Examines factors contributing to or interfering with the negotiation of meaning between non-English-speaking pupils and English-speaking teachers and peers. Proposes a model of interpretive processing with three hierarchically interrelated levels. Finds that, in certain situations, shared background knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for…

Examines the oral discourse of four university teaching contexts (lectures, laboratories, writing classes, and writing conferences) for the incidence of exchange patterns. Defines exchange patterns and explores previous research on three-part exchanges. Presents new research on two-part exchanges. Focuses on how non-native speakers of English…

Examines students' summaries of three lectures. Finds that the percentage, but not the number, of propositions correlated positively with the accuracy scores in the summaries. Suggests that analyses of errors, lexical substitutions, discrepancies in grades, and differences in students' scores for the different lectures revealed interesting results…

States that talk in interaction is the prevailing form of instructional activity. Claims that an understanding of the interactional practices of reading and writing is necessary. Examines the practice of speaker turn design. Concludes by showing how this form of organization can be used in diagnosing problems that students encounter in solving…

Analyzes a sequence of grammar instruction in a fifth-grade classroom to investigate how familiar instructional objects called problems, answers, errors, and solutions are made visible to the cohort. Discusses an "essential instructional fiction" which is essential to the coherence of the lesson in hand and which may hold relevance for…

Investigates the ways in which primary school-aged children engage a teacher's attention through active solicitation. Argues that examining these interactions reveals both what the children do and allows for a redefinition of a conceptualization of "talk engagement." (FL)

Presents an approach to analyzing classroom talk that sheds light on the intellectual work of the classroom. Analyzes the teaching-learning interaction in a ninth-grade English classroom where a writing lesson was being undertaken. (HB)

Examines prekindergarten children's process of learning a commonly occurring classroom discourse structure--an instructional exchange consisting of three moves: teacher solicitation, student response, and teacher reaction. Finds that children's success in learning the structure is a result of maturity and sociocultural factors rather than to…

States that educators have argued for a kind of teaching that helps students to comprehend complex ideas. Considers that this kind of teaching might be important to low-income, cultural-minority students learning a second language, many of whom are at risk for underachievement in school. Proposes that "instructional conversations" might…

Analyzes video recordings of classroom discourse in a cooperative learning program by using sociolinguistic methods to discover the actual content of a classroom dialog and how the participants infer the meaning of what is said. Concludes that, when children are left alone, they will involve themselves in the curriculum but frame it in perspective…

Contrasts two models of instruction: building on ideas in shared endeavors; and transmit-and-test formats. Discusses how these contrasting formats may relate to interactional patterns observed in toddlers and caregivers in a Mayan and a middle-class European-American community; and elementary school children in Japan and the United States. (SR)

Examines requests and responses of first-grade children in peer reading groups and concludes that children differ in the variety and complexity of their requests. (FL)

Notes that studies of the social contexts of literacy learning in school suggest that literacy development cannot be understood apart from the context in which it occurs. Argues that some learning environments provide differential access to literacy activities in which participating in meaningful discourse is both process and product. Concludes…

Describes instances in which conversation topics are audibly formulated in a classroom during a one-hour science lesson and how this task may be problematic for both participants and analysts of classroom talk. (HTH)

Discusses the eight-month examination of interactive student-teacher journal entries of first-, third-, and fifth-grade Spanish-English bilingual classrooms. Concludes that students did not make a "transition" from native to second language, instead used a bilingual approach, shifting language in journal entries. Suggests mandatory…