This paper discusses the possibility of using newspaper genres and genre-based pedagogy to teach intermediate ESL learners to write school genres. Students' typical writing problems reveal the inadequacy of the typical composition classroom instruction. Then two texts regarded as typical representations of the editorial and the school…

This article considers the discourses used by students, mainstream lecturers and academic development lecturers in their evaluations of language interventions at Technikon Natal from 1991 to 2002. The discourses under scrutiny are those of academic literacy: the beliefs, attitudes, values and norms necessary for "epistemological access to…

Although a number of word-frequency lists exist in German, there is an absence of studies investigating the relative frequency with which various grammatical structures are used. Traditionally, extended modifiers have been most prevalent in written German. Based on an analysis of authentic radio news broadcasts, this article makes the case that…

Using a framework based on conversation analysis (Auer, 1984, 1995, 1998), this article presents an analysis of learner code-switching between L1 and L2 in an advanced foreign language (FL) classroom. It was found that students code-switch not only as a fallback method when their knowledge of the L2 fails them, or for other participant-related…

In this study, dialectical reflexive practice is used to maintain student-teacher interactions in the zone of proximal development. The zone of proximal development is the development-and-learning unit of the child or learner and the author suggests that it is also the fusion point of Marx's dialectical historical materialism: the creation of…

This study investigates the mechanisms of scaffolding in a synchronous network-based environment--the "collaborative virtual workplace". A theoretical "multi-actor" scaffolding model was formulated. The study itself focused on the role and inter-relations of verbal scaffolding by tutor "and peers" during a collaborative process of making decisions…

This paper examines preliminary findings from an ongoing federally funded study of Native language shift and retention in the US Southwest, focusing on in-depth ethnographic interviews with Navajo youth. We begin with an overview of Native American linguistic ecologies, noting the dynamic, variegated and complex nature of language proficiencies…

This paper reports on research into the literacies of pre-service teachers and the implications for both mapping and developing students' literate competences. The research focussed on two questions: (1) If tertiary literacies are multiple, how do we bring these into relationship with one another and with the different discourse domains of…

Pre-service teachers and education students in three different classes (N = 53) were directed to read a short story by Mark Twain titled "Heaven or Hell?" written within a compilation of short stories late in his career. The story, "Heaven or Hell?" illustrates a koan, or an unanswerable moral or ethical dilemma. The students,…

It is often assumed that online collaborative learning is inclusive of diversity. In this exploratory paper, I challenge this notion by developing a theory which proposes that inclusion occurs through congruence between learners' social identities and the identities implicitly supported through the interactions in a particular community. To build…

This research investigates the usefulness of two major types of interactional feedback (elicitation and reformulation) in dyadic interaction. The focus is on the different ways in which each feedback type is provided and their relationship with learner repair. The participants were 42 adult intermediate English as a second language learners and…

This study provides a theory-driven account of community building in a bilingual telecollaborative chat setting. A symmetrical arrangement of 70 L1 English learners of Spanish and L1 Spanish learners of English engaged in weekly Internet chat sessions in small groups. The learning metaphors of community and participation serve as the theoretical…

Learners' spontaneous speech beyond interaction patterns such as teacher's initiation-learner's response-teacher's evaluation (I-R-E/F) (Heap, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Ohta, 1999) helps lead them to negotiated interaction (Boulima, 1999), which is effective for foreign language learning. This study examines both an instructor's and a learner's…

There is a continuing need to investigate how contemporary students in schools are writing the word, and their world, beyond modernist parameters of the page. This article explores the online writing of a senior English world literature class, located in a Western Canadian city, as examined through a recent qualitative case study. Borrowing a 17th…

This study aims at identifying indicators of schoolteachers' professional development by learning teachers' perceptual and thinking capabilities of classroom events as reflected in their comments. The analysis of comments produced by novice and expert teachers on videotaped lesson activities, based mainly on the grounded theory strategy, revealed…