Classroom Talk and the Learning of New Registers in a Second Language

This paper describes the role of student-teacher interactions in the development of English, focusing on the more formal academic registers of school, among 9- and 10-year-old ESL students in an inner city mainstream primary classroom in Sydney. The interactions between teacher and learners appeared to play a significant part in facilitating the acquisition of English associated with the science topic that the students were studying, and in the development of literacy skills. Significant factors in this process lay in the place of the interaction within a linguistically based sequence of tasks, and in the degree of student initiation within the interactions. The paper also suggests the need for a broader theoretical base for ESL research in schools,which takes account of both the social and linguistic contexts in which learning occurs.