Presents a summary of the findings of an 18-month longitudinal study which examined how foreign language teachers' conceptions of their classroom practice developed as they participated in an inservice teacher education program. Discusses how shared professional discourse helped increase the complexity of their thinking. (SM)

Uses results from study of home child-caregivers' attitudes to examine how public/private discourses on mothering, professionalism, work, and caring contribute to providers' constructions of home child-carework. Focuses on providers' efforts to set boundaries between their business and the caring relationships developed with children and families,…

Using a small corpus of classroom discourse from graduate business administration seminars, some language features of student-led discussion are identified, then considered in relation to syllabus content. The fruitfulness of a discourse-based approach to both description of formal spoken-language genres and to classroom methodology is discussed.…

Examines two sets of classrooms in Mexican preschools over a period of a year to see why one set of classes improved significantly in independent problem solving when compared with children in matching classes. Differences in two sets of data were explored with a method for investigating classroom talk that combines qualitative interpretation with…

Focuses on the use of inexplicitness by native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs) engaged in English conversations, for example impromptu, uninstitutionalized discourses. Shows that a characteristic of NNSs spoken language is the inappropriate level of inexplicitness used and the ways in which inexplicitness is manifested in the…

Describes a physics course designed to engage preservice elementary teachers in the practices and discourses of science through activities that would later be used with children. Presents an account of preservice teachers' progress in inventing and testing models, working with empirical data, critically evaluating and using authoritative sources,…

Reviews early research on innovative use of networked computers in language learning, focusing on a study of computer-mediated discussion that examined student/student and student/teacher interactions in a college French course. Due to rapid nature of computer-mediated exchanges, the "conversation" is a hybrid somewhere between writing and…

Examines differences in oral narrative discourse of adult second-language learners of English on narrative tasks simulating the ability to describe events in the Here-and-Now versus the There-and-Then. Results indicate that complex tasks elicit less fluent, but more accurate and complex narration than do simpler tasks. (90 references) (Author/CK)

The use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) has been hailed as a solution to the problem of access to native speakers for language learners. This project was devised to investigate whether regular and structured use of email, here via a bulletin board, might enhance learners' study of French, with regard to developing learner autonomy and…

This paper explores the assimilation gap, the gap between the acquisition of a technology and its deployment, in higher education teaching. The relevant literature covers three themes: technology diffusion, the technology acceptance model and task-technology fit. To explore the significance of these models to a teaching environment case study…

This article proposes a model for a critical social-constructivist (CS-C) approach to the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in language/culture education. CS-C theories emphasize a critical approach to social interactions, interpersonal relations, communication, and the influence that these activities have on learning. I will use the…

The "learning turn" that has occurred in discussions of education and training is here subject to critique. The change of discourse signifies more than mere change of linguistic style, with claims being made to a new paradigm by proponents of what may be termed "learnerism". The claims made by the advocates of learnerism for…

The purpose of the present study is to investigate, within the textual framework of "academic journalese", what happens to Danish and Finnish writers' English texts when edited by native English-speaking editors for publication on the World Wide Web. We use the term academic journalese to describe texts written by researchers or…

This study analyses specific written discourse production in which NNSs' usage of English tenses and voice appears to be dramatically different from that of NSs. The data for the study narrowly focuses on a small number of verb phrase features, such as tenses, aspects and the passive voice, examining how they are presented in writing instruction…

This study investigated the effects of "signals" in text (headings, previews, and logical connectives) on the reading comprehension of learners of English as a Second Language. Subjects were 232 female Hong Kong secondary school students, all less-skilled readers of English. The subjects read a relatively difficult passage in English on…