Recognizing the importance of academic language for students' success in schools, this article reports on an investigation of how narrative-focused literacy events in the classroom provide opportunities for academic language socialization. Data were collected from one public elementary school in a major metropolitan area in the Mid-Atlantic region…

Lesson transitions are important units for analysis not only for establishing the presence of group/pair work but also for examining the contextual conditions for small-group learning. Scholars have suggested that the "open" or "closed" contextual conditions set up through the teacher's use of language to introduce group/pair…

Research has established the predominance of one sequence of interaction in teacher-led activity in the classroom. Although much is known about the initiation-response-evaluation sequence, relatively less is known about other interaction sequences that may constitute classroom lessons. This study examines interaction during a time of individual…

Presents how the identity of the foreign student is interactionally produced in the course of ordinary educational activities. Through a detailed discourse analysis within an ethnomethodological framework, shows instances of the social production of primary school students as "foreign" in and through the interaction with other students, the…

This paper explores how literature circles work in the context of L2 instruction through a close scrutiny of classroom interactions in an adult ESL class where nine ESL learners read fictional works and discussed the readings. The paper examines the characteristics of student interactions with the literary text and with other group members,…

Reports findings from a study that investigated the group interaction patterns of overseas Malaysian students in a British undergraduate program. Discusses the theoretical issues underlying the study. Findings and categories of idea framing, which arise from the analysis of group interaction data are highlighted. (Author/VWL)

Examines the potential of small-group interaction to provide significant linguistic opportunities that whole-class teaching is less well placed to deliver. Compares data from two groups of children from the same classroom engaged in the same group activity. Draws on the work of Bakhtin to identify monologic and dialogic features in the children's…