Discusses the interrelationship of the language arts, and how both oral and written language help the learning process. Describes a classroom in which students' activities center around talking, and how the teacher participated as a researcher in ethnographic studies out of which came the motivation for this instructional approach. (HTH)

Discusses classroom literary practices related to teacher questioning, retelling, literalism, and figurative language for children in the concrete operational stage; concludes that recent research on response to literature may say as much about what children are taught to do as what they do developmentally. Offers suggestions about teaching…