Classroom Discourse Analysis

This article discusses how language use affects reasoning and learning in educational settings. Interactions among (1) pupils in upper secondary school, (2) teachers in upper secondary school, and (3) student teachers studying to become secondary teachers were analysed. While previous studies have examined language use among pupils, teachers, and student teachers, respectively, little research has combined these perspectives. As such, this study provides additional insight into the educational discourse. Drawing on sociocultural, dialogical perspectives on learning, the authors of this article found that the inclusion of specialized language promotes learning and enhances professional awareness. These findings hold implications for teacher education and teacher professional development.

The object of this thesis is studying the way in which the (Greek) language course is carried out at the level of High School (pupils aged 12-15) (Gymnasium). For carrying out this study we consider that (each) class teaching is formed by particular discourses, that is different ways of representation in regard with its varied aspects. These discourses, in turn, determine the curriculum macrogenre and the genre network associated with that, namely the succession and the character of interactions, practices and genre fulfilment constituting the course. The specific character of these elements plays a very important role in forming the discourse community developed in the context of the language course, as it specifies the way and the width of the pupils’ participation in literacy practices, thus contributing in the creation of concrete literate identities.
For the accomplishment of the research, interviews with teachers and pupils were utilized, and moreover the pupils’ exercise books (with their homeworks) were analyzed. The general conclusion brought out by the analysis is that the language-instructive discourses for the most part reflect elements from the traditional and structuralist language-instructive approaches, while some interspersed expressions of communicative and text-centered views are present as well. Consequently, these discourses flow into a specific instructive macrogenre which in turn forms a traditional-style language course, during which there develop discourse communities restricted to school-type practices, such as grammar exercises, composition writing and exams. These elements result in forming identity with limited literacy, that is literacy containing specific knowledge about the world, texts and language, as long as the focus is brought into acquiring the school literacy, which mainly aims at familiarizing the pupils with practices necessary for assessment procedures at school.

This article describes a classroom-based research project that implemented picture book discussions with students in Years 5 and 6. The aim was to empower the students and provide opportunities for them to become agentic learners. The article concludes with the researcher's observations of some of the preliminary findings.

En este trabajo se explora el estudio de la interacción en el aula a través del análisis del discurso como medio para comprender el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la música, concretamente la introducción del concepto notas con líneas adicionales. Se analiza una conversación de un aula de escuela de música con 12 alumnos de 2º de grado elemental (9-10 años) y se identifican estrategias discursivas que ayudan a comprender el proceso de construcción conjunta del significado. El artículo se centra en dos de esas estrategias.

In this study we explore classroom interaction through discourse analysis as a tool to understand music learning, in particular, the introduction of a particular musical concept. For this purpose, we analysed a conversation held within a twelve 9-10 years old students in relation to the concept of notes on ledger lines. Some discourse strategies were identified that help to understand the process of joint construction of meaning. The paper focuses on two of these discourse strategies.

This paper explores how ‘laughter’ is communicated in a structured language learning forum. The participants are English language learners at levels A1-B1 (according to the Common European Framework), and their teachers. I start by surveying what can be analysed as ‘laughter’ including the textual representation of laughter sounds; laughter/humour related terms; emoticons; intensification; the co-construction of a humorous frame. I then go on to look at the interactional functions of the laughter in this context through analysing who laughs, what at, when, and what it accomplishes.

More than the recognition, perception, and interpretation of written materials, reading has been dubbed as our bridge to other skills that are necessary for academic success. Subsequently, one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of output of the students is through Classroom discourse analysis, which is an aspect of classroom process research (Jiang, 2012). This paper, therefore, aimed to determine teacher’s questioning vis-à-vis students’ reading strategies in the case of an ESL reading class in one of the private  schools in Zamboanga City, Philippines through classroom discourse analysis. As a qualitative endeavor, it made use of classroom observations  with the aid of an audio recorder to enable the analysis. A total of 131 exchanges were generated in a 45-minute discussion, with roughly 25 minutes
allotted to the said discourse, and the rest for other activities. Teacher-Pupil-Teacher (TPT) captured as Teacher-Student-Teacher (TST) in the case of this paper, is the recurring sequence during the whole duration of the discourse. Discourse analysis that was done to an audio recording transcript of a reading class observation revealed patterns that are primarily present in some, if not most, discourse analysis (DA) research literature. Interestingly, it, however, uncovered the following: for teacher’s way of questioning (in this case, echoic and epistemic), epistemic questions (mostly, rhetorical for this matter), were made reference(s) by the students in answering questions. Consequently, the lesson or activity became, to some extent, communicative, because of the above mentioned points.

