Analyzed personal pronoun use in 36 scientific journal articles, focusing on how use of personal pronouns may reveal writers' perceptions of their own role in research and their relationship with expected readers and the scientific/academic community. Use of first-personal plural pronouns was most common, with a number of semantic references and…

Develops a multidimensional framework for analyzing an extended physics classroom interaction to understand the resources participants use, alignments they form, and meanings and context they construct. Considers how participants negotiate their positions, focusing on one resistant student and why she remains unconvinced by others' arguments and…

Proposes a language-socialization approach to the study of second-language acquisition and illustrates the application of this approach by analyzing non-instructional discourse between native and nonnative speakers of Spanish. Analysis draws from a corpus of videotaped data collected during a two-year participant-observer study at a Los Angeles…

Examines how language attitudes are expressed in Legon, Ghana, a multilingual society. Focuses on the graffiti in male lavatories, which offers an interesting glimpse of some of the intergroup tensions existing within Ghanian society. (Author/VWL)

Examined social influences on the reasoning and rhetorical strategies of fourth graders. Found that the use of argument stratagems snowballed, there were fewer and fewer lines of discussion between successive appearances of a stratagem, and the snowball phenomenon was more pronounced during discussions with open participation than during…

Reports findings from a study that investigated the group interaction patterns of overseas Malaysian students in a British undergraduate program. Discusses the theoretical issues underlying the study. Findings and categories of idea framing, which arise from the analysis of group interaction data are highlighted. (Author/VWL)

Examines the scope of pedagogic discourse, which involves the operation of a set of principles by which persons are apprenticed into ways of working valued in a culture. A pedagogic discourse is realized in two sets of language choices: (1) those connected with the goals of the teaching-learning activity, and (2) those concerning the content to be…

Focuses on the similarities and differences between the rhetorical structure of some Slavonic and English scientific texts. The study tests the assumption that scientific discourse has universal features that are language-independent. Results point to differences between the two types of rhetorical patterns resulting from cultural and academic…

A study of 68 children's contributions to dinner talk showed that, among Jewish American, Israeli, and American Israeli families, children have less access to the floor than adults. In the two Israeli groups, children were exposed more to topics raised by mothers than by fathers; the reverse was true for Jewish American families. (Contains 65…

It is proposed that negotiation of form can be effective in language immersion instruction. Students are pushed to produce ever more accurate and appropriate utterances, drawing on their own sociolinguistic resources. Examples are provided from an eighth-grade classroom where the teacher uses feedback, questioning, discussion, and…

Second-language teachers dealing with teenagers face a task of imparting communicative language skills to learners who think and speak in terms of a language of their own making. It is important that these teachers familiarize themselves with teen language in order to make their teaching relevant by making their classrooms more responsive to their…

Describes an introductory segment of a preservice course on teaching and learning in mathematics and language arts, highlighting a project using multimedia materials to explore the integration of the two. Examples of teacher candidates' insights about mathematics discourse are discussed. The larger implications of classroom discourse for…

Explores ethnic and gender differences in classroom conversational styles by comparing student involvement in face-to-face and computer-mediated discussions. Finds that white males participated more frequently than other groups in the face-to-face setting, and white women benefited more from computer-mediated communication. Notes Hispanic women…

Reviews topical and methodological trends in the past 85 years of research on language classrooms in "The Modern Language Journal." Focus is on empirical investigations into oral classroom instruction in post-secondary classes, which include comparisons of language teaching methodology, observational procedures in classrooms, examinations of…

Suggests that a grand reflection on the paradigms of reality and the predicaments of life is needed in order to deal with the current discontent of humanity. Asserts that people must act on the world and reconstruct it to make it moral, just, and humane. Offers an agenda for educational leaders to help meet the needs of their communities.…