What you will make
- A question-led codebook with inclusion and exclusion rules.
- A record of one ambiguous coding decision.
- A claim whose scope matches the available evidence.
This is an original teaching exercise. The exchange below is invented, not a record of participants or a finding from a classroom study. Its purpose is to make analytical decisions visible. Allow about twenty minutes, and write your first interpretation before reading ours.
1. Choose the question before the code
“How much do students speak?” and “How do students challenge an explanation?” require different evidence. The first might use speaking time or turns; the second needs attention to what an utterance does and how others respond. For this exercise, ask: How does a teacher invite a learner to explain a language choice?
Our unit is a teacher turn, interpreted alongside the preceding and following turns. This is a deliberate simplification. A longer project might divide turns into actions or examine sequences without assigning each turn a single code. Record that choice so a later count is intelligible.
2. Read a small exchange in context
1. Teacher: Which sentence would you send to your lecturer?
2. Mina: “Give me another day.”
3. Teacher: What might the lecturer understand from that?
4. Mina: That I am telling them, not asking?
5. Teacher: Can you try it as a request?
6. Mina: “Could I have another day, please?”
7. Teacher: What changed besides “please”?
8. Mina: They can say no now.
Keep the task prompt with the transcript. Without it, a reader cannot tell whether a turn addresses sentence formation, audience, or interpersonal meaning. If this were real data, audio might also change the interpretation: intonation, pauses, overlap, and laughter are absent here.
3. Draft a codebook with boundaries
| Code | Include when | Exclude when |
|---|---|---|
| SELECT | The teacher asks the learner to choose a form. | The teacher asks for a reason rather than a choice. |
| INTERPRET | The teacher asks about meaning or audience understanding. | The teacher only asks the learner to produce another sentence. |
| REFORMULATE | The teacher requests a different formulation. | The teacher supplies the replacement without requesting one. |
With these rules, turn 1 is SELECT, turn 3 is INTERPRET, and turn 5 is REFORMULATE. Turn 7 is the useful difficulty. “What changed” might invite a grammatical comparison, but Mina’s next response concerns the lecturer’s ability to refuse. We would provisionally code it INTERPRET and record that the next turn informed our decision.
Do not quietly rewrite INTERPRET to include everything interesting. Add a memo: “Turn 7 permits both form and interpersonal readings; code chosen using turn 8; revisit comparable cases.” If another analyst chooses a different code, compare the rule and evidence before seeking agreement. Disagreement can expose an under-specified category.
4. Separate a count from an explanation
A count of two INTERPRET turns describes this exercise under this coding scheme. It does not show that the teacher usually teaches pragmatics, that the learner has acquired request forms, or that the approach is effective. Those claims require additional observations and a design that addresses them.
A bounded interpretation is: “In this exchange, the teacher’s questions invite attention to how a request positions its recipient, and the learner explicitly mentions the possibility of refusal.” This connects a visible action to a visible response without treating one response as durable learning.
5. Take a decision log into your own study
- Write the question, unit of analysis, and context you need to retain.
- Pilot the rules on a small sample before applying them across the dataset.
- Store ambiguous cases with the competing readings and your reason for choosing.
- When a rule changes, revisit previously coded material affected by it.
- Keep identifying data within the storage and access arrangements approved for your project.
For conceptual background, read our pragmatics guide and discourse analysis guide. Neither a codebook nor transcription software substitutes for an explicit account of how an interpretation was reached.