Intercultural Conversation: Building Understanding Together
Classroom talk has been recognized for several decades as central to student learning (e.g., Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Edwards & Westgate, 1994; McNaughton, 2002; Mercer, 1995; Nystrand, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978), some teachers are working to improve it as student populations become more diverse linguistically and culturally. Recently, suggestions have been made for “stretching,” “extending,” or “pushing” English-language learners’ (ELLs’) linguistic and conceptual development by scaffolding or otherwise promoting production of more complex instructional talk (e.g., Cappellini, 2005; Dansie, 2001; Gibbons, 2002; McNaughton, 2002; Mohr & Mohr, 2007; Wallace, 2008). There is compelling research evidence (McNaughton, 2002) that these strategies work. Opportunities for immersion in the language of school activities—and to learn the features of that language—improve literacy achievement across the curriculum, in particular for vocabulary and comprehension development.
Competence in classroom talk is dependent on participation in a learning community where talk is meaningful and key language is used repeatedly (McNaughton, 2002). Accordingly, there are many ideas in the literature for increasing ELLs’ participation in classroom talk. Yet talk is a two-way process—ELLs must have someone with whom to speak. With notable exceptions (e.g., Yoon, 2007), there is a lack of attention to the conversational capabilities of those others, in particular white, monolingual English-speaking students. It is to address this gap that this article suggests ideas for developing the capabilities of all students—ELLs or otherwise—for instructional conversations in mainstream classrooms where English is used by some as a first or only language, and by others as a second language.
I am using “conversation” both literally and metaphorically (Appiah, 2007) here. In the literal sense, “conversation” refers to spontaneous, spoken, dialogic communication that takes place in real time in a shared context. In recent decades this type of talk has been an important goal of second and foreign language teaching (Thornbury & Slade, 2006), but not necessarily of first language teaching. In the metaphorical sense, “conversation” refers to engagement with the ideas of others (Appiah, 2007). It entails connecting with others through talk and interacting with interest and enthusiasm. These qualities characterize classroom talk that enables learning. “Learning,” it has been observed, “occurs through engagement,” but the experiences and ideas of others with whom we engage in classrooms are often “marked by extraordinary difference” (Kalantzis, Cope, & the Learning by Design Project Group, 2005, p. 47).
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