Background/Context: Portfolio assessment is a popular form of authentic assessment, but often portfolios become simply folders full of papers rather than student reflections on their work.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The author conducted a study aiming to help the ninth-grade students in his English language arts classroom be more reflective about their reading and writing portfolios.

Research Design: This study was conducted as a teacher research study in two parts. The first part studied the effect on the reflectiveness of students when using a 10-minute one-on-one presentation with the teacher instead of a cover letter. From the data received from these first-semester presentations, the teacher-researcher categorized the students' statements into reflective and nonreflective categories. In the second part of the study, the teacher used these categories to teach students to speak more reflectively during their second-semester presentations.

Conclusions/Recommendations: The author found that students can be taught to be more reflective about their work and that this newfound reflectiveness helps students take more control in their literacy education.

Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, wie Unterrichtsgespräche in der Schule genutzt werden können, um bildungssprachliche Fähigkeiten von Schülerinnen und Schülern zu fördern. Er fokussiert am Beispiel des Erklärens und Argumentierens die Ebene globaler diskursiver Praktiken. Anhand authentischer Unterrichtsdaten zeigt er auf, mit welchen interaktiven Verfahren Lehrkräfte Gelegenheiten für schülerseitige Diskursbeiträge schaffen und in partizipations-und diskurserwerbsförderlicher Weise nutzen können. Empirische Befunde aus der Unterrichts-und Erwerbsforschung werden zu einem Konzept unterrichtsintegrierter Diskursförderung zusammengeführt.

This book offers a close investigation of interactional practices in L2 classrooms, and provides a deeper appreciation of the processes involved in the co-construction of understanding and knowledge in settings for instructed language learning. Using Conversation Analysis, and referring to epistemic, multimodal, and multilingual resources, Olcay Sert interprets key interactional and pedagogical practices observed in language classrooms by closely examining the verbal and nonverbal features of teacher-student interaction; for example, gaze, gestures and orientations to classroom artefacts. With an emphasis on the multimodal and multilingual resources, this is one of the first studies to comprehensively address these issues in L2 classrooms with a clear theoretical and practical underpinning, and is an essential study for researchers and postgraduate students in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.

Professor Numa Markee, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign:

Sert’s must read book introduces conversation analysis to readers who are not familiar with the power of this methodology, while simultaneously providing a detailed theoretical discussion of cutting edge issues in the field. And his contributions to understanding teacher education as a data driven enterprise are both provocative and enlightening.

The aim of the present book is two-folded: to formulate a theoretical and methodological framework of educational discourse analysis and, based on this framework, to map the mobility demonstrated in Greek language teaching during the present historical juncture, which is characterized by intense changes, at both local and global levels. In contrast with most international classroom discourse analyses, the present book focuses on the understanding of educational reality from a pedagogical perspective, which entails that the findings can be fruitfully utilized in educational planning and teaching practices. Theories originating from the fields of critical sociolinguistics and classroom discourse analysis are employed to this end.

Language teachers perform constant multi-tasking in L2 classrooms while they are teaching. They manage materials, behaviours, content, discourse, and organise and co-construct learning environments at the same time. At the heart of this multi-tasking lies a process of instant decision making during classroom interaction: they initiate turns, respond to student utterances, attend to linguistic mistakes within micro-seconds. As research in the last two decades has clearly documented, the convergence between pedagogical goals and unfolding classroom interaction (Seedhouse, 2004; Walsh, 2011, 2013; Sert, 2015) is perhaps one of the most important means of creating learning opportunities for students. Opportunities for language learning are facilitated if interactional practices are fine tuned to the goal of teaching the L2. Mainly using conversation analytic methods, researchers of L2 classroom interaction have documented the interactional manoeuvres of teachers so as to understand the microscopic details of instructed language learning and teaching. Findings of these empirical observations have recently been incorporated into teacher education and development programmes, increasing the importance of classroom interaction in teacher education. Against this background, this chapter provides a review of classroom interaction research with a focus on the role of teacher talk in facilitating language learning opportunities and presents how classroom interaction and teacher development are closely related by reviewing research in both initial teacher education and in-service teacher education. After presenting research on the longitudinal development of L2 CIC, it makes a case for a technology-enhanced, reflective, and micro-analytic teacher education framework, presents practical applications, and discusses future directions.

