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

Interpretation / 134

contribute substantially to the family economy in terms of services
provided, are therefore given definite responsibilities and duties to
carry out, and perform a wide range of roles from very early ages. This
is evident in the topics, and, as will be discussed later, has
consequences for, the structure of conversations. To someone from an
urban European background the impression is given that 6-7 year old
children are considered very much ’grown up'.

As one would expect, literacy-related activities are scarce, though not
totally absent, since adults are mostly поп-literate by school standards.
There is an interesting sequence of a grandmother and a child looking at
a magazine, where somehow the tutorial roles are reversed, as the child
explains the pictures to the old woman. Children talk about school or
read textbooks with older siblings who are in higher grades, and with
adults who have never been pupils:

Vhat songs do they teach you at school? Tell me, шу son! You
know, I never went to school ... whenever I hear you sing there in
the distance, I feel sorrow, because I never had the chance.

(A neighbour to Luis)

Children also like to 'play the teacher' with younger ones, acting like
the teachers in their classrooms, using very telling reproductions of
'classroom talk'; these sequences, however, are not in conversations with
adults.

As for the main purpose of Conversations, a broad classification taken
from Veils (1985) shows that approximately a third of conversations have
the function of 'controlling the present and future behaviour of one of
the participants', approximately two thirds of conversations have the
function of exchanging information, while very few are tutorial ('with a
deliberate didactic intention by one of the speakers’): see Table 5.4.
Characteristics of adults and children's talk In tutorial situations and
literacy events are discussed in 5.5.

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