Language learning at home and school

Abstract

The structure of classroom discourse It has often been observed that going to school presents young children with a range of problems. Not least of these is the change in their relationship with adults from intimate individual contact with parents to relatively impersonal contact with a teacher who is responsible for the care, control, and education of a large group of children. This is a matter of great consequence since the quality of the interpersonal relations in the classroom inevitably influences the patterns of discourse which, in turn, have an impact upon the children's learning. Research over the last twenty-five years has exposed patterns of classroom talk which have been criticize..