A realistic goal of pronunciation teaching in the second language context is to acquire comfortably intelligible rather than native-like pronunciation. To establish a set of teaching and learning priorities necessary for English teachers and students whose first language is Chinese, the purposes of this study are three fold: (1) Identify the…

Explores the need to implement the World Englishes (WE) perspective into international teaching assistant (ITA) programs. While traditional ITA programs typically view ITA speech as deficient and in need of improvement, the WE perspective asserts that intelligibility is dependent upon interaction between speaker and listener, thereby rendering…

Dynamics of discussion in the classroom are analyzed based on data from 64 classrooms in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Among the discourse problems considered are the separation of answers from questions, the relationship between the presupposition of an utterance and the speaker/hearer assumptions, and the relationship between utterance form and…

A case study examined the classroom behavior of a third grader named Andrea. Andrea's lips moved but no response could be heard. Because Andrea was an appealing child, her lack of oral communication became a challenge for her teacher. Members of the Educators Forum supported feelings that Andrea needed to be helped to use oral language. An…

Preliminary results of a comparison of the language modifications made by teachers when telling stories to native English speakers and non-native speakers of English at various proficiency levels suggest that teachers need to do more than make the routine modifications in linguistic input to lower-level learners. Teachers need to: (1) act on the…

This study addresses the question: Is the verbal interaction between teachers and students reciprocal? Teachers' and students' verbal behaviors were investigated using the verbal behavior classification system (CVC) in 72 seventh through ninth grade classrooms. The CVC system consists of a matrix of process and substance dimensions. Categories in…

Noting that collaboration can enhance children's ability to solve problems of increasing difficulty, this paper discusses the theory of collaborative talk in the classroom and how it can be applied. The first section of the paper introduces the notion of collaborative talk by describing a classroom setting and offering an excerpt of two children…

Investigates the relationship between the social organization and educational practices of schools and how they relate to students' ability to recognize differences between curriculum-specific talk. The study recorded students' observations regarding Mathematics and Art to determine their ability to speak in subject-specific ways teachers deem…