The present study attempts to examine how the language lesson is constructed by studying the teaching practices of two 10th grade teachers of Modern Greek. Data were gathered by adopting methodological triangulation (observation, recording, interview). The analysis focused on the same teaching module, as this would facilitate the exploration of issues such as the ‘fluidity’ characterizing the language lesson, the teacher’s agency, the diverse ‘recontextualizations’ of the teaching material (textbook) and, finally, the various constructions of the Greek language lesson. Following the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis and Social Semiotics, we approached each teaching module as a ‘macrogenre’ comprising a chain of teaching events (macrostructure), the sequence of which reflects specific conceptualizations of language teaching. Having as a theoretical departure point the interconnection between ‘discourses’, ‘genres’ and ‘identities’ in each social practice, we investigated the language teaching discourses permeating the teaching practices, as well as the teachers’ and pupils’ identities. The analysis of both teaching macrogenres demonstrated that their ‘macrostructure’ results from the similar ‘accumulative’ logic which is prominent in traditional language teaching discourses. In such discourses the language lesson is based on the following pattern: offering information (teacher) followed by close pattern practices (pupils). The aforementioned teaching structure, which seems to be well-established in the Greek educational system, fosters the cultivation of specific types of educated subjects who will be able to unproblematically reproduce, conform and obey to a given pattern (‘transmission discourse’). However, by focusing our study on individual teaching events, we ascertained that the teaching macrogenres have been enriched in each case by the teachers’ personality, as there were different choices in terms of their negotiation of the content of teaching (knowledge of the world, language/semiosis and genres), their teaching practices and, therefore, the literacies that they attempted to cultivate. These differences, manifest in the macrogenre’s ‘interdiscursivity’ or in the hybridization of the teachers’ Discourse, are, firstly, a clear indication that there is, even on a small scale, the tendency towards change in Greek education through the restructuring of the well-established teaching model (an established macrostructure of the teaching macrogenre). Secondly, the detected differentiations underscore the role of agency during the recontextualization of the language lesson by highlighting the teacher as ‘designer’. The teacher’s choices become politically significant in that through her/his teaching practices s/he is enabled to alter dominant or identifiable discourses by restricting or extending the boundaries within which the language lesson is constructed.

