Contextualizing IRE in an eighth-grade quiz review*

This study examines ways in which a single classroom speech event, the quiz review,affects and contextualizes the initiate-reply-evaluate (IRE) sequence. The analysis specifies the kinds of conversational acts surrounding the IRE sequence and further analyzes how the components of IRE interact with the quiz review context. The IRE sequence, as well as the framing structures which embed it, are shown to be intergrally tied to the writtentext (a previously graded quiz) in ways suggesting that public display of student test performance is routinely accomplished through the interactional sequences of review activities. The sequential organization of talk also displays an extensive framework of teacher utterances within which a student is sanctioned to speak and suggests the constraining nature of much IRE-based interaction.