Few studies in language teacher education programs provide insight on how knowledge of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is developed by teacher candidates to support their metalinguistic awareness and preparation to teach language. Building upon the contributions of Johnson and Byrnes, we combined Halliday's language-based theory of learning…

In this paper, we argue the importance of conceptualizing educational quality as located in everyday talk, and to search for it in the unfolding of classroom discourse and interactions. More specifically, we argue that for the discursive classroom process to be qualitatively effective it should be open and accessible by a series of…

Content-based instruction (CBI) adopts a second language (L2) as the medium of instruction for some or all academic subjects to facilitate L2 learning. There seem however, no uniform policies concerning which academic subjects should be taught in L2, in case only some subjects are involved. Conventional wisdom tends to favour Humanities subjects…

In order for schools to develop systematic and realistic strategies for extending children's linguistic repertoires, it is imperative that teachers and allied professionals have access to scientifically informed accounts of the variable but structured nature of the everyday speech used by children. Because there is insufficient information…

This article presents the contextualised interpretive analysis of communicative practices (artefacts including a song and a comic strip) developed by economically disadvantaged secondary students from two Brazilian public schools. Students' uses of standard and popular languages stretch and problematise social and cultural constructions about what…

Current guidelines on teacher--student rapport, while providing helpful suggestions, fail to address the question of how rapport building can be achieved in contextualised classroom interaction in which a balance needs to be reached between rapport and instructional tasks. Using discourse analysis informed by a conversation analytic approach and…

Describes some of the misconceptions and confusions in metalinguistic understanding that are established by the teacher during whole-class teaching of the active and passive voice. Draws on findings from a larger study investigating how teachers use talk in whole-class settings to scaffold children's learning. (Author/VWL)