classroom interactive practices for developing l2 literacy: a microethnographic study of two...
TRANSCRIPT
Applied Linguistics 273 377ndash404 Oxford University Press 2006
doi101093applinami052
Classroom Interactive Practicesfor Developing L2 LiteracyA Microethnographic Studyof Two Beginning AdultLearners of English
JOHN HELLERMANN
Portland State University
Using methods from conversation analysis this microethnographic longitudinal
case study traces the development of interactional competence which results
from adult learnersrsquo socialization into literacy events in a modified Sustained
Silent Reading (mSSR) program The investigation focuses on two learners who
participated in the mSSR program in an ESOL classroom at an adult community
college for three terms The findings show how the two learners (with different
first language educational backgrounds) follow different paths in acquiring
interactional competence moving from peripheral to more engaged participa-
tion in classroom literacy events through their socialization into three of these
events book selection opening post-reading re-tellings and completing and
filing reading logs
INTRODUCTION
Previous studies of L2 literacy development have focused on cognitive and
structural issues involved in reading and writing in a second language
including cognitive processing while reading (August 2001 Felser et al
2003) vocabulary development (Treville 1996 Grabe and Stoller 1997
Pulido 2003) memory and cognitive processing (Carrell 1991 Bernhardt and
Kamil 1995 Sagarra 2000) decoding practices (Yang 2000) and comparing
L1 and L2 reading strategies (Segalowitz et al 1991 Tang 1997) A few have
focused on student literate (Hood and Joyce 1995 Palacios 2002) and
conversational (Lerner 1995) practices In contrast to much of this research
the current study explores the social processes which foster the development
of classroom and interactional practices that characterize beginning literacy
activities for adults in an L21 This study describes such practices of two
learners over the course of three terms of study (30 weeks) in an ESL
classroom which employed an experimental technique for the teaching of
reading to beginning adult learnersmdasha modified method for Sustained Silent
Reading (McCracken 1971 Chow and Chou 2000)
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ADULT LEARNERS LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATIONAND INTERACTIONAL COMPETENCE
The majority of learners at the data collection site for this study (known
locally as lsquothe Lab Schoolrsquo) are working adults who as adults bring an
understanding of the world to the classroom that children learning a second
language do not have This understanding of the world can serve as an
important contextual resource for adults who share many of the same life
experience contexts as they interact in a lingua franca Studies which focus on
working adultsrsquo development of strategies for engagement in classroom
interaction in an L2 (English in this case) are especially interesting because
these resources from their home languages and cultures are available for use
in language learning The fact that learners who are part of the database for
this investigation are adults means that in many cases they need to use and
are using English every day outside of the classroom either for work or other
day-to-day social interactions Research on members of this population is
also important because of their under-representation in the applied linguistics
research literature
For these reasons this study starts from the theoretical perspective that
a primary goal of language learning is becoming competent interactionally
and that this competence is achieved through socialization into language
This theoretical perspective seems especially important for understanding
working adult immigrant language learning as the learners on whom this
study focuses need competence to engage in social practices both within and
outside of the classroom in a variety of situations
While the theory of communicative competence (Hymes 1974 Canale and
Swain 1980 with respect to SLA) resolved many of the conflicts over the
exclusion of language use from a theory of competence it remained tied
closely to a conceptualization of the L2 as located in the individual who is
engaged in little more than the transmission of information in the L2
Influenced in part by research in the area of ethnomethodological
conversation analysis language learning researchers have been developing
a theory of interactional competence (Kramsch 1986 Hall 1993 1995 1997 He
and Young 1998 Young 1999 2000 2002 Markee 2000) which understands
language use as situated and co-constructed A focus on interactional
competence seeks to understand the discursive practices that participants use
to co-construct their social interactions in recurring contextually-equivalent
situations Interactional competence focuses on resources including but not
limited to turn-taking appropriate use of linguistic register and the ability
to recognize and signal boundaries of communicative events (Young 2000)
The focus of studies of interactional competence is on the dynamic processes
of negotiation between interlocutors as they work to accomplish specific
social actions through their talk-in-interaction
The development of the interactional competence of language
learners has a reflexive relationship with language development through
378 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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language socialization The perspective of language learning as language
socialization (Ochs and Schieffelin 1979 Schieffelin and Ochs 1986
Kramsch 2002) was established in linguistic anthropology where the first
research focused on children developing language as novices participating in
particular activities and contexts within communities of adults who were
experts in the language and culture of the community Adult learners in
a classroom setting can be seen as engaging in socialization into English and
specifically for this project into literacy events through their interaction with
classroom peers in activities designed by an expert instructor to promote
English literacy This process of socialization into literacy events in turn
allows for the development of learnersrsquo interactional competence in English
Repeated classroom tasks such as the literacy events require learners to
participate in interaction regularly within a classroom community of practice
