The paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy: gradeschoolers aged 9;0 to 10;0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school…

This study explores the perceptions of different groups of L1 and L2 Israeli pre-service teachers and their instructors regarding "good" academic writing. The study further investigates whether those perceptions accurately reflect their knowledge of academic writing. Eighty-one participants graded three different essays written by…

This article examines the language choices made by native-speaker teachers of Japanese, Korean, German and French in foreign language (FL) classrooms in New Zealand secondary schools. It explores these teachers' patterns of alternation between English, the majority language, and the TL, using both AS-units (Analysis of Speech units), devised by…

Theory has always possessed an elusive, intangible, and almost ethereal quality. Comprising nothing but ideas compressed into words, it is supposed to guide literacy interactions and transactions. Theory provides the "why" that underlies the "how to" of teaching. Yet the author, a teacher, has often struggled with the effort of translating theory…

In this paper we propose a theoretical reassessment of the discourse-analytic tools that are used in classroom research and of the data that are addressed. To that end we present in-depth analyses of 1) an IRE structure in a first English (EFL) lesson in a Dutch secondary school; 2) episodes from Dutch as a second language classes in a school for…

This paper is based on a qualitative case study on the perceptions of Malaysian Chinese parents towards literacy practices of their two children specifically in relation to the socialization practices they privilege at home. It looks at these literacy practices as choices made by parents for their teenage children at the intersection of home,…

This article analyzes CEE's and NCTE's current positions related to political action and highlights the increasing need for public intellectual and political activism as an integral part of organizational policy. Using Lakoff's (2005) concept of cognitive/linguistic framing in political discourse along with Kuchapski's (2002) characterizations of…

A study of simultaneous interpretation from Japanese to English focused on problems inherent in simultaneous language processing. Data were drawn from a discussion session at an international conference of physicians concerning nuclear war. Transcription of the Japanese source text (romanized), English product, and a gloss of lexical equivalents…

This study examined discourse strategies used by males and females to convey embarrassing information to interlocutors of unequal status and unspecified gender. Subjects were 80 native speakers of Turkish (28 males, 52 females), from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and geographic areas. Data were derived from a written discourse completion…

This collection of essays explores the diversity of contemporary English language use, both spoken and written, around the world. The first chapters focus on the use of English within various kinds of interpersonal communication, and later chapters look at artistic and creative products of English speakers and writers, discussing the kinds of…

This paper reports on an investigation into the communication activities in a multicultural elementary school classroom in England. In the first exercise, the whole class worked in groups of three, each group led by a bilingual child, to devise a doctor-patient dialogue in that child's foreign language. When the dialogue was presented to the…

A qualitative study examined the meaning-making processes involved as six struggling readers and a teacher interacted to make sense of a story during small group literature discussions. Students were low-achieving fifth graders. Instruction consisted of partner reading, written response followed by discussion and extended free journal writing.…

A study compared the rhetoric of letter-writing in English and Japanese, focusing on: (1) relationship between degree of cultural awareness and writing behavior of Japanese students of English as a Second Language (ESL); and (2) relationship of cultural awareness and English proficiency in ESL student writing. Subjects were 120 Japanese college…

A Future Teachers' Autobiography Club discussion group/research project invited six elementary teacher candidates to read, write about, and discuss ethnic autobiography in order to foster and investigate the potential of peer discussion in teacher learning. Using a selected list of six autobiographies, the researcher hosted monthly dinner…

This study took place within a teacher education program at a large Midwestern university with vast field observation placements around the state and the world. The purpose was to discover whether preservice teacher electronic conferencing on the World Wide Web about early field experiences can have an impact on the learning of educational…