125 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK Does “Experience” Bring about Any Significant Difference in EFL Teacher Talk? Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni rahmanidoqaruni@stu-mail.um.ac.ir English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran & Ebrahim Khodadady (Corresponding author) ekhodadady@um.ac.ir English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran Abstract The rationale for the present study is based on the fact that understanding the teaching pro- cess and the development of teachers is incomplete unless the teachers' classroom behavior, especially their talk, is objectively explored. To this end, four male teachers offering En g- lish as a foreign language (EFL) were recruited and divided into two groups, namely inex- perienced and experienced. To secure the objectivity in data collection they were observed in their classes and one lesson of each teacher was audio-recorded. The audio-recordings were then fully transcribed and analyzed through micro structural approach of schema theo- ry. The approach is based on the assumption that any word uttered by the teacher represents a specific concept commonly known as a schema. The schema enters into a hierarchical r e- lationship with other schemata to constitute species, genera and semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic domains of language. The teachers’ talks were thus parsed into their constitu t- ing schema types, species, genera and domains and certain codes were assigned to them to run statistical analyses. The findings showed that the inexperienced teachers significantly outnumbered their experienced counterparts in all schema categories and thus challenged “experience” as an effective variable in EFL teaching. Keywords: Teacher talk, schema theory, novice and experienced teachers Introduction Teaching English as a second language (L2) in general and as an EFL in particular has witnessed an expanding development and modernity in the last two decades. A Beyond Words Vol.4, No. 2, November 2016 mailto:rahmanidoqaruni@stu-mail.um.ac.ir mailto:ekhodadady@um.ac.ir EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 126 large number of books and articles which examine different aspects of teacher educa- tion and behavior from professional, cogni- tive, social, as well as contextual perspec- tives is presently accessible (e.g., Bartels, 2005; Borg, 2003; Burns & Richards, 2009; Johnson, 2000, 2005, 2009; Richards, 1998; Richards & Farrell, 2005; Richards & Lockhart, 1994; Tedick, 2004; Tsui, 2003; Woods, 1996). The point of all these studies has been to furnish us with a gen- eral picture of what teachers do in the class- room. As Gatbonton (1999, p. 35) stated, "it is clear that these studies have contribut- ed greatly to the current understanding of the teaching process, its procedures and methodologies and as a result have had an impact on teacher training". However, keeping in mind the end goal to pick up a more profound understanding of the teach- ing process, these studies of teachers' class- room practice should be supplemented with studies of teachers' talk inside the class- room context. Since all dimensions of classroom process involve teacher talk and it assumes numerous parts in L2 class- rooms, studying teacher talk has always been one of the most vital parts of class- room research (Rahmani Doqaruni, 2015). Nevertheless, despite the fact that teacher talk has been of extensive enthusiasm for understanding and attempting to develop language teaching pedagogy (e.g., Chaudron, 1988; Cullen, 1998, 2002; Seedhouse, 2004; Thornbury, 1996; Walsh, 2002; Yanfen & Yuqin, 2010), little atten- tion has been paid to teacher talk from a schema-based perspective. A schema is defined as a single or phrasal word, whether uttered or written, in an authentic text which comes along with other words to be heard or read at a specific place and time (Khodadady & Seif, 2006). In line with the previous research (e.g., Khodadady & Eslami, 2013; Khodadady & Khosravany, 2014; Khodadady & Lagzian, 2013), this study analyzed teachers' talk in the classroom context by categorizing their spoken words into three linguistic domains: Semantic, syntactic, and parasyntactic. They were further broken into the subcate- gories of genera and species to account for their specific linguistic functions in teach- ers’ talk (see Appendix A). The reason be- hind such an analysis is that "the ac- ceptance of schema as the building block of authentic textual products provides lin- guists and language teachers alike with an objective measure to form their analyses and pedagogy on, respectively" (Khodadady, 2008a, p. 434). Meanwhile it is interesting to know that most of the previous studies have ap- proached teacher talk by using either expe- rienced or inexperienced teachers as sole subjects. However, as Gatbonton (2008, p. 163) suggested, 127 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK Although one can gather insight from novice teachers' thinking and behavior in- dependently of experienced teachers and vice versa, examining both sets of teachers together in the same study allows one to compare them on very specific points and identify more clearly how they differ or how they are similar to each other. Thus, the purpose of the present study is to address the association between teach- ers' experience and different types of sche- mata they use in their talk in EFL class- room contexts. To meet this objective, the following research questions were formu- lated. 