Language Patterns That May Help or Hinder Learning: Taking an Inventory of Your Assumptions (original) (raw)
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Linguistics and Education, 1992
Analysis of the discourse demands across the school year within a recurrent event, "Circle Time," is presented to show how 3-and 4-year-old students learned to be conversationally appropriate partners within a group setting, how the teacher's interactional patterns shifted as students learned to participate in socially and academically appropriate ways within this event, and how participation in the subevents of Circle Time (Milling, Transition, Singing, Talking, and Dismissal) placed differing social and communicative demands on both teacher and students. The overtime analysis of one Circle Time subevent, Talking, is presented to illustrate how 3-and 4year-old students, in their first school experience, construct with their teachers a schooled discourse repertoire for participating in large group discussions, and how the discourse demands on the teacher shifted across time in the Talking subevent as well as across all subevents.
The purpose of this study was to determine the nature of talk that surrounds the literacy events of read aloud, guided reading, and literature discussion in an early childhood literacy program. This research describes how teachers promote and sustain talk, and describes the characteristics of student talk in each event. Examining the broad themes of talk that emerged provided a window into students' thinking and meaning making in these pedagogical strategies. This naturalistic, qualitative inquiry borrowed from two research traditions: case study and grounded theory. Five kindergarten students were audio-taped for three months as they participated in whole class read aloud, small group guided reading, and small group literature discussion. Transcriptions of talk, interviews, and field notes were analyzed to uncover the interactions between students and teachers, the content of talk, and the meanings students created. Analysis included open and selective coding and constant comparative analysis to reach data saturation. Data were further scrutinized through the lenses of conversation and discourse analysis. Research findings suggest that each literacy event helped nurture behaviors and knowledge necessary for developing readers. In guided reading the teacher dominated the talk, focusing on reading skills and strategies. In the read aloud and literature discussion group, the students had more influence over the direction of the conversation, v and generated comments and questions, expressing their understanding of the text, ideas, and opinions. During the course of the three month study, students in the literature discussion group demonstrated they were capable of sophisticated conversations, at times edging into critical literacy. The teacher played a crucial role in fostering student's thinking in all events through her choice of text, the type of questions she asked, and how long she paused for student talk. The overarching implication of this study is that the literacy task, as defined by the teacher, determines the kind of language she uses. This in turn, impacts the language and learning of her students. Further discussion addresses implications about the role of talk about text in emergent literacy programs. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Reading and Writing Quarterly
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2007
Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events presents analyses of classroom discourse in relation to language and literacy events from a microethnographic perspective. It is a timely publication that reflects increasingly strong concerns over issues ranging from gender, race, identity and power relations within and beyond classrooms. The book contains a forward, an introduction and five chapters. The forward by Brian Street begins the book well on a good note. It is in this forward that Street sets a clear tone by introducing some of the important issues concerning the topic with which the authors engage themselves. He swiftly highlights the authors' laudable efforts to have successfully built a close link between their analysis of linguistic features of social interaction with what Gee (1999) calls the "social turn" in language study that extends from the social nature of identity (i.e., the construction of identity is socially determined), power relations in classroom events, to the role of multiple literacies, which are important topics in discussions on literacy and multiliteracies (e.g., Luke, 2003; New London Group, 1996). He concludes his forward in a fashion with metaphoric use of language by comparing the authors to what Yeats described in his poem; namely, the authors are "dancers in the dance, their glance and their bodies cannot be excluded from the question of choreography posed by Yeats, which runs throughout this elegant and well balanced book" (p. xi). Meanwhile, he cautions that, while it is true that the authors approach the classroom language and literacy events at a micro level, researchers need to analyze their own framing and interpreting of the classroom language and literacy events. Immediately following the forward is the introduction, whose purpose it is to introduce the authors' approach to discourse analysis. The authors explain that the approach they have adopted in the book is basically "social linguistic" or "social interactional" (p. xv) within the large framework that examines the sociology of language use. For the sake of clarity, the authors label it a microethnographic approach. Given the nature of the book (i.e., it is a series of research studies of language and literacy events in classrooms), the authors should be commended for their clear description of their work in the introduction. By virtue the clarity of the introduction, any beginning researchers intending to follow the ethnographic paradigm in methodological orientation or those who are classroom teachers but interested in knowing something about how researchers interpret and frame their daily language-related activities will find that the introduction prepare them well for a sustained reading experience. It is in this introduction that the authors clearly delineate the specific theoretical positions and frameworks for data analysis and interpretation. They state that the particular approach they have adopted in their work builds on sociolinguistic ethnography (i.e., microethnographic), linguistic anthropology, related discussions on human communication, anthropological studies of narratives and poetics,
ISRN Education, 2012
This paper describes the development of discourse and reflection competencies by three early-age student teachers through repeated children’s book reading (RCBR) in small, heterogeneous groups. The students were enrolled in a four-track, early-education preparation program at Levinsky College of Education in Israel. Research based on a multiple-case-study methodology, focused on an analysis of the students’ interpretation of and reflections on the transcripts of the discourse throughout the three years of their fieldwork. Findings indicate that, over the three years, all three students relaxed their control of the discourse, allowing for more continuous literary discourse among the children. Differences in the developmental trajectories of the three students were manifested in the extent to which literary understanding and distinctive interpretations by the children were emphasized. Over the three years, all three students also developed a genuine concern for the children’s well-bei...
Cyclic Patterns of Interaction in the Discourse of English Teachers
1979
The use of discourse analysis in examin4.ng the classroom language interaOtions between English teachers and their students builds on the basic concepts of language function and language sequence. The four language functions are eliciting, informing, directing, and boundary marking (marking the divisions of discourse'units). The three language sequences are moves (the basic units of classroom language, including opening, answer, and . follow up) , exchanges (related. moves taken in turns) , and transactions (strings of exchanges) . Data that examine these functions and sequences were collected for 11 beginning English teachers by coding the Audiotapes of three classes per teacher. The patterns observed in these tapes suggest that the training of English teachers should . contain a middle ground between the behavioralist approach, that argues for microscopic modifications of teaching, behaviors (because they correlate with affective. or cognitive outcomes) and a gestalt apptoach that advocates a cr:neralized stulent attitude as the goal of a holistic approach to teaching. (PL)
Language Use in the Classroom. Final Report
1969
The first part of this study explored the form of verbal exchanges in the classroom, the effects of various conditions upon the exchanges between child and adult, and the child's competence in producing quebtions and narratives. Research was carried out in two first-grade classrooms located in a predominately Hawaiian working-class suburb of Honolulu, Children were found to be more likely to volunteer narratives in recorded conversations with a familiar adult when they were not answering questions. Since individually directed questions were generally interpreted as negative attention, the typical forms of classroom communication apparently are not the most productive ones. The second part of the study, using the same subjects, evaluated whether the use of nonstandard speech by first-grade children interfered with their learning to read. Evidence implied that improvement in reading sentences written by the child correlated with an index of the use of standard speech and that the use of nonstandard verbs correlated negatively with the correct identification of pictures used in "reading readiness" tests.