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

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difficulties encountered by children in oral practice for the learning of
the L2 at school.

The study will try to identify and describe patterns in the structure and
process of interaction in naturally-occurring Ll conversations between
adults and children, at hone. These patterns will be contrasted with
those of texts used in the Classroon for the developnent of L2 oral
connunication skills. Keconnendations will be fornulated within the
Units of the specific situation outlined in 1.1. Finally, Inplications of
the study for Teacher Education will be discussed.

Chapter 1 Indicates the alns of the study and the grounds for the
ethnographic approach.

Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature considered relevant to the
present study. Language policies during the colonial and post-Independnce
periods are sketched to provide a background to the setting of the study;
differences between British, French and Portuguese colonial policies are
indicated. The situations of linguistic nlnorlties in developed countries
and of rural populations in underdeveloped countries are compared to show
the extent to which studies on bilingual language programmes carried out
in the Forth are relevant to the South.

Studies on the cognitive consequences of literacy and bilingualism are
reviewed in 2.2, in particular those which criticize the polarity between
written and oral language and stress the importance of Ll competence in
the learning of the L2.

The socio-hlstorlcal school in Soviet psychology and the theories of
Vygotsky on the social origin of language and cognition are briefly
presented in 2.3; it is argued that they provide a solid foundation for
understanding the nature of the Interaction between adults and children
in the process of language acquisition, that they anticipated and provide
a theoretical background to recent developments in linguistics that focus
on the centrality of context for the interpretation of meaning, and that
their pedagogical implications respond to the problems of underdeveloped
countries more adequately than other theories.

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