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…

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…

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)

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…

Shows that among the qualities of interaction present in peer learning are the negotiation of teaching and collaborative roles, attention-focusing, showing and pointing, and informative messages. (FL)

Examines how students in a bilingual third-grade classroom coconstruct knowledge through oral and written discourse. Explains that, by analyzing the various interactional patterns of the class, the multiple opportunities for learning become visible. Demonstrates how a group of students achieved the common task of writing a "planet story." (PA)

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…

Analyzes extracts of classroom discourse involving teachers and groups of nine-year-olds in terms of what they reveal about the establishment of shared knowledge between teacher and students. Identifies this shared knowledge with the discourse "context," focusing on how classroom events are recalled and reconstructed. (MM)

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)

Concludes that differences exist in the classroom behavior of some deaf and some hearing teachers and that what defines the successful teacher is task persistence and clarity. (FL)

Examines the effect of management and turn-allocation activities on students' reading performance during classroom lessons. Shows that the teacher was often oriented toward other class members while eliciting information during students' reading turns. (FL)

Compares interactional rules in the lessons of a teacher who taught in a culturally congruent way and one who did not. Concludes that control over topic of discussion was maintained only by the teacher who used culturally congruent interactional patterns, and that the lessons of the other teacher were frequently sidetracked because of conflicts…

Reports on a study in which attempts were made to instantiate the same task in a series of classroom lessons and activities and which used two process coding systems to evaluate teacher performance. Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each type of coding system. (FL)

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)