1. Is there any significant difference in the number of common and distinct semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic domain types employed by inexpe- rienced vs. experienced teachers? 2. Is there any significant difference in the number of common and distinct semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic genus types employed by inexperience- ed vs. experienced teachers? 3. Is there any significant difference in the number of common and distinct semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic species types employed by inexpe- rienceed vs. experienced teachers? Literature Review The researchers have explored the rela- tionship between teachers' experience and different aspects of their behavior inside the classroom context from different perspec- tives in the field of L2 education. Mok (1994), for example, conducted a case study with experienced and inexperienced ESL teachers to examine their real concerns and changing discernments after some time. She identified five common categories of concern such as teachers' self-concept, atti- tudes, teaching strategies, materials used, and expectations. She also asserted that the diverse views expressed by the inexperi- enced teachers on teaching suggested that they gradually moved beyond the class- room and viewed their profession in a more extensive context more quickly in contrast with the experienced teachers who pro- gressed more slowly. Akyel's (1997) com- parative investigation of experienced and novice ESL teachers demonstrated that ex- perienced teachers managed a more exten- sive scope of instructional options in re- sponse to their students in contrast with novice teachers who translated learner re- sponses as deficiencies. In addition, it was found that inexperienced teachers favored the flow of instructional activities but were worried about the suitability of their in- structional strategies. The findings were in accordance with the past literature as the research in L2 teacher education had sug- gested that less experienced teachers were worried about classroom administration and keeping up the flow of instructional rou- EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 128 tines (Johnson, 1992; Numrich, 1996). Richards et al. (1998) were interested in how novice and experienced teachers plan the same reading lesson. They found that novice teachers were not able to see the ad- vantages of using a story as a part of a read- ing lesson because of their restricted com- prehension of the nature of L2 reading. Tsui's (2003) study of four ESL teach- ers with various levels of experience and expertise showed that novice and experts are qualitatively distinguished on numerous critical viewpoints such as planning and decision-making processes. In light of this finding, she proposed that one can form hypotheses about inadequacies in the nov- ice teachers' pedagogical knowledge by recognizing what parts of pedagogical knowledge are lacking in the novice teach- ers' repertoire however existent in their ex- perienced counterparts. This in turn may lead to revising teacher training programs to fill the gaps. Mackey et al. (2004) claimed that teachers' use of incidental fo- cus on form techniques is affected by teachers' experience to a substantial degree as experienced ESL teachers make use of more incidental focus on form techniques than novice teachers. Gatbonton (2008) examined the cate- gories of pedagogical knowledge of novice ESL teachers and compared these catego- ries to those found for experienced teachers in her earlier study (Gatbonton, 1999). The results of her study showed that the peda- gogical knowledge of novice teachers were comparable to that of experienced teachers regarding major categories such as lan- guage management, procedural issues, and handling student reactions and attitudes but not in terms of details within these catego- ries. She then claimed that the fact that the novice teachers were similar to the experi- enced teachers may suggest that they had already been in the process of acquiring many skills expected of experienced teach- ers. Pouriran and Mukundan (2012) report- ed the findings of an empirical study that examined whether EFL teachers' use of in- cidental focus on form techniques was af- fected by their level of experience. They found that experienced teachers were dif- ferent from less experienced teachers in terms of type and frequency of corrective feedback types they used in their classes. Moreover, the results revealed that experi- enced teachers used incidental focus on form techniques more frequently than nov- ice teachers which has previously been re- ported in the literature (e.g., Mackey et al., 2004). As the literature reviewed within the context of L2 shows, despite the fact that teaching experience has been regarded by applied linguists as an important variable in language teaching, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has ever tried to explore the relationship between teachers’ experience 129 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK and their talk in classrooms from an empir- ical perspective. By resorting to the micro- structural approach of schema theory (MICAST) the present study was therefore conducted to fill the gap and find out