Quantitative characteristics of teacher speech in face-to-face and virtual teaching situations in kindergarten and preschool
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18861/cied.2025.16.2.4029Keywords:
exchange configurations, volume of speech, lexical diversity, kindergarten, in-person, virtualityAbstract
This paper analyzes face-to-face and virtual teaching situations in kindergarten and infant school (2 and 3 year old classrooms). The analysis considers the configuration of conversational exchanges between teachers and children ―teachers' utterances are addressed to a group of children or to individual children―, taking into account the relationship between these different forms of organization of exchanges and the characteristics of the teachers' speech vocabulary (speech volume and lexical diversity). Using a quantitative methodological strategy, two corpora recorded in kindergartens and infant school in the City of Buenos Aires were analyzed: a corpus of face-to-face situations (Rosemberg, Stein, Migdalek, 2003-2014) and a corpus of virtual situations (Ibañez & Rosemberg, 2020). The results showed that in face-to-face situations, teachers tended to use a greater volume of speech and greater lexical diversity when addressing a single child and to a lesser extent when addressing groups of children. In the virtual setting, teachers tended to use a greater volume of speech and greater lexical diversity when addressing the group of children and to a lesser extent when addressing a single child. These results provide relevant evidence for the design of pedagogical strategies that promote children's linguistic development in virtual and face-to-face environments.
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