ΠΕΡΙΛΗΨΗ

Η παρούσα μελέτη επιχειρεί να αποτυπώσει το πώς «κατασκευάζεται» το γλωσσικό μάθημα μελετώντας την περίπτωση δύο εκπαιδευτικών που διδάσκουν το μάθημα της «Έκφρασης – Έκθεσης» στην Α´ λυκείου. Η μελέτη άντλησε τα ερευνητικά δεδομένα της με τη μέθοδο της τριγωνοποίησης (παρατήρηση, μαγνητοφώνηση, συνέντευξη). Η επιτόπια παρατήρηση αφορούσε τη διδασκαλία της ίδιας διδακτικής ενότητας, καθώς κάτι τέτοιο θα βοηθούσε στο να διερευνήσουμε ζητήματα όπως αυτό της «ρευστότητας» του γλωσσικού μαθήματος, της «δημιουργικότητας» του καθηγητή, των ποικίλων τρόπων «αναπλαισίωσης» του γλωσσικού εγχειριδίου και τελικά των ποικίλων τρόπων πραγμάτωσης του μαθήματος των ελληνικών. Συνθέτοντας ένα δίκτυο θεωρητικών εργαλείων από τα πεδία της Κριτικής Ανάλυσης Λόγου και της Κοινωνικής Σημειωτικής, αντιμετωπίσαμε την κάθε διδασκαλία ως ένα «μακροκειμενικό είδος» το οποίο συγκροτείται από μια αλυσίδα διδακτικών συμβάντων, η αλληλουχία των οποίων (μακροδομή) μαρτυρά συγκεκριμένες οπτικές για το τι σημαίνει διδασκαλία της γλώσσας. Αξιοποιώντας τις θεωρητικές προτάσεις της διαλογικής σχέσης μεταξύ «κειμένων», «λόγων» και «ταυτοτήτων» στο πλαίσιο κάθε κοινωνικής πρακτικής, αναζητήσαμε τους γλωσσοδιδακτικούς λόγους οι οποίοι αποτυπώνονταν στο μακροκείμενο αυτό και επιχειρήσαμε να τους συνδέσουμε τόσο με την ταυτότητα των εκπαιδευτικών όσο και με τις εγγράμματες ταυτότητες των μαθητών. Η αποτύπωση των δύο διδακτικών μακροκειμένων έδειξε ότι η μακροδομή τους ακολουθεί παρόμοια «αθροιστική» λογική η οποία γίνεται αντιληπτή στο πλαίσιο παραδοσιακών γλωσσοδιδακτικών λόγων, όπου το γλωσσικό μάθημα συνίσταται εν πολλοίς στην προσφορά κάποιας πληροφορίας από τον εκπαιδευτικό και εν συνεχεία στην εξάσκηση των μαθητών πάνω στην προσφερθείσα γνώση. Η κειμενική αυτή διδακτική δομή, που δείχνει να είναι ακόμη παγιωμένη στα ελληνικά εκπαιδευτικά δεδομένα, είναι φανερό ότι ευνοεί τη δημιουργία συγκεκριμένου τύπου εγγράμματων υποκειμένων τα οποία θα είναι σε θέση να αναπαράγουν ένα πρότυπο, να συμμορφώνονται και να υπακούουν σε αυτό («λόγος της μετάδοσης»). Ωστόσο, εστιάζοντας τη μελέτη μας στα επιμέρους διδακτικά συμβάντα, διαπιστώσαμε πως το μακροκείμενο της διδασκαλίας «διανθίστηκε» σε κάθε περίπτωση από την προσωπικότητα των εκπαιδευτικών, καθώς αποτυπώθηκαν διαφορετικές επιλογές ως προς το πώς διαπραγματεύθηκαν το περιεχόμενο της διδασκαλίας (τις γνώσεις για τον κόσμο, τη γλώσσα/ τη σημείωση και τα κειμενικά είδη), ως προς τις διδακτικές πρακτικές τις οποίες ακολούθησαν και συνεπώς ως προς τους γραμματισμούς τους οποίους επιχείρησαν να  καλλιεργήσουν. Οι διαφοροποιήσεις αυτές, οι οποίες εκφράστηκαν μέσω της «διαλογικότητας» στο μακροκείμενο ή μέσω της υβριδοποίησης του Λόγου των εκπαιδευτικών, αποτελούν, πρώτον, μια σαφή ένδειξη πως υπάρχει, έστω και σε περιορισμένο επίπεδο, η τάση για αλλαγή στο ελληνικό εκπαιδευτικό τοπίο μέσω της αναδιαμόρφωσης ενός παγιωμένου διδακτικού μοντέλου (μίας παγιωμένης μακροδομής του μακροκειμένου της διδασκαλίας). Δεύτερον, καθιστούν ευκρινή το ρόλο της ανθρώπινης δράσης (agency) κατά την αναπλαισίωση του γλωσσικού μαθήματος αναδεικνύοντας τον εκπαιδευτικό ως ένα «σχεδιαστή» του οποίου οι επιλογές έχουν πολιτική σημασία, καθώς με τις διδακτικές πρακτικές του δύναται να διαφοροποιήσει αναγνωρίσιμους ή κυρίαρχους λόγους περιστέλλοντας ή διευρύνοντας τα όρια μέσα στα οποία κινείται η πραγμάτωση του γλωσσικού μαθήματος.

The present study attempts to demonstrate the utilization of specific theoretical and methodological tools belonging to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in classroom discourse analysis and, more specifically, in the investigation of research queries about the various “constructions” (Kress et al. 2005) of the Modern Greek language lesson. Drawing on various CDA approaches (Gee 2005, Fairclough 2003) and also on the basics of Systemic Functional Grammar, we attempt to underscore the pedagogic discourses that permeate teaching events, teachers’ Discourses, and their potential hybridization. Our analysis moves from the ‘here-and-now’ micro-level of language and action to the macro-level of social practices in order to present some initial concluding remarks concerning the materialization of the language lesson.

En este capítulo se presenta un estudio realizado con el interés de evaluar la manera en que los recursos electrónicos organizados en la Enciclomedia, y presentados a través del pizarrón electrónico interactivo (PEI), son utilizados en el aula por los docentes para construir conocimiento de manera compartida. De manera más específica, nos interesó calificar la calidad de la práctica educativa mediada por el uso del PEI, en comparación con el uso del pizarrón tradicional (PT).