whether experienced and novice teachers differ significantly from each other in the schemata they employ to teach EFL to their learners. Participants Methods the institutes in which they were teaching. The participants were four EFL teach- ers who were teaching general English courses in two private language institutes in Babolsar, northern Iran. All teachers were male and their ages ranged from 23 to 47. The literature in L2 teacher education has revealed that experienced teachers are those with many years of teaching behind them, with many interpreted in various studies as at least four to five years (e.g., Gatbonton, 1999; Tsui, 2003, 2005). Novice teachers are those who are still undergoing training, who have just completed their training, or who have just commenced teaching and still have very little (e.g., less than three years) experience behind them. In accord- ance with the previous literature, the partic- ipants' teaching experience in this study varied from less than 3 to more than 15 years; two of the teachers with less than three years of pedagogical practice were labeled as less experienced and the other two teachers with more than fifteen years of pedagogical practice were viewed expe- rienced. All four teachers had completed their B.A degree in English language and gone through Teacher Training Courses in All the participants consented to taking part in the study. Data Collection To collect the required data for this study, one of the researchers observed the classrooms as a non-participant and made audio-recordings from one lesson of each teacher. One class at pre-intermediate level was selected from each teacher. Each class had between 10 to 15 students who were between 14 and 20 in age. A tape-recorder was used for making the audio-recordings of the whole class. An MP3 Play- er/Recorder was also placed near the teach- er in each class both to record whole-class interaction and to capture teacher's voice more clearly. Using the above-mentioned method, seven hours of naturally occurring data was obtained from the four teachers participating in this study. The audio- recordings were then fully transcribed and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Theoretical Foundation This study employs the MICAST to explore the experienced and inexperienced teachers’ talk. It provides researchers with a more precise tool for the analysis of dis- EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 130 course than other approaches. The MICAST treats single and phrasal words constituting authentic texts as schemata (Khodadady, 1997) and assigns them into three main domains: semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic. Each domain is hierar- chically formed by its genera, which are in turn composed of species and types. The semantic domain, for example, consists of four genera, i.e., adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, which are open in type. Similar- ly, each genus contains specific species. The genus of nouns is, for example, sub- sumed under adjectival, complex, com- pound, conversion, derivational, gerund, nominal, and simple noun species. And fi- nally each species comprises schema types such as “age”, “belt” and “box”, to name a few. The syntactic domain which is closed in nature includes conjunctions, determin- ers, prepositions, pronouns and syntactic verbs. As the last linguistic category, parasyntactic domain consists of abbrevia- tion, interjection, name, numeral, para- adverb, particle and symbol genera. (Ap- pendix A provides the schema species and genera semantic, syntactic and parasynt- actic domains employed by teachers.) Procedure After transcribing the audio-recordings of the teachers’ talk, their talk was broken into single word and phrasal schemata. Fol- lowing Khodadady (1997, 2008a), the parsed schemata were assigned to three domains, i.e., semantic, syntactic and parasyntatic. The genera and species of the- se domains (see Appendix A) were then specified and codified in Microsoft Office Excel. Data Analysis In order to find out whether experi- enced and novice teachers differ from each other significantly in terms of the schema tokens and types they use in their talk, Chi- Square test was employed. SPSS software was used to run the statistical analyses. In addition, the data were analyzed qualita- tively to find out why they differed in their talk. General Patterns Findings Table 1 presents the domain tokens and types by teachers cross-tabulation. As can be seen, experienced teachers have used 5795 semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic schema tokens. This number, however, rises to 6378 for their inexperi- enced counterparts. As it can also be seen, the schema types employed by inexperi- enced teachers (985) are almost 10% more than those of experienced teachers (811). The difference becomes more obvious when semantic schema types are taken into consideration. The experienced teachers, for example, have used 93 different adjec- 131 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK tives among which “good” has a token of 24. Their inexperienced counterparts have, nonetheless, employed more adjectives, i.e., 108, but in less frequency. For exam- ple, they have used “good” 19 times. Table 2 shows the number of schema domain types used by experienced teachers and their inexperienced counterparts. In order to take into account schema types common to