Teacher’s Initiation Based on IRF Model in English Online Class During Covid-19 Pandemic

The purposes of this study is to find out the dominant types of teacher’s initiation, to
analyze the process of IRF realization and to find out the reason why teacher use the
dominant types of teacher’s initiation in English online class due to the Covid-19
pandemic. Theory that this current study used is the IRF theory suggested by Sinclair and
Coulthard (1975). The researcher used qualitative research and the technique of the data
collection into three steps: video recorder, interview sheets and audio recorder. The data
taken from the online teaching and learning process in SMPS Santo Thomas 1 Medan
from the meetings were held in by Zoom application. After doing the research, it was
found that there are about nine types of teacher’s initiation used in both meeting 1 and
meeting 2 from the data in this study and teacher direct is the dominant type used. The
result showed that the students response was the dominant sequence that happened in the
data because if the initiation by the teacher. Followed by the teacher initiaton and the last
was teacher's feedback. The reasons why the teacher used the dominant type of teacher
initiation which is teacher direct due to several reasons: (1) Direct student, could create
an effective classroom interaction; (2) By giving direction, the teacher can push the
students to react to the teacher; (3) By using teacher direct, it can push students the
confidence to speak up in the meeting process. (4) Teacher can manage the virtual
classroom easily.