Uses action research methods to describe one classroom in order to urge English educators to invite their students to participate in literacy and social action. Suggests ways that Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theory can help English teachers and English educators discover and better understand the link of word and deed. (NH)

Observations and interviews of 100 British 14-16 year-olds were used to analyze their explanations of the benefits of lifelong learning. Five main discourses emerged: the importance of being educated, the usefulness of education, meritocracy (belief that more qualifications guarantee better jobs), competition, and avoidance of hard times. (SK)

Using the variationist comparative method, the status of ambiguous lone Spanish-origin nouns in Catalan discourse is determined by analyzing their distribution and conditioning and by comparing them to their counterparts in unmixed Spanish or in multiple-word code switches. Suggests that the grammar of these nouns is Catalan, and their categorical…

Presents five classroom tips for the English-as-a-Second/Foreign-Language classroom. The first provides practice for question formation, the second describes a writing strategies worksheet, and the remaining three focus on global communication and cultural awareness, haiku, and greetings. (Author/VWL)

Argues that post-structuralist discourse analysis has a strong contribution to make to feminist and educational research, examining how the use of feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis (FPDA) can be tricky. Highlights an ethnographic study of secondary school girls' and boys' speech in class. Suggests that FPDA can produce powerful…

Takes issue with the assumptions that training and productivity are causally related, skill development leads to economic growth, and vocational education serves the interests of employers, government, and workers. Argues that training discourse is aimed at reasserting the dominance of capital over labor. (Contains 40 references.) (SK)

Focuses on the increase in discourse-based studies of oral proficiency assessment techniques. Discusses research carried out on a number of factors in the assessment setting, including the role of interlocutor, candidate, and rater, and the impact of tasks, task performance conditions, and rating criteria. (Author/VWL)

Presents an approach to textual analysis and its application in translator training for university students at advanced level at the Aarhus School of Business (Denmark). The approach emphasizes not only the quality of the product, but also how the process is administered. Hence, it is a process-oriented approach to translation. (Author/VWL)

Demonstrates how talking with children can provide an awareness of the "funds of knowledge" they bring to school. Examines the talk of a young girl from a culturally diverse background to gain insight into her cultural scientific knowledge; explores an adult's ability to collaborate with the student in pursuit of the topic; and offers…

Examines the kinds of inquiry fourth-grade children accomplished in a cross-curricular unit involving various kinds of texts. Identifies the circumstances that accompany the best examples of student thought, talk, and questions. Describes procedures used as well as the talk that accompanied each type of text (biography, historical fiction, and…

Describes some stable syntactic features of Swazi English. Discusses, among others, the use of the modal auxiliary "must," the use of "as to," the conflation of the emphatic "do" with the simple past tense, and dangling modifiers. (Author/JL)

Surveys how a group of students in a recent computer mediated communication (CMC) course attempted to develop referencing conventions to suit their learning purposes, relying heavily on actual quotations (citations) from previous messages. Suggests that success in using referencing correlates with success in a CMC course. (Author/VWL)

Presents a case study of one first-grade student's literacy behavior while corresponding through email during a 13-month period. Presents guidelines for teachers for developing an email pen-pal project. Suggests email is a powerful new medium for writing. (NH)

Notes the many levels of complexity inherent in successful classrooms. Describes a set of common physical attributes and paraphernalia in the classroom settings observed. Examines discourse features that were a function of the learning contexts that teachers deliberately and consciously established, looking at specific language use, and at…

Discusses whether the "Economist" magazine is a suitable source for the analysis of the language of economics, and argues that its discourse is essentially journalistic and very different from that of a textbook. (Author/VWL)