Studied the effect of content knowledge on learners' participation in interactions between nonnative speakers. Measures of participation included amount of talk, conversational fillers, back channels, topic moves, clarification questions, and confirmation and comprehension checks. Findings support the relationship between knowledge and…

Analyzes video recordings of postgraduate seminars in the Arts Faculty at a South African university in order to define the nature of this practice in South African tertiary institutions. This article exposes these seminars as sites of competition for the floor with significant imbalances in participation by different groups, reflecting different…

Examines what linguistic devices speakers use to make an entity salient in a discourse and how they re-refer to discourse entities moving in and out of focus. Speakers' center of attention was manipulated via a videotaped basketball game. Speakers referred to prominent entities as subjects; when they referred to them as objects, they repeated the…

Analyzes the academic records of 191 nonnative students who took a writing examination in 1991 to assess their performance on the writing examination of Georgia State University. Results indicate that questions remain about the relationship between English proficiency and academic preparation and about responsibilities for academically weak…