p.55 in the attached volume

My paper will not have a single focus, but the unifying central theme will be the description of the method actually being enacted in particular contexts (method-in-use) to help us compare unique experiences across contexts. For cross-cultural comparison to be possible at all, we have to assume that there is something in common between even the most divergent teaching contexts. I have therefore selected the two most different situations I could find from my own experience and from my research and then used the same model to compare them. By comparing experiences of unique teaching situations across diverse contexts, we attempt
to learn from the local experience of others, help to make sense of local experience for ourselves and help others to make sense of their own experience. After briefly summarizing my model of method-in-use developed and modified from my earlier PhD study (Nunn 1996), I will narrate some of the episodes that could not be included in an examined study or in standard journal articles, but which help support the perception of the need to describe real local experience and to look below the surface of polished academic study. Anecdotal narrated experience would not normally be included in standard academic writing. I use this partly as a counterbalance to more formal writing I have already published on this same subject, but partly because I have come to believe that formal academic writing can take the life and energy out of what is a very dynamic, lived profession and can exclude
some highly relevant local data. I do not believe it is possible to understand the context I describe without the anecdotal narrative.

Rhymes and songs are useful for creating phonemic awareness among learners, and they are the predictors of a child’s reading development. This paper tries to list the benefits of using rhymes and songs as inputs for the development of literacy and cognitive skills in children, and prepare them for listening, speaking, reading, and in due course,
writing. The paper also presents some strategies for the teaching–learning of rhymes and songs. Strategies like snowballing, echo principle, choral and closed eye singing make rhymes interesting, and draw the attention of children to themes and help them acquire a language. Thus  rhymes and songs become inputs for language processing, leading to language acquisition.

(Abstract - short version)
In Australia, a significant number of international students undertake intensive language instruction to prepare for higher education (Australia Education International 2014). Difficulties with academic writing pose a barrier to tertiary entrance. With much at stake, effective support for academic writing development is an on-going concern for researchers and educators.

A substantial body of research has analysed the linguistic demands of ‘academic’ texts. However fewer studies explore the negotiation of meanings, through classroom interaction. This study uses methods of qualitative phasal analysis (Malcolm 2010) and discourse semantics tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Martin 1992; Martin & White 2005; Martin and Rose 2007) to examine teacher-student talk, during five lessons of a collaborative writing step, known as joint construction (Rothery 1996; Rose & Martin 2012). It builds on previous studies to examine three main aspects of collaborative text creation: what students do; what teachers do to support student activity (without taking over); and how meanings are negotiated at the time of text creation.

Findings contribute to a better understand of how the ‘end product’ is created. They also provide insight into the semiotic resources that teachers and students use to talk about and negotiate academic language choices, at the time of writing.

Classroom discourse analysis is an aspect of classroom process research. It helps us understand how teachers use a language in classroom. in this paper we are going to use two different researches that were done in this field and see what were the results of these two studies. One of them was based on the data of discourse collected from English classroom in Three Gorges University in China and the other one was from three English teachers of a vocational college in Zhejiang Province. the data will show the aspects of the amount of teacher talk, the structures of classroom discourse and the questions of teacher. It finds out some features in the present College English classrooms, they are:  teacher talk far exceeds students talk; IRF pattern dominates classroom discourse structure, and larger amount of displayed questions On the basis of data analysis, the authors of this two paper offer some tentative suggestions for English teachers to courage students to talk more in class.

This paper investigates the literacy practices related to the production of written texts by pupils attending the course of Modern Greek language in junior high school (in Greek called Gymnasio). More specifically, the focus is on three questions: a) which genres do pupils produce in the context of Greek Language course, b) the types of discourses embodied in their literacy practices and, c) what kind of literate identities do they result in? In order to investigate these questions, homework papers and inter-views with five pupils from different (both public and private) junior high schools have been utilized and analyzed. The theoretical framework for the analysis and the interpretation of the research data is based on the triptych discourses, genres, identities (Κουτσογιάννης, 2010 α). Specifically, I assume that every instruction correlates with specific discourses, that is different configurations of beliefs and practices in relation to the teaching of writing. Moreover, I consider that every language lesson is a specific curriculum genre (Christie, 2002) and pupils’ homework consist a genre net-work (Fairclough, 2005) related to the first one. These two dimensions, discourses and genres, result in the fostering of specific types of literate identities. The basic conclusion is that skills discourse seems to be dominant and it results in forming literate identities with practices restricted to solving drill exercises and to writing traditional school essays without comprehending the context.

This short, introductory paper presents an up-to-date account of works within the field of Applied Linguistics which have been influenced by a Conversation Analytic paradigm. The article reviews recent studies in classroom interaction, materials development, proficiency assessment and language teacher education. We believe that the publication of such a special journal issue is timely, since Conversation Analysis has been one of the most influential methodologies in recent Applied Linguistic research, as can be seen by the growing number of publications appearing in various journals.

