Teacher and Student Interaction in English Language Classrooms

Abstract

Teacher and student interaction shapes opportunities to use English, negotiate understanding, and respond to feedback. However, visible participation alone provides an incomplete account of its educational value. This article examines how interaction can support language learning through a selective narrative review of research on instructed second language acquisition, classroom discourse, learner engagement, and online teaching. It distinguishes interaction, participation, engagement, and learning, and uses these distinctions to analyse questioning, teacher follow-up, corrective feedback, peer collaboration, and inclusive participation. The synthesis suggests that productive exchanges depend on how teachers respond to learner contributions, how tasks create a need to communicate, and whether students can influence the developing discussion. A proposed sixty-minute lesson illustrates how these principles can inform classroom planning without treating the illustration as empirical evidence. The article also presents a practical approach to reviewing interaction through brief classroom records, learner perspectives, and subsequent language use. It argues for context-sensitive decisions about teacher guidance and learner agency, with particular attention to quieter learners, multilingual resources, and the limits of participation counts as evidence of learning.