both experienced and inexperi- enced teachers and explore the significance of their difference, a third category was added to the analysis, i.e., common, as shown in Table 2. The overall pattern which emerges from Table 2 is that the in- experienced teachers have outnumbered their experienced counterparts in all do- main types. However, as can be seen, most of the distinct domain schema types em- ployed by inexperienced (n=471, 77.2%) and experienced (n=320, 73.7%) teachers are semantic in nature. Parasyntactic do- main schema types come in the second place. The fewest schema types employed by teachers are syntactic in domain. The data presented in Table 2 above also reveal that most of the schema types shared by both experienced and inexpe- renced teachers are semantic (n=216, 57.6%), highlighting their superiority over their syntactic and parasyntactic counter- parts in teachers’ talk. The Pearson Chi- Square p-value shows that inexperienced teachers have used significantly more se- mantic, syntactic and parasyntactic domain types than experienced teachers have (x 2 =1.522, df=4, p<.05). Answering the first research question, there is a significant difference in the number of semantic, syn- tactic and parasyntactic domain types em- ployed by inexperienced and experienced teachers. 132 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK Genus Table 3 presents the schema genus types by teachers cross-tabulation. As can be seen, the three most frequent exclusive schema genus types are semantic in nature, i.e., nouns (n=384), verbs (n=250) and adjectives (n=135), respectively. The same pattern appears for common schema genus types, i.e., nouns (n=94), verbs (n=83) and adjectives (n=33). The names genus of parasyntactic domain come next in terms of exclusive schema types for both experienced (n=55) and inexperienced (n=54) teachers. Similar to the domain types, the Pearson Chi-Square p-value shows that inexperienced teachers have used significantly more semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic genus types than experienced teachers have (x 2 =2.261, df=30, p<.05). Answering the second research question, there is a significant dif- ference in the number of semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic genus types employed by inexperienced and experienced teachers. Species The number of semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic species types used by experienced and inexperienced teachers are given in Appendix A (due to its length). As can be seen, the two most frequent exclusive species types are semantic in nature, i.e., simple nouns (n=288) and simple verbs (n=88). The third most frequent schema species type is parasyntactic in d o- main, i.e., names (n=86). The simple adjectives (n=82) take the fourth place in the species types. Similar to the domain and genus types, the Pearson Chi -Square p-value shows that inexperienced teachers have used significantly more semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic species types than experienced teachers have (x 2 =3.993, df=170, p<.05). Answering the third research question, there is a significant difference in the number of semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic species types employed by inexperienced and experienced teachers. 133 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK Genus Adjectives Count 60 75 33 168 % within Genus 35.7% 44.6% 19.6% 100.0% % within Experience 13.8% 12.3% 8.8% 11.8% Adverbs Count 10 12 6 28 % within Genus 35.7% 42.9% 21.4% 100.0% % within Experience 2.3% 2.0% 1.6% 2.0% Nouns Count 162 222 94 478 % within Genus 33.9% 46.4% 19.7% 100% % within experience 37.3% 36.4% 25.1% 33.7% Verbs Count 88 162 83 333 % within Genus 26.4% 48.6% 24.9% 100.0% % within Experience 20.3% 26.6% 22.1% 23.5% Conjunctions Count 0 4 6 10 % within Genus 0% 40.0% 60.0% 100% % within Experience 0% .7% 1.6% .7% Table 3 Experienced/Inexperienced vs. Genus Cross-Tabulation Experience Total Experienced Inexperienced Common Determiners Count 1 12 25 38 % within Genus 2.6% 31.6% 65.8% 100% % within Experience .2% 2.0% 6.7% 2.7% Prepositions Count 4 4 16 24 % within Genus 16.7% 16.7% 66.7% 100% % within Experience .9% .7% 4.3% 1.7% Pronouns Count 5 6 30 41 % within Genus 12.2% 14.6% 73.2% 100% % within Experience 1.2% 1.0% 8.0% 2.9% Syntactic verbs Count 3 4 20 27 % within Genus 11.1% 14.8% 74.1% 100% % within Experience .7% .7% 5.3% 1.9% Abbreviations Count 13 17 15 45 % within Genus 28.9% 37.8% 33.3% 100% % within Experience 3.0% 2.8% 4.0% 3.2% Interjections Count 9 2 9 20 % within Genus 45.0% 10.0% 45.0% 100% % within Experience 2.1% .3% 2.4% 1.4% EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 134 Table 3 Experienced/Inexperienced vs. Genus Cross-Tabulation (continued) Discussions Teacher knowledge cannot well be comprehended unless it is approached from the point of view of schema employed by cognitive psychologists to portray how knowledge is stored in memory subjectively or macro-structurally (e.g., Rumelhart, 1980) and how it is utilized objectively or micro-structurally in testing (Khodadady & Herriman, 2000), reading comprehension ability (Khodadady, 1997) and translation (Khodadady, 2008b). The results of previous studies and the present one show that approaching the schema from these two perspectives yields two different results regarding experience. Macro-structuralists believe that the schemata