Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Kethod / IOl

4.3 The subset of data

4.3.1 From Interaction to adult-child conversations

My work for the present study consisted in an extension of the IIDE
project: adult-child conversations were identified as the area of inquiry,
and a subset of data from the project was selected and analyzed according
to the aims of the study. I was already very familiar with the main
corpus of data because I had participated, on a part-time basis, in
almost all phases of the IKDB project, from its inception in 1982 to the
conclusion of its first part (analysis of home data, July 1984> and for 6
months in 1985 (draft of the final report).

The reasons for the focus on adult-child conversation were varied and
based on an appreciation of Vygotsky's theories and the line of research
of Veils and Tizard:

- I wanted to see what the school might learn from the home experience
of the children;

- parents and teachers interacting with children are examples of
situations where adults extend the upper level of the Zone of Proximal
Development;

- the culture of the population studied tends to value the intervention
of the adult in learning, especially at school;

- the teacher is often the only competent speaker of the L2 in a school
where children have to learn through that L2;

- the examples of verbal interaction on which the learning of L2 at
school is based are mostly adult-child conversations, but no previous
research had been done on their structure;

- adults' talk with children is a cheap and available resource that could
be better used in education in poor countries, one field being teacher
education.

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