The communicative language teaching approach is described, its theoretic history is reviewed, and classroom techniques are presented. The origins of the approach are found in research on the development of linguistic competence. Characteristics of the approach include: the goals of language use for communication; use of real-life communicative…

Action research is one of the more increasingly popular and innovative techniques for engaging teachers in shaping change in the classroom. The research in this monograph was conducted by teachers in classrooms in Florida and Georgia. Papers were selected from 65 action research papers written in fulfillment of one of the requirements of the…

Sharing concerns and interests of New York State educators in the improvement of literacy, this annual journal raises educational issues such as appropriate, effective instruction and assessment for all of New York's children. A central thread found in many of the articles is the importance of authenticity and inclusion. A second strand reflects…

This paper reports a study that examined the academic language of middle school social studies education, as found in textual and classroom discourse, and the instructional practices effective in guiding students to accomplish academically and socially meaningful tasks. It involved classroom-based research, analysis of textbook discourse,…

Collaboration in writing is not confined to conventional multiple authorship and peer editing, but extends across the text to include its readers. Strong support for language development comes from dialogic situations in which student writing is created as a response to some other utterance, and yet classrooms rarely support such situations. The…

Offering glimpses into an English teacher's unorthodox teaching style, this book presents the story of one woman's dedication to her energetic, unruly students and challenges teachers to find their own unique genius within personal and institutional limitations. The book discusses how the teacher (who has spent her entire career at one school)…

This project developed and tested a computer-based instructional program designed to increase the number of positive, academic student/teacher interactions exhibited in mainstreamed regular classrooms by mildly handicapped elementary students. The program, called Teacher Net, integrated a microcomputer-controlled videodisc system, a system of…

Yale's Cooke Teaching Program is designed to diminish the sense of imperviousness and immobility that the university often conveys to its surrounding community. During the academic year, one Yale graduate student attended a high school senior honors English class twice weekly. It was an advanced class (mostly minorities), many were college-bound,…

A number of strategies, informed by science education research, have been identified to assist the understanding and communication of difficult concepts in science. A teacher's craft lies in creating learning experiences that facilitate concept development and challenge misconceptions from which students actively build, modify, and extend their…

To change the way classroom discipline and student discipline are examined, a two-study investigation, rather than focusing on student noncompliance and other types of student misbehaviors, examined teachers themselves as potential sources of instructional and/or motivational problems in the college classroom. The first study was designed to…

This portrait of a high school literature classroom is one of a series of several such portraits which depict diverse classroom settings of high school literature, and which result from the second year of a teacher-research project in the greater Albany, New York area. This article portrays teacher Mr. McCabe and his eighth grade class in their…

There are compelling reasons to use talk in the writing classroom to improve both expressive and expository writing. First, speaking is natural, and students come to the writing classroom linguistically well-developed and confident. Second, talking encourages exploration of words by slowing down the thought process without completely stopping it.…

The home's supportive setting, which has the potential to encourage children to share their thoughts and feelings through spoken language, is the basis of the home's strength as a communicative context. Teachers can help extend this sharing of meaning by creating classroom environments in which written language experiences and microcomputer-based…

The lack of authentic, real-world interaction practice in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom is described and discussed, and the ways in which dialogue journals answer this classroom need are detailed. A dialogue journal is an interactive, self-generated, cumulative and functional writing and reading exchange between teacher and…

To help students develop needed skills in listening, teachers need to (1) encourage improved listening through interesting learning activities, (2) involve students in presenting ideas as well as listening to content, (3) vary kinds of learning experiences, (4) provide direct training in listening skills, (5) recognize differences in students'…