Data from a larger ethnolinguistic study are presented to demonstrate patterns of pupil-teachers exchanges between bilingual children and monolingual teachers in an urban nursery school in England. Children were aged 3-4 years. Naturally-occurring discourse data were audiotaped and substantial contextual data was gathered. Analysis of patterns in…

A detailed review of current research and state-of-the-art ideas concerning both communication processes and family functioning is presented in this collection of articles. The volume is organized around three sections. Part 1, "The Development of Family Communication Patterns," contains: (1) "Communication in Infancy"…

A qualitative study, presented in the form of an analytical narrative, examined children's symbolic and social use of superhero stories--popular media stories that vividly reveal societal beliefs about power and gender, which are themselves interwoven in complex ways with race, class, and physical demeanor. A second-grade classroom in an East San…

A discussion of discourse analysis focuses on its usefulness as a framework for analyzing and improving the communication skills of international teaching assistants (ITAs). The discussion is based on the transcript (appended) of a native Chinese-speaking ITA conducting an organic chemistry class in English. Using discourse analysis at one level,…

A discussion of second language learning and second language underproduction proposes a differentiation between conscious avoidance and subconscious underproduction Reference is made to J. Schacter's avoidance theory, which was based on a study in which Chinese and Japanese students of English as a Second Language (ESL) produced fewer Relative…

A case study investigated the pragmatics of language classroom communication, using an analytical framework developed in an earlier study with 30 expert language teachers at the junior high school level. The case study subject was also an expert teacher. Analysis focused on the teacher's transformations of intention in language instruction, based…

Two lines of research are synthesized in this study: (1) structural aspects of children's narrative discourse and (2) the role of maternal styles of talking with young children. Personal narratives of 20 Japanese preschool children, aged 4 and 5 years, and their mothers were analyzed for developmental differences in the 2 age groups. Then…

Deconstruction for reconstruction is a classroom teaching technique designed to help students improve writing skills. The objective is to write natural expanded sentences that fit in a cohesive paragraph. The technique evolved from observation of many intermediate and upper-intermediate students of English as a Second Language for whom writing…

The collection of essays on discourse as a form of social interaction includes: "Discourse as Interaction in Society" (Teun A. van Dijk); "Discourse Pragmatics" (Shoshana Blum-Kulka); "Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Study of Social Action as Sense Making Practices" (Anita Pomerantz, B. J. Fehr); "Institutional Dialogue" (Paul Drew,…

This study explored the multiple effects of "professionalization" discourse on the creation of a new early childhood teacher certification program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The study explored two questions: How is the influence of professional ideology on the construction of the program linked to university prestige and…

A study described, analyzed, and evaluated a project to rear three French-English bilingual children in a predominantly English-speaking environment. Using weekly tape recordings of spontaneous dinnertime conversation, a ratio of French-to-English utterances was calculated, and correlated with linguistically significant events documented in field…

Personal narratives of 20 middle-class Japanese preschoolers, half of them 4 years old and half 5 years old, and their mothers were analyzed using stanza analysis and high point analysis. The patterning in stanzas yielded the following: (1) with regard to the proportion of three-verse stanzas, there were no differences between the groups of…

A study of reading problems among Hong Kong university students of English as a Second Language has two parts. The first examines a teacher's comparison of a source text with a student's written response. The student subject was a highly-motivated, proficient learner. Discussion of her reading problems focuses on the incidence of misinterpretation…

A British ethnolinguistic study described the language behavior of 12 preschool children during their first experience in a formal educational setting where they constituted a linguistic minority. All were third-generation, British-born children of Moslem parents of ethnic Pakistani background; their home language was a vernacular Panjabi. Data…

This study tested the utility of an approach to analyzing second language learners' listening skills in the context of a classroom discussion ("two-way listening skills"). The approach used was the Communicative Outcome system, which shifts the focus in discourse analysis from counting of tokens of negotiation to evaluation of what participants…