This article describes an in-service training project designed to raise trainees' awareness, through the analysis of transcriptions of teaching sequences, of the degree of communicativeness in their classroom interactions. The presence or absence of such features of communicative classroom talk as referential questions, feedback on content, wait time, and learner-initiated interaction, are used as ‘bottom-up’ markers of communicative, content-driven, teacher–student interaction. Trainees’ analyses showed evidence of growing awareness of their non—communicative ritualized teaching behaviours, awareness that, at least in some cases, resulted in improved classroom practice.