How can you tell that the teacher is the dominant participant?
I can tell the teacher is the dominant participant in the play script because he uses a lot of interrogatives "so what is the main point of the poem" this shows that the teacher is the dominant participant because he is the one asking the questions and is controlling the topic of the conversation by setting the agenda. Also the teacher quite often interrupts the students "[no no That's Huckleberry Finn" this could be seen as presenting him as the dominant participant because he regularly interupts the students when they are trying to answer his questions.
How does the class respond to the teacher's techniques?
Near the end of the transcript the student Petros overlaps the teacher "[That's terrific!" this shows the students are sort of gaining dominance in the conversation and are starting to answer the questions about the poem. Also the students start to have more airtime "I think it is ... he's talking about what he [wants" the airtime is how long each person has so the longer a character speaks for the more power they have in the conversation.
What seem to be the key quotes?
"is that a threat"
"I haven't asked you Alex. Petro?"
"eschew explicitness"
"lascivious er promiscuous"
Good use of techniques to support interpretations. To improve, focus on the techniques in the quotes you choose and show exactly how they make meaning in context e.g. the teacher is clearly in control of the discourse in this interrogative as he/she uses the discourse marker "so", working with the pre-modifying adjective "main" in the noun phrase "main point" to draw together the learning from the prior discussion - the teacher judges when to do this (you were right to say the teacher sets the agenda). So don't forget to dig into the quote in detail using terminology to identify how the techniques work in context. But there is very promising work here.
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