Classroom interaction is an essential element in developing communicative skills. In a foreign language context like Burkina Faso, the classroom appears as the only setting that provides an opportunity for English language learners to practice their communicative skills. In the classroom, teachers create opportunities for interaction between…

The goal of dialogic teaching is to position students as active participants who engage in academically accountable talk, but research consistently suggests that a major stumbling block is the teacher's own interactional style. To explore the issue from an emic perspective, I carried out an action research investigation of advanced proficiency…

This study focuses on teacher talk in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in China. Framed against China's current focus on "thinking, imagination and innovation" as stated in the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS), this paper reports the findings of a qualitative study aimed at understanding how the…

This study examined how two experienced instructors of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) literature treated questions posed by students during classroom discussions. Data came from two semester-long college-level classes in Turkey. Video recordings of the classes in one semester, field notes taken during the observations, and interviews with…

Describes the role of meta talk (explicit talk about grammar) in the classroom practice of two English-as-a-Second-Language teachers. Classroom observations and teacher interviews provided descriptive data about the initiation, development, and outcomes of meta talk in the teachers' work, and insight into the rationale behind their approaches to…