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This study evaluated 90 junior high level public school teachers' interactive verbal behavior in response to three seating arrangements (row, herringbone, and u-shaped) across four dimensions: frequency of indirect teacher talk, frequency of direct teacher talk, frequency of student talk, and silence or confusion. Results indicate that: (1) teachers using either u-shaped or herringbone seating engaged in more interactive verbal behaviors than those in traditional row seating; (2) alternative seating arrangements had the most effect on the dimensions of indirect teacher talk (accepts feelings, praises or encourages, accepts or uses ideas of students, asks questions, and answers student questions) and student talk (teacher-initiated teacher talk, student questions, and student-initiated student talk); and (3) alternative seating arrangements enabled teachers to use interactive verbal behaviors in ways that made their lesson presentation more active and collaborative among students. The study concludes that other factors such as the teacher's enthusiasm, energy, and personality may be more of a factor when examining interactive verbal behavior than seating arrangement alone, and that teachers who alternate their existing row seating arrangements may effectively enhance their instructional dialectic in all dimensions. Appendixes present categories of interactive verbal behavior, diagrams of seating arrangements, and statistical data from the study. (Contains 60 references.) (JDD)