The study explored social studies student teachers' views on the implementation of learner-centred teaching and learning approach in Zambian primary schools. Triangulation research design which collected both quantitative and qualitative data was used. This involved survey questionnaires which were distributed to 600 third year student teachers who were randomly sampled from 6 primary colleges of education using class registers provided by respective college registrars. Out of 600 questionnaires, 561 were returned back representing a return rate of 93.5%. Face to face interviews were also conducted with student teachers who were conveniently sampled from three colleges. The total students who participated in the interviews were 21. The interviews collected detailed qualitative narratives regarding student teachers' experience with implementation of learner-centred approach. The findings of this study pointed to the fact that the policy emphasis on using learner-centred approach in the teaching learning process has not really taken off in Zambian Primary Schools.Most student teachers reported that the traditional teacher led classrooms still dominate and characterise classroom in primary schools. A number of challenges ranging from low literacy levels, over enrolments (high number of pupils per class), inadequate time allocated per subject lesson per day, and lack of teaching and learning materials were cited for the non-implementation of leaner-centred approaches. The teachers however expressed positive attitude towards learner-centred approach citing among other benefits promotion of learner participation, improved retention of knowledge among learners, development of problem solving skills, motivation of learners and ownership of the learning process by learners. Since the fundamental goal of teaching social studies through learner-centred approach in schools is to help students become responsible, critical, reflective, and active citizens who can make informed and reasoned decisions about the societal issues confronting the local, state, and global community respectively (Yilmaz, 2008), the study concluded that the views of primary teachers did not inspire the realisation of this goal. The study recommends school based programmes aimed at capacity building on how apply learner-centred methods in classroom situations with high numbers of pupils and low literacy levels among other deterrent factors.

Teaching English to non-native speakers today necessitates conducting conversations where learners interpret and decipher linguistic and nonverbal aspects of interaction, in other words, preparing learners to use English to participate in conversations inside and outside the classroom. However, this is not the case in Algerian Secondary school English classes. Regular observation indicated almost no continuous teacher-learner conversation while lessons. This paper intends to observe language use between the teachers and students; what instruction is used and how is it dealt with by learners. The results would aim at revealing the shortage learners show in the speaking skill and confirm the effectiveness of observation for classroom evaluation. Adopting a systematic observation, six classes at secondary school level in two different cities in Algeria were observed and audio-taped through a quantitative and qualitative method. Data is analysed from the amount of teacher's talk, types of classroom discourse structure and questioning. Based on data analysis, the findings showed that most of the talk is approximately initiated by the teacher; learners act only when asked display questions and keep silent when are challenged by influential questions. It also showed display questions dominate the classroom for they maximize learners' participation. Yet, this learner' short output would limit the learners' critical reflection and lessen the classroom interaction among participants. Therefore, this paper urges teachers to adopt a student-centred approach to FL learning that enables students' to talk more and participate in conversations negotiating meaning with their teacher and peers. For further research, the author puts forward some guidelines to build on new research.

This study explores the interactional unfolding of ‘epistemic status check’ (ESC) (e.g. ‘no idea?’, or ‘you don’t know?’), which is a frequently observed feature of teacher talk in language classrooms. The paper aims at contributing to the literature of institutional interaction and classroom discourse by introducing and defining ‘ESCs’, which also will indirectly be conducive to expanding the scope of the idea of epistemic engine ( [Heritage, 2012a] and [Heritage, 2012b]). An ESC can be defined as a speaker's interpretation of another interactant's state of knowledge, which (in the case of classrooms) can be initiated in order to pursue certain pedagogical goals when a second-pair part of an adjacency pair is delayed. It is employed subsequent to inter-turn gaps (Schegloff, 2007) that are accompanied by non-verbal cues. The study draws on 16 h of video-recorded interactions in two English language classrooms in a public school in Luxembourg. The participants are adolescent multilingual students, aged between 15 and 18, and a local teacher. The analysis was carried out using conversation analysis, by also drawing on the use of multi-semiotic resources including gaze directions, gestures, and body orientations. The findings show that teachers treat these embodied actions as displays of insufficient knowledge in classroom talk-in-interaction, and initiate ESCs subsequent to certain student non-verbal cues including gaze withdrawals, long silences, and headshakes. These displays of insufficient knowledge were found to be visual resources that the teacher uses in order to move the classroom activity forward, by first initiating an ESC, and then by allocating the turn to another student. These findings have implications for the analysis of ‘claims of insufficient knowledge’ (e.g. ‘I don’t know’) in general and their management in instructed learning environments in particular.