of both expert and novice teachers affect their specific characteristics (Tsui, 2003). For example, Livingston and Borko (1989, p. 37) state that, …the cognitive schemata of experts typically are more elaborate, more complex, more interconnected, and more easily accessible than those of novices…Therefore, expert teach- ers have larger, better-integrated stores of facts, principles, and experiences to draw upon as they engage in planning, interactive teaching and reflection. The quotation above is based on the macro-structural approach of schema theory (MACAST) whose advocates, according to Khodadady (1997), define schema in broad and 135 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK vague terms such as “elaborate”, “complex”, “interconnected” and “accessible” (Livingston & Borko, 1989, p. 37), to name a few. They are too subjective to be verified by empirical research. In contrast to MACAST, the MICAST defines schemata as concepts represented by the words produced by individuals such as teachers. They can be analyzed, categorized and assigned to various linguistic domains, genera, and species and thus be objectively ex- plored not only by themselves but also in relation to variables such as teaching experience. Following MACAST, Carter et al. (1987), for example, provided their expert, novice and postulant participants with a hypothetical scenario, “a short note left by the previous teacher, a grade book with grades and attendance recorded, student information cards con- taining demographic information on one side and teacher comments about the student on the other, corrected tests and homework assignments” and then asked them “to write a lesson plan for the first two days of instruction” (p. 149). The very scenario and using lesson plans for mathematics and science classes instead of the participants’ class performance in EFL classes render their “nine propositions representing qualitative differences…among expert, novice, and postulant teachers” (p. 149; emphasis added) questionably simple because le s- son plans are not the same as actual teaching. Teacher knowledge cannot well be comprehended unless it is approached from the point of view of schema employed by cognitive psychologists to portray how knowledge is stored in memory subjectively or macro-structurally (e.g., Rumelhart, 1980) and how it is utilized objectively or micro-structurally in testing (Khodadady & Herriman, 2000), reading comprehension ability (Khodadady, 1997) and translation (Khodadady, 2008b). The results of previous studies and the present one show that approaching the schema from these two perspectives yields two different results regarding experience. Macro-structuralists believe that the schemata of both expert and novice teachers affect their specific characteristics (Tsui, 2003). For example, Livingston and Borko (1989, p. 37) state that, …the cognitive schemata of experts typically are more elaborate, more complex, more interconnected, and more easily accessible than those of novices…Therefore, expert teac h- ers have larger, better-integrated stores of facts, principles, and experiences to draw upon as they engage in planning, interactive teaching and reflection. The quotation above is based on the macro-structural approach of schema theory (MACAST) whose advocates, according to Khodadady (1997), define schema in broad and vague terms such as “elaborate”, “complex”, “interconnected” and “accessible” (Livingston & Borko, 1989, p. 37), to name a few. They are too subjective to be verified by empirical research. In contrast to MACAST, the MICAST defines schemata as concepts represented EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 136 by the words produced by individuals such as teachers. They can be analyzed, categorized and assigned to various linguistic domains, genera, and species and thus be objectively e x- plored not only by themselves but also in relation to variables such as teaching experience. Following MACAST, Carter et al. (1987), for example, provided their expert, novice and postulant participants with a hypothetical scenario, “a short note left by the previous teacher, a grade book with grades and attendance recorded, student information cards con- taining demographic information on one side and teacher comments about the student on the other, corrected tests and homework assignments” and then asked them “to write a lesson plan for the first two days of instruction” (p. 149). The very scenario and using lesson plans for mathematics and science classes instead of the participants’ class performance in EFL classes render their “nine propositions representing qualitative differences…among expert, novice, and postulant teachers” (p. 149; emphasis added) questionably simple because le s- son plans are not the same as actual teaching. Teacher knowledge cannot well be comprehended unless it is approached from the point of view of schema employed by cognitive psychologists to portray how knowledge is stored in memory subjectively or macro-structurally (e.g., Rumelhart, 1980) and how it is utilized objectively or micro-structurally in testing (Khodadady & Herriman, 2000), reading com- prehension ability (Khodadady, 1997) and translation (Khodadady, 2008b). The results of previous studies and the present one show that approaching the schema from these two pe r- spectives yields two different results regarding experience. Macro-structuralists