This work examines spoken language as a field of study, looking at the various ways in which we can both theorize the place of talk in education, and examine the way talk is actually done in educational settings. It brings quite different and important perspectives to the study of education. It is relevant to teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and for researchers interested in spoken language in educational contexts.

This work examines spoken language as a field of study, looking at the various ways in which we can both theorize the place of talk in education, and examine the way talk is actually done in educational settings. It brings quite different and important perspectives to the study of education. It is relevant to teachers at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and for researchers interested in spoken language in educational contexts.

An intelligibility-based approach to teaching that presents pronunciation as critical, yet neglected, in communicative language teaching.

This textbook shows how classroom discourse can be applied to develop and improve teaching. Combining examples from everyday practice with theoretical approaches, it provides a comprehensive account of current perspectives on classroom discourse.

Conversing with others has given insights to different perspectives, helped build ideas, and solve problems. Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas: Elaborating and Clarifying Supporting Ideas with Evidence Building On and/or Challenging Ideas Paraphrasing Synthesizing This book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following: Academic vocabulary and grammar Critical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and application Literacy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizing An academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual support The ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.

Readers will emerge from the book with a better understanding of the significance of quality teacher-student talk and some of the most important research and researchers.

In Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse twelve prominent linguists and linguistic anthropologists examine 'responsibility', 'authority', and 'knowledge': central, but problematic, concepts in contemporary anthropology. Their detailed case studies analyze diverse forms of oral discourse - everyday conversation, conversational narrative, song, oratory, divination, and ritual poetry - in societies in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The studies show how speakers attribute responsibility for acts and states of affairs, how particular forms of language and discourse relate to claims and disclaimers of responsibility, and how verbal acts are themselves social acts, subject to such attributions. The volume challenges those cognitive theorists who locate responsibility for the meaning of verbal acts solely in the intentions of individual speakers. Instead, the contributors focus on the production of meaning between speakers and audiences in particular social and cultural contexts, through dialogue and interaction which mediate between linguistic forms and their interpretations. This landmark volume will serve for years to come as a point of reference in the study, not only of responsibility and evidence, but of reported speech, authorship, and other phenomena in the social life of language. Besides linguistic and cultural anthropologists, linguistics, and folklorists, it will interest also readers from pragmatics, legal studies, sociology, religion, and social psychology.

What does it really mean to be intelligent? Ron Ritchhart presents a new and powerful view of intelligence that moves beyond ability to focus on cognitive dispositions such as curiosity, skepticism, and open mindedness. Arguing persuasively for this new conception of intelligence, the author uses vivid classroom vignettes to explore the foundations of intellectual character and describe how teachers can enculturate productive patterns of thinking in their students. Intellectual Character presents illustrative, inspiring stories of exemplary teachers to help show how intellectual traits and thinking dispositions can be developed and cultivated in students to promote successful learning. This vital book provides a model of authentic and powerful teaching and offers practical strategies for creating classroom environments that support thinking.

This volume explores the nature of discourse in secondary and upper elementary mathematics and science classrooms. Chapters examine conditions that support or hinder teachers and students, in particular language learners, in employing language as a tool for learning. The volume provides rich oral and written language examples from a range of classroom contexts to illustrate how linguistic practices affect students’ appropriation and display of disciplinary specific knowledge. Chapters further explore linguistic practices through with the support of discourse analytic models that foreground the authentic classroom data with the aim of understanding the dynamics of the classroom. The authors investigate the intersection between discourse and learning from a range of perspectives, including an examination of key concepts such as intertextuality, interaction, mediation, scaffolding, appropriation, and adaptations. This volume offers concrete suggestions on how teachers might benefit from a discourse approach to teaching in the areas of mathematics and science.

RTI in Action: Oral Language Activities for K-2 Classrooms, published by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), capitalizes on the power of collaboration between speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs) and teachers. Designed to .enhance K-2 students' oral language skills, the book offers practical activities based on general education curricular standards and provides specific, straightforward strategies to help SLPs and teachers modify instruction. Organized by grades K, 1, and 2, and using RTI's three tiers of instruction, the book provides activities to build oral language skills in five major areas critical to success in language, literacy, academics, and social skills: basic concepts, vocabulary, listening and speaking, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. The accompanying CD features PDFs of all activities in the book for convenient downloading and sharing, a sample PowerPoint for in-service training, and helpful, informative handouts for SLPs, teachers, parents, caregivers, and day care providers.