In addressing teacher talk and its role in providing opportunities for learning in L2 classrooms, a growing number of studies have investigated different ways teachers manage learner initiatives and demonstrate L2 Classroom Interactional Competence. However, despite their commonness in L2 classrooms, an investigation into pre-listening/ watching activities (e.g. prediction activities) is scarce in terms of how learning opportunities are created. Based on a corpus of fourteen 45-min EFL classes videotaped at a secondary school in Turkey, the current paper explores the ways student engagement is enhanced and learning opportunities are enacted in pre-watching activities in meaning and fluency contexts. Drawing on the analyses of detailed transcriptions of such activities and utilizing the micro-analytic lens of multimodal conversation analysis, it is revealed that the teacher creates opportunities for language learning by successfully managing learner initiatives and emergent knowledge gaps; evidenced through the appropriate use of resources like embedded correction, embodied repair, and embodied explanations. Evidence for potential language learning will be shown by tracking students' use of a phrase in meaningful communicative events. The findings have implications for research on L2 classroom interaction, teacher talk, and instructed language learning.

Introductory courses dealing with sex, gender and sexuality are usually quite biased, going as far as to deny the reality of biology. Drawing on the Catholic tradition (Aquinas), this article presents an accessible argument aimed at restoring deliberative balance in the classroom.

This chapter considers the scope of metalanguage during English language instruction undertaken directly before tertiary studies. While past studies of metalanguage have tended to privilege the analysis of spoken language in the classroom, with particular attention to linguistic terminology, this chapter explores both language and body language.  Methods of classroom discourse analysis focus on interaction between teachers and students during a collaborative writing lesson. Analysis draws on new developments in the theorisation of body language in Systemic Functional Linguistics theory. Findings illustrate how metalanguage may be expressed phonologically as spoken wording and also kinaesthetically as gestures. The gestures in this study, however, appear to initially be dependent on language for meaning, before gradually being used as an alternate and independent form of expression. These findings contribute to a broader conceptualisation of metalanguage that acknowledges a fuller range of semiotic resources used to share and develop knowledge about language in the classroom.

Five questions guided a case study exploring the relationship between oral narrative and discussion in middle school literature study: (a) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how can overall literature instruction be characterized? (b) Relative to similar classrooms in a large-scale study, how well do students achieve in the focal classroom? (c) What, if any, are the links between oral narrative and discussion? (d) If discussion and narrative co-occur, what sorts of oral narratives do narrators tell in discussions? and (e) If discussion and narrative co-occur, how can we characterize the overlap in terms of interaction? In the frequent conversational narrative discussions, where oral narrative and discussion discourse overlapped, teacher and students used various kinds of oral narrative genres to prime, sustain, ratify, and amplify discussion.

Unconscious mental processes (such as the automatic activation of racial stereotypes) can lead to such phenomena as negative pygmalion effects and stereotype threat, both of which directly interfere with black students' academic success, thus widening the racial achievement gap. Because stereotype activation occurs automatically and outside of conscious awareness, there is the disturbing possibility that nothing can be done to fully mitigate its harmful effects. It is proposed, however, on the basis of recent cross-disciplinary research, that by expending deliberate effort along the personal, instructional, and environmental dimensions, conscientious teachers can counteract these effects and help close the achievement gap.

This article presents an original needs-based partial theory of human injustice and shows its relationship to existing theories of human need and human liberation. The theory is based on an original typology of three social structural sources of human injustice, a partial theorization of the mechanisms of human injustice, and a needs-based theorization of the nature of human injustice, as experienced by individuals. This article makes a sociological contribution to normative social theory by clarifying the relationship of human injustice to human needs, human rights, and human liberation. The theory contends that human injustice is produced when oppression, mechanistic dehumanization, and exploitation create systematic inequality in opportunities to address human needs, leading to wrongful need deprivation and the resulting serious harm. In one longer sentence, this needs-based theory of the sources, mechanisms, and nature of human injustice contends that three distinct social syste...