believe that the schemata of both expert and novice teachers affect their specific characteristics (Tsui, 2003). For example, Livingston and Borko (1989, p. 37) state that, …the cognitive schemata of experts typically are more elaborate, more complex , more in- terconnected, and more easily accessible than those of novices…Therefore, expert teachers have larger, better-integrated stores of facts, principles, and experiences to draw upon as they engage in planning, interactive teaching and reflection. The quotation above is based on the macro-structural approach of schema theory (MACAST) whose advocates, according to Khodadady (1997), define schema in broad and vague terms such as “elaborate”, “complex”, “interconnected” and “accessible” (Livingston & Borko, 1989, p. 37), to name a few. They are too subjective to be verified by empirical research. In contrast to MACAST, the MICAST defines schemata as concepts represented by the words produced by individuals such as teachers. They can be analyzed, categorize d and assigned to various linguistic domains, genera, and species and thus be objectively e x- plored not only by themselves but also in relation to variables such as teaching experience. 137 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK Following MACAST, Carter et al. (1987), for example, provided their expert, novice and postulant participants with a hypothetical scenario, “a short note left by the previous teac h- er, a grade book with grades and attendance recorded, student information cards containing demographic information on one side and teacher comments about the student on the other, corrected tests and homework assignments” and then asked them “to write a lesson plan for the first two days of instruction” (p. 149). The very scenario and using lesson plans for mathematics and science classes instead of the participants’ class performance in EFL clas- ses render their “nine propositions representing qualitative differences…among expert, nov- ice, and postulant teachers” (p. 149; emphasis added) questionably simple because lesson plans are not the same as actual teaching. However, Carter et al. (1987) found that the rich and elaborate schemata of expert teachers fundamentally empower them to allocate the importance and the relevance of in- formation to their planning and teaching. This clarifies why expert teachers can give careful consideration to information that is critical to teaching. By contrast, their novice counter- parts’ schemata are still in the beginning phase of decision-making. Consequently, they are less efficient in figuring out whether the information is pertinent, and they analyze substan- tially more information before they reach decisions. This in turn affects both their planning and teaching, and results in less efficiency on novice teachers’ part (Livingston & Borko, 1989). Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993), however, attributed these characteristics of exper- tise identified in the literature to experience which enables experts to perform with effortless automaticity. They argue that one of the main differences between experts and novices is the experts’ propensity to reinvest the resources unchained by the use of routines to deal with more advanced problems and to challenge what appears to be unproblematic and rou- tine. In the same way, different patterns of teacher talk between experienced and ine xperi- enced teachers in the present study can be attributed to their cognition, however, from a di f- ferent perspective. Considering teacher development as a continuum, Gatbonton (2008) be- lieved that we could put inexperienced teachers and experienced teachers in the early and later stages of this continuum, respectively. Taking this continuum into account, it is not far from reality to contend that the thinking and classroom behavior of experienced teachers are likely to be more stable and less variable in comparison to their novice counterparts. As Gatbonton (2008, p. 162) stated, "the stability arises because they [experienced teachers] already have had ample opportunities to deal with recurring issues and, consequently, have had occasions to retain what works and eliminate what does not". This statement does not, EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 138 however, hold true within the real EFL context of the present study. This is because unlike Gatbonton who followed the MACAST and based her recurring issues on “pedagogical knowledge inferred from the novice teachers’ reports of their thoughts” (p. 164; emphasis added), the present study has followed the MICAST and recorded what teachers do in their classes from the beginning to the end of their teaching sessions. While inferences made from teachers’ thoughts might never materialize in real situations, what they teach in their classes does represent their “pedagogical knowledge” objectively. This study is, therefore, based on the assumption that the more teachers’ schemata the learners are exposed to in their EFL classes, the more likely they would use their sentential and discoursal context to internalize the teachers’ schemata as their own intake. As its r e- sults show, the number of schemata the inexperienced teachers employed in their classes was significantly more than the experienced ones in linguistic semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic domains, indicating that their “pedagogical knowledge” is superior to that of experienced teachers and thus challenges the nature of “recurring issues” linguistically. An- other explanation might be related to the “recency effect” of the teachers’ past training. The inexperienced teachers are more likely to remember theoretical constructs and pedagogical ideas they have recently learned from their recently completed studies. This could explain their richer schema compared to the more experienced teachers who have completed their studies many years earlier. In order to explore the linguistic richness of schemata employed by teachers, their talk was further examined using the measure of lexical variation (LV) adopted by Meara et al. (1997). LV is the type-token ratio which is used to assess the lexical richness of teacher talk. In other words, LV ratios show the diversity of words in teacher talk. The higher a r a- tio, the fewer repetitions there are. Its calculation is straightforward: However, Carter et al. (1987) found that the rich and elaborate schemata of expert teachers fundamentally empower them to allocate the importance and the relevance of in- formation to their planning and teaching. This clarifies why expert teachers can give careful consideration to information that is critical to teaching. By contrast, their novice counter- parts’ schemata are still in the beginning phase of decision-making. Consequently, they are less efficient in figuring out whether the information is pertinent, and they analyze substan- tially more information before they reach decisions. This in turn affects both their planning and teaching, and results in less efficiency on novice teachers’ part (Livingston & Borko, 1989). Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993), however, attributed these characteristics of expe r- tise identified in the literature to experience which enables experts to perform with effortless 139 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK automaticity. They argue that one of the main differences between experts and novices is the experts’ propensity to reinvest the resources unchained by the use of routines to deal with more advanced problems and to challenge what appears to be unproblematic and rou- tine. In the same way, different patterns of teacher talk between experienced and inexperi- enced teachers in the present study can be attributed to their cognition, however, from a di f- ferent perspective. Considering teacher development as a continuum, Gatbonton (2008) be- lieved that we could put inexperienced teachers and experienced teachers in the early and later stages of this continuum, respectively. Taking this continuum into account, it is not far from reality to contend that the thinking and classroom behavior of experienced teachers are likely to be more stable and less variable in comparison to their novice counterparts. As Gatbonton (2008, p. 162) stated, "the stability arises because they [experienced teachers] already have had ample opportunities to deal with recurring issues and, consequently, have had occasions to retain what works and eliminate what does not". This statement does not, however, hold true within the real EFL context of the present study. This is because unlike Gatbonton who followed the MACAST and based her recurring issues on “pedagogical knowledge inferred from the novice teachers’ reports of their thoughts” (p. 164; emphasis added), the present study has followed the MICAST and recorded what teachers do in their classes from the beginning to the end of their teaching sessions. While inferences made from teachers’ thoughts might never materialize in real situations, what they teach in their classes does represent their “pedagogical knowledge” objectively. This study is, therefore, based on the assumption that the more teachers’ schemata the learners are exposed to in their EFL classes, the more likely they would use their sentential and discoursal context to internalize the teachers’ schemata as their own intake. As its r e- sults show, the number of schemata the inexperienced teachers employed in their classes was significantly more than the experienced ones in linguistic semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic domains, indicating that their “pedagogical knowledge” is superior to that of experienced teachers and thus challenges the nature of “recurring issues” linguistically. An- other explanation might be related to the “recency effect” of the teachers’ past training. The inexperienced teachers are more likely to remember theoretical constructs and pedagogical ideas they have recently learned from their recently completed studies. This could explain their richer schema compared to the more experienced teachers who have completed their studies many years earlier. EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 140 In order to explore the linguistic richness of schemata employed by teachers, their talk was further examined using the measure of lexical variation (LV) adopted by Meara et al. (1997). LV is the type-token ratio which is used to assess the lexical richness of teacher talk. In other words, LV ratios show the diversity of words in teacher talk. The higher a ra- tio, the fewer repetitions there are. Its calculation is straightforward: LV = no. of types / no. of tokens x 100 In this study, types were defined as all the different words in the corpus, and tokens as the total