Initiation Response Feedback (IRF) Interaction in Contextual Oral Language Studies

This study was about Initiation-Response-Feedback Interaction in
Contextual Oral Language Studies. During Online Class first semester of
English Department, Language and Art Faculty, State University of Medan.
The Objective is to describe what types and how IRF patterns in the classroom
interact with listening and speaking activities. This study used the descriptive
qualitative method and used observation and video recording instruments.
The data was examined using Sinclair and Coulthard theory in 1975. The
result of this study was the following (1) The type of IRF pattern used in
classroom interaction in Online Classes based on Sinclair and Coulthard 1975
is used all, such as Initiation, Response, and Feedback. (2) The realization of
the IRF pattern itself is already used in the classroom. The lecturer always
starts the conversation in the class with Initiation, as the first way to get
students’ Responses, after the lecturer gets responses from the students, the
lecturer will give feedback. In the classroom, both the lecturer and the
students employed unbalanced language. For listening activities interaction,
the response of the students is 28%, and for speaking activities interaction,
the response of students is 26%. Actually, in the teaching and learning
process, if talking about the lecturer’s ability in managing the class, the
lecturer can do it well. The lecturer was able to get student attention to listen
to the topic and speech about the topic in the online class. The student has a
low ability to answer or respond to the lecturer’s questions or initiation, which
also caused vocabulary limited theirs have. It is suggested to English teachers
or lecturers, especially in listening and speaking to stimulate students to
actively practice/use English in the classroom. It is suggested that the students
improve their ability by having some extra effort to learn many vocabularies
future.