Proposes a taxonomy for the many roles a second language learner must play in real-life interactions. Three types of roles are established and illustrated via dialogs: social, emotive, and maturational. Students practice these roles, and in doing so, acquire the grammatical structures of the target language. (Author/PJM)

Reports on a study of five multicultural third grade students' responses to literature across the interaction patterns of adult-dominated, peer-dominated, and adult-balanced social situations. Concludes that a direct relationship exists between the structure of the social interaction pattern and its consequence in verbal behavior. (FL)

Explores how Cantonese-speaking math students and their teacher use different languages to achieve academic and social success in their multilingual classroom in Toronto. The article discusses inter-ethnic tensions related to the use of languages other than English and raises questions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of multilingual…

Provides suggestions for creating learning environments that affirm and value linguistic varieties, including adapting the school/classroom environment, promoting positive group and individual identities, creating school-family-community connections, diversifying the curriculum, providing students with sociolinguistic education, and teaching…

Examines the idea that one goal of English language teaching should be to replicate "natural" rather than "traditional" classroom communication. The article argues that this goal is unattainable and that it would be more satisfactory to take an institutional discourse approach, where classroom discourse is regarded as an institutional variety of…

This paper reviews selected findings from two traditions of educational research--process-product research and sociolinguistic research. The first research method generally focuses on the teacher and identifies teacher behaviors (processes) that correlate with student outcome measures (products). Sociolinguistic research focuses on communicative…

In a sociolinguistic study of five transcripts of high school discussions, two analyses were conducted. The first was a detailed qualitative analysis of the data, which combined paralinguistic features with three perspectives: a speech act analysis, a conversation analysis, and an interaction analysis. In the second, more quantitative analysis,…

The fact that some people learn a second language more easily than others has prompted numerous studies designed to link one factor or another with successful language learning. This work examines a large number of these studies to assess the importance of various factors involved in language learning. The influencing factors suggested are grouped…

Designed as a synthesis of concepts familiar to students having studied the earlier Minnesota Project English units or as an introduction for other students, this unit for grade 12 treats the role of language in the social and psychological development of man. Alternative introductions to the unit are provided: one concentrating on definitions of…

It is not sufficient for students in foreign language classes to simply internalize the sound system and grammatical structure of the target language or to memorize the vocabulary. Speaking is not merely a linguistic event, but rather involves an extensive system of norms for the social interaction. The relationship between speaking and social…

This thesis presents the results of a field study of code-switching in K-3 level classrooms of an experimental Spanish-English bilingual education project in Los Angeles. The goal of the project, based on a pluralistic model of bilingual education, was the maintenance of Spanish by means of continued language-development in both the students'…

Improvement of communication skills for junior college students is a valid goal, but traditional methods defeat it. A sociolinguistic approach maintains the goal but alters the methods, choosing to teach the skills in the context of relevant material: language against the backdrop of society, Teaching language sociolinguistically means including…

Criticizes views of literacy represented by Hirsch, Farrell, and others for assuming (1) the priority of alphabetic literacy over the social uses of orthographies; (2) a stable external world; (3) that literacy can be taught by skills instruction; and (4) that teachers are the centers of authority. Argues with reference to theoretical linguistics,…

This paper explores the theoretical and applied groundwork for a new "sociohistorical practice" of cross-cultural communication. Influenced heavily by the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the theory assumes that the way teachers think about and teach culture should result from an understanding of how sociohistorical conditions produce…

This article discusses the value of the notional-functional approach to language teaching and considers some sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and linguistic features of the notional-functional syllabus. (CFM)