number of running words. Type was taken to include both the base form and all its derivations, despite any differences in orthography and pronunciation. As Table 4 shows, the LV ratio of experienced and inexperienced teachers varied. Lex- ical variation ratios were higher for inexperienced teachers (15.44%) than their experienced counterparts (13.99%). This finding shows that the experienced teachers’ classes are lexical- ly poorer than those of their inexperienced counterparts. In other words, contrary to what Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) claimed, inexperienced EFL teachers perform with more effortless automaticity than the experienced teachers in employing schemata in their classes. The findings obtained via the MICAST are not only superior to those of MACAST objectively, but also multidimensional in analysis in that the MICAST approaches schemata both linguistically and cognitive- ly (Khodadady & Yazdi, 2015). While the schema “older”, for example, belongs to the linguistic species of comparative modifiers within the linguistic genus of adjectives comprising the linguistic semantic domain, it was juxtaposed by one of the experienced and inexperienced teachers with other words to produce a sentence representing a single concept called cognitive species (Khodadady & Bagheri, 2014). A compari- son of the species produced by the teachers shows which one places “older” within an unambiguous species presented as input to his students: Experienced teacher: 141 EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK You said number one is the man in the middle. Yes, why you say he’s number one, Saeed? How can you understand that what in the picture? I mean the person on the CD say that. We say he is number one. Do you remember any descriptions of this man older thirty? Inexperience teacher: I'm not talking just about the kids, old people, your parents. What do they like to talk about: Their jobs, work, their career, games, computer games, voting. These days they're talking about government, yes gov- ernment politics. Mostly older people are talking about politics a lot. It seems that EFL teachers undergo some sort of attrition over years in which teaching becomes a routine job for them and they produce species whose constitut- ing schemata are not pedagogically pre- sented in appropriate syntactic order such as “this man older thirty”. While the expe- rienced teacher’s four species appearing be- fore the species of which the schema “old- er” forms a part, provide no background knowledge for his learners to compare “this man” in terms of his age, the inexperienced teacher brings up “kids” and then moves to “old people” like the learners’ “parents” leading to their comparison with “older people” whose hobby is talking about poli- tics in Iran. Conclusion With a specific end goal to pick up a more profound knowledge of teacher talk, this study examined the use of schemata by EFL teachers in their talk. The rationale for this exploration is that understanding the teaching process and the development of teachers is incomplete unless the teachers' classroom behavior, especially their talk, is taken into consideration. Despite such an importance, however, there are relatively few studies that address the question of how background knowledge is developed and the ways in which experienced teach- ers’ knowledge development differs from less experienced and novice teachers. The scarcity of such studies is partly attributed to the nature of knowledge which is tacit. Unlike performance in the classroom, teachers’ knowledge is not only unobserva- ble but also often very difficult to elicit. Yet, as Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) convincingly asserted, understanding teachers’ knowledge and how it is devel- oped as teachers live through their experi- ences is vital to the understanding of other aspects of their professional life. The results of the present study showed that the number of schemata the inexperienced teachers employed in their classes was significantly more than the ex- perienced ones in linguistically established semantic, syntactic and parasyntactic do- EXPERIENCE AND TEACHER TALK 142 mains. In addition, this study is a further proof of superiority of the MICAST over the MACAST as the former deals with the objective reality inside the classrooms while the latter is principally of subjective nature. The authentic data collected in this study through observations of real classes are hoped to reinforce “the links between research and teacher development, creating in teachers an awareness of the contribution which research in their own classrooms can make to their professional growth” (Borg, 1998, p. 281). © Vahid Rahmani Doqaruni & Ebrahim Khodadady (Corresponding author) Vahid Rahmani Doqarumi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Teaching English as a Foreign Lan- guage, English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Letters and Hu- manities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Islamic Republic of Iran. & Ebrahim Khodadady is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi Univer- sity of Mashhad, Iran Suggested reference format for this article: Doqarumi, Vahid R. & Khododay, E. (2016, November). Does “Experience” Bring about Any Significant Difference in EFL Teacher Talk? Beyond Words, 125-144. 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