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…

An analysis of classroom discourse proposes four frames, modeled as concentric circles. The inner most circle is the lesson frame, removed or sheltered from outside influences and most likely, in a language class, to maintain second-language usage. The next frame from the center is the lesson-support frame, an intermediate layer of classroom…

This study analyzed scaffolding techniques in the context of symbolic or pretend play in the case of a child with developmental learning disabilities (DLD). Interactions in four situations were examined and compared: the DLD child in interaction with her mother and with the speech therapist; and a child of similar age, without DLD, in interaction…

Preliminary results of a contrastive discourse analysis project at the University of Oulu, Finland, are reported. The research focuses on cross-cultural encounters between Finnish students of English and native speakers of English from the point of view of students' level of social competence. The students' ability to use discourse strategies is…

A yearly cross-section of current work in Edinburgh University's Department of Applied Linguistics is offered with the aim of eliciting reactions and criticism. Papers in this compilation are: "Discursive Aspects of Metafiction: A Neo-Oral Aura?"; "The Reaction of Learners to Tape-Based Listening Comprehension Materials in French,…

Articles on diverse areas of linguistics include the following: "Correlative Constructions in Chinese" (Steve Harlow, Connie Cullen); "Xhosa Isinkalakahliso Again" (John Kelly); "Conversational Phonetics: Some Aspects of News Receipts in Everyday Talk" (John Local); "Parametric Interpretation in Yorktalk"…

This paper examines discourse among fifth-grade students in a science classroom. The authors assess students' participation in small-group activities by focusing on their roles during conversation. The issue of gender equity is raised as an important question to be addressed by teachers, students and researchers in the context of science…

This paper argues that second language instruction that aims to foster speaking skills and natural spoken interaction should be based upon the grammar of the spoken language, and not on grammars that reflect written norms. Using evidence from a corpus of conversational English, this examination focuses on how four grammatical features that occur…

The storytelling narratives produced by four children, namely, two low-income African-American first-graders and two White middle-class first-graders, were examined using a text analysis technique that organizes lines into the groupings referred to as stanzas. The narratives were based on the viewing of a film. Subtle differences were found in the…

This graduate level text on second language learning is divided into three sections. The first two sections provide a survey of the historical underpinnings of second language research in contrastive analysis and error analysis. The third section includes discussions of recent developments in the field. The first section contains articles on the…

A study investigated the notion that bilingual students' low academic achievement may be due to semilingualism (having limited language skills) in each of the two languages, and the cognitive deficits that presumably result. The subjects were two boys and two girls from the fifth and sixth grades with low proficiency in either English or Spanish.…

Text linguistics can make significant theoretical and practical contributions for writing teachers. Borrowing from classical rhetoric and cognitive psychology, text linguists investigate defining text, creating text grammars, and identifying communicative aspects of text. To show how these investigations are useful for writing teachers, this…