Current Issue

Volume 34

Editors-in-Chief: Kristina B. Lewis and Gareth Smail

Editors' Note (PDF)

Complaining as Reflective Practice in TESOL Teacher–Mentor Post-Observation Meetings (PDF), Santoi Wagner and Kristina B. Lewis

An Inquiry Approach to Understanding Students’ Learning Goals in an Adult English for Speakers of Other Languages Classroom (PDF), Emily Rose Schwab

Global Citizenship and Local Social Relations in the Discourse of Self-Development: Translanguaging in Address Terms (PDF), Jay Jo

Special Section: Classroom Discourse Analysis (PDF)

Embracing Students’ Diverse Communicative Repertoires to Change English as a Second Language Classroom Participation Dynamics (PDF), Patricia Miele

Analyzing Co-Teacher Turns as Interactional Resources (PDF), Xiaoyu Wang

Code Switch at an Alternative High School (PDF), Dean C. Schmeltz

Note From the Field: What Is Normal in Educational Linguistics? (PDF), Jennifer Phuong

Editors' Note (PDF)

Complaining as Reflective Practice in TESOL Teacher–Mentor Post-Observation Meetings (PDF)

Santoi Wagner and Kristina B. Lewis

This study investigates interactions between a novice language teacher and TESOL practicum mentor during a series of post-observation meetings, focusing on how and why the teacher engages in complaining. We draw upon conversation analysis and narrative analysis to look at how the teacher’s complaints are developed and managed, as well as what they accomplish, within the institutional context. The data show the novice teacher uses a variety of interactional resources to construct complaints about her co-teacher, a peer observer, and the practicum course workload. We argue that complaints are relevant to reflective practice and show how the teacher’s complaints work to express beliefs about teaching and learning and to defend her competence and moral values as a novice teacher. Based on our analysis, we discuss implications for mentor practice.

An Inquiry Approach to Understanding Students’ Learning Goals in an Adult English for Speakers of Other Languages Classroom (PDF)

Emily Rose Schwab

This paper seeks to expand discussions about identifying students’ learning aspirations in adult English for Speakers of Other Languages classes in the United States. By critically examining the process of ascertaining students’ learning goals and dreams for the future in one adult ESOL class, the author explores how an inquiry approach to this process opened space for centering students in class learning design and the implications it has for complicating researchers’ understandings of forming curriculum around the reasons students expressed for coming to class. Utilizing data from a year-long practitioner inquiry project, the teacher–researcher offers a perspective on centering students’ dreams and goals as curriculum and the potential it has to augment discussions of student-generated curricula in an era of increased decentering of students’ perspectives in adult literacy education in the United States.

Global Citizenship and Local Social Relations in the Discourse of Self-Development: Translanguaging in Address Terms (PDF)

Jay Jo

This study examines communicative practices of a group of South Korean adults conducting self‑organized English practice to develop their oral competence in English. In the context of globalization, these young Koreans organized a study group that practiced English‑mediated communication as a means of self-development—a collective discourse in South Korea that encourages individuals to make relentless efforts to develop oneself. However, in this study of communicative practices in a study group, I found that members of the group endorse not only such a societal discourse but also the making of locally-based social relationships among the people sharing similar values and goals. I interpret the instances of simultaneous English–Korean use as translanguaging and examine the interactional sequences where Korean terms of address/reference come into the English-based communication, which can be read as a flexible embracement of the locally-rooted social relations within the practice of a global language.

Special Section: Classroom Discourse Analysis (PDF)

Embracing Students’ Diverse Communicative Repertoires to Change English as a Second Language Classroom Participation Dynamics (PDF)

Patricia Miele

Student-initiated interaction is often difficult to achieve in English as a second language classes, despite its value for improving students’ oral communication skills. This problem is exacerbated by English-only rhetoric, common in classrooms around the world, which demands monolingual communication or no communication at all. In contrast, students can be encouraged to draw on their diverse communicative repertoires even in English language classes with mixed first languages (L1s) when those repertoires are seen as assets. In the example analyzed in this article, a Chinese student managed to break her way into a clique of Saudi Arabian students by bringing Chinese humor into the classroom in English. The dramatic shift in participation patterns that followed this interaction demonstrates the powerful effects of encouraging students to draw on all their communicative resources, even without a common L1.

Analyzing Co-Teacher Turns as Interactional Resources (PDF)

Xiaoyu Wang

Collaborative teaching is widely adopted in teacher-training programs in the United States for the positive influence it has on teachers’ professionalism and on students’ learning. Though there are a vast number of studies on the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequence between teachers and students, studies on the use of IRF in co-teaching contexts are scarce. The current study focuses on interactions between two pre-service teachers in a semester-long adult ESL classroom at a U.S. university. Through a discourse analysis of the leading and non-leading teachers’ interactions within the IRF sequence, the study has found that the non-leading teacher utilized the second turn of IRF as an interactional resource to advance the instructional talk and achieve the immediate instructional objectives.

Code Switch at an Alternative High School (PDF)

Dean C. Schmeltz

A two-year, ethnographic study of the use of the term code switch within an alternative high school community reveals that it has taken on a distinct, institutional meaning. Observed primarily as a reprimand, teachers nonetheless downplayed the significance of the disciplinary term in interviews. However, Black students expressed a sense of being asked to switch between two versions of themselves, only one of which is professional enough to belong in school. Students generally accepted that this was what teachers implied by the term, but some rejected the idea that code switching is a fundamental change, or that the change should only go in one direction at school. These findings indicate that what the school may intend to be a socially progressive term has been taken up in a way that reinforces negative self-perception among students. This paper concludes with suggestions for educators seeking to foster discourse that supports students from marginalized communities, without deferring to respectability politics.

Note From the Field: What Is Normal in Educational Linguistics? (PDF)

Jennifer Phuong

In this note from the field, I explore what is considered normal in educational linguistics when considering language in special education contexts through a Disability Studies in Education perspective. In highlighting theoretical perspectives that simultaneously complement and complicate one another, I argue that our field should more carefully consider processes of ableism and racism in issues of language and education.