Word searches: on the use of verbal and non-verbal resources during classroom talk

Insights gained from the analysis will then inform suggestions regarding the
interactional implications for specialist language teaching and therapy.

Case details and description of corpus

Ciara (not her real name) is an eight-year-old child who is educated in a specialist
speech and language provision attached to a mainstream primary school. Ciara was
admitted to the language provision three years previously and during that time has
received additional resources from a specialist language teacher and a speech and
language therapist. Ciara has a statement of special educational needs that describes
her as needing help to develop both her expressive and receptive language skills. Her
speech and language therapist and teacher jointly completed a questionnaire to supply
details regarding her specific language difficulties and language teaching goals and
strategies (table 1). Semantic difficulties are a key characteristic of Ciara’s profile,
including reported naming and word-finding difficulties. Current areas of priority for
language intervention, according to her teacher and therapist, include vocabulary
work, syntactic and pragmatic targets.

Insert table 1 about here

Video recordings were made of interactions between Ciara and her specialist language
teacher during small group and individual oral language sessions. The author was
present during the recordings but did not interact with the participants. There were
three distinct types of classroom activity: collaborative story writing in a small group;
circle-time where children take turns to speak following the teacher’s model; one-to-

<<   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   >>

More intriguing information