are often questions, but can be also requests: ”tell me how electricity flows through the circuit”

Example (1):

-Explainer: [So tell me, what do you know about black holes?] --->Diagnostic query
-Explainee: ["Well, I know they're created when stars, once they start growing, it doesn't, it can't expand anymore, so they collapse inward.]
-Explainer: ['You got, pretty much, you got a very good idea about it...]

Example (2):

-Explainer: [So far, what do you know about black holes?]  --->Diagnostic query
-Explainee: ['I never knew beforehand how hard it was', 'to get actual data of the black holes itself,', "first of all, they're dark, and, like,", "they're so far away, it's almost impossible just", 'to get a good image of them.', 'They were discussing a project in', 'which multiple radio telescopes of some sort, like, are,', 'like, pinpointed all across, from Greenland', "to South America, and, like, and they're trying to", 'get an image of', 'the black hole in the center', 'of our galaxy because, as opposed', 'to just recording its impact', 'on the surrounding stars and planets.']
          

Generating a recast

Clarke et. al. discuss that "in the adult–child interaction, the adult generates a recast when he or she "....expands, deletes, permutes, or otherwise changes the [child’s utterance] while maintaining significant overlap in meaning". Sometimes, recasts provide a corrective contrast with the child’s immediately prior turn through the provision of an enhanced version of the child’s ill-formed utterance, as in the example below reproduced from Saxton."

    "Child: It might get loosed down the plughole
    Adult: Lost down the plughole?"

"Equally, some recasts give no clear-cut correction but still offer potential for facilitation of acquisition by providing a structural contrast with an errorless sentence produced by the child as in the following constructed extract, which illustrates an adult expanding the child’s utterance into one that is more complex":

   "Child: That's a big horse. 
   Adult: Yep, that's a big horse with lots of black spots."

"Sometimes, recasts may introduce multiple changes, as in the following example,whereby the adult both expands on and corrects components of the child’s utterance:"

   "Child: Why does he that? 
   Adult: Mmm, I am not sure why he does that." 

Hinting

Hinting is an explanation move and a type of scaffolding where something is suggested or indicated indirectly or covertly. Examples: "The hard disk can be used for storage" or “What about the hard disk?” "When the student is having problems answering a question or solving a problem, the tutor gives hints by presenting a fact, asking a leading question, or reframing the problem. A hint may be a memory cue or a critical problem-solving clue. Hints are frequently indirect speech acts, so they run the risk of being missed by an insensitive student" .

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.']

repetition to place information in common ground, reformulation, Embedded correction

Repetition has multiple functions in conversation . One pervasive use, for example, is when a speaker adds to common ground new information offered by another.

"As an example in child-adult interaction, some adult repetitions are characterized as ‘reformulations’. These are repetitions of erroneous child utterances in which adult speakers have corrected the child errors, underlined, as in example (1)":

Example(1):
     Child: Don ’t fall me downstairs!
     Parent: oh, I wouldn't drop you downstairs.
     Child: Don ’t drop me downstairs.

"Adults also make some embedded corrections, as in Example (2), where the correction of the erroneous form is (fell) offered in the next turn by the father":

 Example (2): Embedded correction :
       Child: He falled, he falled again.
       Father: Ok he fell, but no, he’s at the boat, now put him in front of the car
       

splicing

splicing is considered as a scaffolding strategy. When a student’s contribution is error-ridden, the tutors tend to jump in quickly and splice in a good answer. Thus, immediate corrective feedback is given by the tutor. The metaphor of ‘splicing’ is used because normally the tutor and student are jointly constructing a connected structure of ideas when the errors occur.

"The tutor jumps in and splices correct information as soon as the student produces a contribution that is obviously error-ridden. The tutor needs to be able to recognize errors, bugs, and slips in order to do this. Deep misconceptions in the student are more difficult to detect and are not handled by splicing." <