(Wenger 1998) with one another and their teachers using particular
language forms for particular actions within those literacy events The
increased ability of learners to participate in these literacy events is an
important part of the development of interactional competence as well as
literacy The literacy practices perspective (Scribner and Cole 1981) I am taking
in this paper sees the development of interactional competence as an integral
part of literacy development Literacy becomes accessible to learners in part
through their interaction in classroom literacy events This interaction
guided by a teacher-expert allows the language practices in literacy events
to become contextualized and salient to the learners The reoccurrence of
interactions in and for literacy events with teacher guidance is the
socialization process in which interactional competence and literacy develop
These are interactions in which learners negotiate meanings with peers and
instructors as they move from peripheral to full participation in literacy
events (Lave and Wenger 1991 Wenger 1998)
LITERACY AND LITERACY EVENTS
This study focuses on adult learnersrsquo2 development of practices for interaction
in literacy events as part of a modified Sustained Silent Reading (mSSR)
method for the teaching of reading The theoretical perspective on literacy
which informs this research is a literacy practices perspective discussed first by
Scribner and Cole (1981) and developed in the work of the New Literacy
Studies movement (Gee 1990 Street 1998 Barton 2001 cf review by Reder
and Davila 2005) This perspective considers literacy in a holistic manner
as lsquosocially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and
technology for producing and disseminating itrsquo (Scribner and Cole 1981
236) linguistic processing thus is embedded within and inseparable from
social practices or routines in which individuals are engaged
While literacy (reading in particular) is considered the goal of the
classroom interactions which are part of the mSSR investigated for this
project the interactions themselves consisted of students doing literacy in
JOHN HELLERMANN 379
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literacy events Literacy events may be understood as lsquoany occasion in which a
piece of writing is integral to the nature of participantsrsquo interactions and
their interpretive processesrsquo (Heath 1982 50) Heathrsquos definition captures
both the goal and process of the classroom interactions which are the focus
for this study The use of this term foregrounds literacy as the process of
individuals understanding their own literacy (Street 2001) through their
negotiation both with texts teachers and one another
The literacy events analyzed in this study are
1 book selection and silent reading
2 practices for opening pair interaction for story re-telling
3 filling in and filing reading logs3
THE DATA AND SETTING
The data for this research come from a five-year federally funded project4
which investigates language learning by low-level adult learners of English
The data were collected in two classrooms which were designed to obtain
high quality video recordings Each classroom has six cameras embedded in
the ceiling5 Every class period two learners and the teacher wear wireless
microphones and there are two microphones in the ceiling to capture the
audio from the entire classroom The classroom interactions are coded for
activity and participation and portions of one half of all the recorded class
sessions are transcribed Specially designed software allows for viewing
transcription and codes together with the six camera views of the classroom
simultaneously This allows the researcher as complete a picture of the
classroom environment as currently available using video recording
The entire corpus of learner interaction consists of (at the time of writing)
over 4000 hours of classroom video recordings For analysis I isolated
instances in which the two focal participants in this study were either
wearing or sitting next to a classmate wearing a wireless microphone This
narrowed the data for close analysis to 14 three-hour class periods for
each learner The other class periods in which the learners participated were
also reviewed in order to observe their interaction with other learners and
their teachers Examples of learnersrsquo writing and information gathered from
in-home bilingual interviews were also used to add context to the analysis6
THE FOCAL PARTICIPANTS
At the time these data were collected Eduardo7 was a 51-year-old divorced
man from Mexico where he had had two years of formal education He had
been living in the USA for 14 years with his daughter son-in-law and two
grandchildren and spoke Spanish at home He had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School In the course of five terms of study at the
380 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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Lab School Eduardo logged 182 hours of instruction time giving him a
70 per cent attendance rate
Abby was a 21-year-old single woman from China with 11 years of
education in her home country Like Eduardo she had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School She lived with her parents and spoke
Cantonese at home In her first four terms of study she tallied 190 hours
of class time a 90 per cent attendance rate
These two learners were chosen because of their participation in three
consecutive terms of the mSSR method because neither of them had studied
English before attending the Lab School and because of their different
educational backgrounds Each student was assessed at approximately the
same proficiency level (based on an oral proficiency interview) and started
in a class for beginners I expected (as did their classroom teachers) that
their different levels of education and first language literacy would result in
different levels of participation in the interactive practices for literacy events
in the classroom Describing these differences aids an understanding of
emerging L2 literacy as part of learnersrsquo interactional competence as fostered
by language socialization in classroom literacy events
METHODS FOR ANALYSIS
This studyrsquos emic perspective on classroom discourse language and social
systems is influenced by ethnomethodology interactional sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis This theoretical and methodological perspective
sees language social order and social systems as locally constituted and
