Analyzes two primary-grade morning meetings to explain how the way formality is structured in a classroom affects students' communicative competence, sense of identity, and group participation skills. Asserts the usefulness of understanding what children are learning as they enact formal occasions. (KH)

This paper presents linguistic evidence for communication problems in everyday classroom interactions where children are dialect speakers. It also examines the problem of coding language functions for use in experiments. (RB)

Reports the findings of programmatic research on the perceived seriousness of communication barriers to learning across five pedagogies, which uncovered a generalized ordering of specific concerns as well as dimensionality of learning barriers. Suggests that pedagogical research bound by discipline or university may be more generalizable than…

Relates a story of one high school English teacher who uses unorthodox methods for evoking her students' language abilities. (JAD)

Analysis of naturalistic data identified features of adult-child talk which occurred frequently at school but rarely at home. One of these features--question sequences intended to elicit an answer--was used in an intervention study and was found to promote young children's understanding of ambiguity in verbal messages. (PCB)

Ten "do's" and eight "don'ts" for beginning teachers to use to enhance the classroom atmosphere and forge a bond of confidence between teacher and student are outlined. The suggestions, based on experience, are designed to help the teacher avoid pitfalls and use positive strategies from the first day of class. (MSE)

Teachers often have difficulty responding to emotionally upset children in ways that help the students solve their problems. Examples of commonly used "put-downs and put-offs" and suggested techniques that teachers can use to lend emotional support are offered. (DF)

Findings are presented from a study of the interactive effects of sex and race on teacher communications patterns in 67 classrooms. ANOVAs revealed two significant main effects for race, five for sex, and three significant race/sex interactions. Previous research literature is summarized. (Author/MT)

Provides ways for teachers to make ninth-grade general mathematics courses more pleasant and productive. (MD)

Reviews the literature on teacher clarity and communication skills, then describes a study showing that teachers must be trained in ways to reduce vagueness terms, mazes, multiple utterance questions, and overall frequency of questions posed to students. (FL)

Developing a classroom environment where students share their ideas, feelings, and perceptions can be a challenge for the teacher. Language acquisition begins in the home and many teachers are finding ways to incorporate key aspects of the home environment into communication activities in school. Computer software that may expand the communicative…

Content or subject matter, interpersonal relationships, and symbolic means of representing meaning are interacting elements that affect language use. The elements have been described as the field, tenor, and mode of discourse. The influence of these concepts on what children write, why they write, and for whom they write are explored. (DF)

Describes instances in which conversation topics are audibly formulated in a classroom during a one-hour science lesson and how this task may be problematic for both participants and analysts of classroom talk. (HTH)

Some concepts to help teachers adhere to classroom instruction in the target language are presented and discussed. These include ideas related to the teacher's speech (visual cues, speed, and repetition and rephrasing), student speech (teacher-assisted and student-dominated communication), out-of-class assignments, and teacher assessment of…

Experimentally tests for direction of causality in negative correlations previously found between a measure of teacher control of conversation and measures of deaf primary school children's initiative and loquacity. Results show that as teachers change style, their students follow them, exhibiting changes in initiative and mean length of turn. (RH)