Classroom Discourse: The Skills and Systems Mode in the Persian Reading and Writing Literacy Development Course

Text Self-Evaluation of Teacher Talk (SETT), comprised of four modes and 14 interactures, aims to make teachers cognizant of the importance of their classroom interactions. This study specifically elaborates on the skills and systems mode, which generally gives primacy to accuracy and is pertinent to the reading and writing literacy development course. The data were collected from five experienced elementary teachers - one female and four males - taking part in the official ‘Superior Teaching Style Contest’ of the Ministry of Education in Iran. The data were analyzed using Walsh’s (2006b) adapted SETT framework. The results showed that all of the interactures and pedagogic goals of the mode were observed in the analyzed data. Code-switching, as an added interacture to the mode, happened in all five teachers’ recorded classes, especially when moving from one activity to another. The findings of the study provided robust evidence regarding the overuse of teacher echo in the mode.