Strong empirical evidence exists indicating language can influence students' beliefs about ability. Professional literature for teachers offers practical advice on how to adjust their classroom-based talk to support student achievement by orienting students toward an incremental theory of ability. Yet, little empirical work has been done to…

This study explored how fifth-grade teachers and their students use indexical expressions (i.e. verbal expressions to convey the degree of certainty or tentativeness) as being indicative of dialogism in whole-class discussions in four elementary classes. Half of the classes received instruction on geographic information system (GIS)-related topics…

Studies on Second Language (L2) classroom interaction have placed a great deal of emphasis on the value of teacher third-turn feedback practices. However, the roles that seemingly minor aspects of interaction like minimal response tokens (e.g. 'Mm', 'Mm hm', 'Uh huh', 'Okay', 'Yeah') play as a feature of these practices have not been investigated…

This study explored the language practices of a small group of international Chinese students in an anglophone Higher Education context where English was the medium of instruction. The context was the first year of an early childhood education course at an Australian university. Building on findings from research in conversation analysis on…

This study aims to explore a teacher educator's perceptions and practice of translanguaging in his education classrooms as a teacher of English as a medium of instruction (EMI). Adopting a qualitative case study approach, the research revealed that the teacher educator used three translanguaging strategies (i.e. integrating academic discourse with…

Considers aspects of verbal interaction in classrooms. Attempts to show that whether researchers approach classroom talk from the perspective of systematic observation, ethnography or sociolinguistics, their underlying theoretical assumptions determine the "facts" that they record and the interpretations they are able to offer.…

Investigates nature and functions of teachers' verbal communication by presenting empirical evidence that relates teacher talk and routines to classroom management and learning. Demonstrates how routines of a teacher of four mentally retarded students vary as a function of (1) the social configuration of the classroom, (2) the structure of the…

This examination of the frequency of occurrence of multiple meaning expressions in the oral speech of teachers found that such expressions as indirect requests, idioms, similes, metaphors, and irony were used in about 36 percent of all utterances by two different teachers at each grade level from K-eight. Implications for language-impaired…

With particular attention to the use of questions and the maintenance of topics, the classroom discussion of kindergarten children and their teacher during a storybook lesson was analyzed to determine how conversational control is maintained and what rules of conversation might apply in the classroom. A transcript for discourse analysis was…

A STUDY WAS DESIGNED TO EXAMINE THE LINGUISTICS STRUCTURE OF SECOND- AND FIFTH-GRADE TEACHERS' CLASSROOM LANGUAGE USING PROCEDURES THAT HAVE BEEN APPLIED IN RECENT STUDIES OF CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE (LOBAN, 1963 "THE LANGUAGE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN" ED 001 875). TEN SECOND-GRADE AND 11 FIFTH-GRADE TEACHERS IN A LARGE, SUBURBAN, PUBLIC SCHOOL…

The development and use of verbal and nonverbal communication by children in the early stages of second language acquisition were investigated in a natural setting. Twenty young speakers of Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Spanish, Icelandic, and Polish, enrolled in a multilingual program and ranging in age from 7 to 12 years, served as subjects. All of…

Discusses the declining role of Spanish at every level of the teaching profession. Although Spanish is the most-studied foreign language in the United States, the increasing trend is to use English instead of Spanish, even in upper-level and literature classes and in scholarly writing about Spanish. (CNP)

Emphasizing language as both medium and object of instruction, the articles in this focused journal issue promote the interaction of students' language and teachers' language as a means to increased student awareness of, and facility with, language. The first three articles provide a context, methodology, and evaluation framework for language…

A study examined students' perceptions of an instructor's use of slang and verbal aggression in giving a presentation. The study used an experiment to investigate the relationship between these two variables and students' perceptions of credibility, affect, and immediacy. Participants, 167 undergraduate communication students at a large midwestern…

This paper argues for a reorganization of the educational procedures in the ESL classroom, in the interest of developing communicative competence. Special emphasis is placed on the use in the classroom of only structural and phonological patterns which are easily transferrable to real-life situations. In the interest of abolishing mechanical…