With the development of language corpora, linguists have been able to identify how often specific words, phrases, and expressions are used, and in which contexts. However, applications of corpora in the wider domain of language teaching have remained limited. This article presents an approach to utilizing corpora, combining principles from…

Drawing on data from three English classrooms at two Chinese universities, this paper documents the turn-taking patterns that the teachers and students developed over time and explores how these patterns affected students' opportunities to participate in classroom discourse. The data were collected through observations, audio- and video-taping,…

Discourse intonation attempts to explain how intonation patterns in English affect the communicative value of speech, through the use of falling and rising tones along with changes in pitch. The teaching of intonation seems to sit naturally with communicative language learning, but it is not an easy aspect of English to incorporate into the EFL…

Looks at learner initiative in teacher-fronted activities, and how this can influence classroom interaction. Extracts from lesson transcripts of adult evening classes in Italy are used to give precise definition of what is meant by learner initiative and to illustrate how it can change interaction patterns. (Author/VWL)