Previous conversation analytic research has documented various aspects of preference organization and the ways dispreference is displayed in relation to pedagogical focus in L2 and CLIL classrooms (Seedhouse, 1997, Hellermann, 2009, Kääntä, 2010). This study explores preference organization in an under-researched context, an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) setting, and it specifically focuses on how a teacher displays dispreference for preceding learner turns. The data consist of 30 h of video recordings from two EMI classes, which were recorded for an academic term at a university in Turkey. Using Conversation Analysis, we demonstrate that the teacher employs a variety of interactional resources such as changing body position, gaze movements, hedging, and delaying devices to show dispreference for preceding student answers. Based on our empirical analysis, the ways the teacher prioritizes content and task over form/language are illustrated. The analyses also reveal that negotiation of meaning at content level and production of complex L2 structures can simultaneously be enabled through teachers’ specific turn designs in EMI classroom interaction. This demonstrates that preference organization, particularly in a teacher's responsive turns, can act as a catalyst for complex L2 production and enhance student participation. This study has implications for conversation analytic research on instructed learning settings, and in particular on teachers’ turn design in classroom interaction.

Each year, Israel's young men and women are drafted into compulsory military service and are required to engage directly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is by its nature intensely complex and is played out under the full glare of international security. So, how does Israel's education system prepare its young people for this? How is Palestine, and the Palestinians against whom these young Israelis will potentially be required to use force, portrayed in the school system? Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity. This book provides a fresh scholarly contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian debate, and will be relevant to the fields of Middle East Studies and Politics more widely

This study investigates the syntactic structures of spoken discourse of teachers in academic discourse. The knowledge of syntactic structure of a language helps in understanding the spoken discourse. So, the study identifies the wh-Movement in the syntactic structures of teachers in English classroom sessions. The data was collected from two universities of Federal government, Pakistan. The one was Air University Islamabad and the second was National University of Modern Languages Islamabad. The data was collected through the recording tool where the English classroom sessions of the teachers were audio-recorded and transcribed. The analysis of data was quantitative and qualitative in nature. The frequency of wh-movement in the structures of recorded English spoken data was analysed quantitatively. In qualitative analyses, the transcribed data was analysed syntactically, keeping in view minimalist perspective, with the help of parsing rules and figures. The analyzed data shows that the teachers at undergraduate level use language where wh-movement is employed in syntactic structure of English used in classroom sessions. They move wh-expression into other slots like internal merge and pied-pipe. However, the minimalist parametric unit, wh-movement, was found in the sentence structures of the teachers in the delivery of classroom sessions. So, the minimal pairs of sentence structure impacts different level of language.

This exploratory study investigates the impact of class size on the rhetorical move structures and lexico-grammatical features of academic lecture introductions. From the MICASE corpus (The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English), two small corpora of lecture introductions of small- and large-class lectures were compiled. Using a genre-based analytical approach, the lecture introductions in the two corpora were compared to examine how the size of the audience influences the rhetorical and linguistic choices lecturers make in university settings. Findings of the comparative analysis suggest that class size does affect lecturers’ discursive decisions. A large audience seems to compel experienced lecturers to use more of certain discursive strategies as a way to create positive and friendly learning environments in settings that may not be particularly favorable for establishing such conditions. However, due to the nature of small classes in which the number of students is smaller and the proximity between lecturers and students is closer, reinforcing positive rapport seems to take less rhetorical and linguistic effort on the part of lecturers. The paper ends with a number of tentative pedagogical implications for lecturer training.

This book presents a corpus-based study of spoken learner language produced by university-level ESL students in the classroom. Using contemporary theories as a guide and employing cutting-edge corpus analysis tools and methods, the authors analyse a variety of learner speech to offer many new insights into the nature and characteristics of the spoken language of college ESL learners. Focusing on types of speech that are rarely examined, this original work makes a significant contribution to the study and understanding of ESL spoken language at university level. It will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, second language acquisition and discourse analysis.

In the United States, the immigrant population explosion has been calling for increasing attention to English instruction for immigrant learners. In comparison with prolific literature on immigrant English language learners (ELLs) in K-12 educational settings, literature on English instruction for adult immigrant learners at non-profit organizations, especially through microanalysis of classroom interaction, is scarce. Using a microethnographic method, this study explores how a nonnative English speaking student teacher picks up classroom contextualization cues to understand how adult immigrant learners negotiate their learning needs and how their classroom habitus (Bourdieu, 1977a) embodies the social forces outside of class. Drawing on poststructuralist identity theories, this paper discusses how adult learners' conflicts in language learning and socialization are manifested in classroom contextualization cues, and how a non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) and adult immigrant students discursively and socially co-constructed identity and power dynamics throughout the learning/teaching process. I argue that listening to these contextualization cues has meaningful implications for teachers, who should listen for classroom details and reflectively examine their positionality in the discourse of teaching adult immigrant populations. This paper also urges rejection of stereotyped deficit views toward immigrant learners and NNESTs in the field of language teaching.