re-constituted Participants in any interaction be that mundane conversation
or classroom interaction co-construct a local cultural expertise (Garfinkel
1967) and display that expertise to one another at every moment (Goffman
1959 1961) through their talk-in-interaction From this perspective on social
interaction research on adults who have well-developed skills for social
interaction but little linguistic skill in their lingua franca is a rich area for the
study of the local co-construction of classroom discourse (Macbeth 2003)
This study takes advantage of the recurrent nature of activity in classroom
discourse to understand how the local practices for social interaction of two
learners in similar interactional environments constitute socialization into
literacy over the course of three terms of study The background information
for each participant in the study the categories lsquoMexican-Spanish L1 male
with little educationrsquo or lsquoMandarin-Chinese L1 female with high school
educationrsquo are not used to predict or explain a priori particular interactional
patterns While these categories played a role in participant selection it will
be a task for analysis to uncover how the discursive practices for literacy
of the two participants may or may not differ
The research relies on audio and video recording technology to open
a window onto micro-level details of situations by repeated observation
The descriptive richness and depth of context of this microethnographic
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analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
382 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
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4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
ADULT LEARNERS LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATIONAND INTERACTIONAL COMPETENCE
The majority of learners at the data collection site for this study (known
locally as lsquothe Lab Schoolrsquo) are working adults who as adults bring an
understanding of the world to the classroom that children learning a second
language do not have This understanding of the world can serve as an
important contextual resource for adults who share many of the same life
experience contexts as they interact in a lingua franca Studies which focus on
working adultsrsquo development of strategies for engagement in classroom
interaction in an L2 (English in this case) are especially interesting because
these resources from their home languages and cultures are available for use
in language learning The fact that learners who are part of the database for
this investigation are adults means that in many cases they need to use and
are using English every day outside of the classroom either for work or other
day-to-day social interactions Research on members of this population is
also important because of their under-representation in the applied linguistics
research literature
For these reasons this study starts from the theoretical perspective that
a primary goal of language learning is becoming competent interactionally
and that this competence is achieved through socialization into language
This theoretical perspective seems especially important for understanding
working adult immigrant language learning as the learners on whom this
study focuses need competence to engage in social practices both within and
outside of the classroom in a variety of situations
While the theory of communicative competence (Hymes 1974 Canale and
Swain 1980 with respect to SLA) resolved many of the conflicts over the
exclusion of language use from a theory of competence it remained tied
closely to a conceptualization of the L2 as located in the individual who is
engaged in little more than the transmission of information in the L2
Influenced in part by research in the area of ethnomethodological
conversation analysis language learning researchers have been developing
a theory of interactional competence (Kramsch 1986 Hall 1993 1995 1997 He
and Young 1998 Young 1999 2000 2002 Markee 2000) which understands
language use as situated and co-constructed A focus on interactional
competence seeks to understand the discursive practices that participants use
to co-construct their social interactions in recurring contextually-equivalent
situations Interactional competence focuses on resources including but not
limited to turn-taking appropriate use of linguistic register and the ability
to recognize and signal boundaries of communicative events (Young 2000)
The focus of studies of interactional competence is on the dynamic processes
of negotiation between interlocutors as they work to accomplish specific
social actions through their talk-in-interaction
The development of the interactional competence of language
learners has a reflexive relationship with language development through
378 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
language socialization The perspective of language learning as language
socialization (Ochs and Schieffelin 1979 Schieffelin and Ochs 1986
Kramsch 2002) was established in linguistic anthropology where the first
research focused on children developing language as novices participating in
particular activities and contexts within communities of adults who were
experts in the language and culture of the community Adult learners in
a classroom setting can be seen as engaging in socialization into English and
specifically for this project into literacy events through their interaction with
classroom peers in activities designed by an expert instructor to promote
English literacy This process of socialization into literacy events in turn
allows for the development of learnersrsquo interactional competence in English
Repeated classroom tasks such as the literacy events require learners to
participate in interaction regularly within a classroom community of practice
(Wenger 1998) with one another and their teachers using particular
language forms for particular actions within those literacy events The
increased ability of learners to participate in these literacy events is an
important part of the development of interactional competence as well as
literacy The literacy practices perspective (Scribner and Cole 1981) I am taking
in this paper sees the development of interactional competence as an integral
part of literacy development Literacy becomes accessible to learners in part
through their interaction in classroom literacy events This interaction
guided by a teacher-expert allows the language practices in literacy events
to become contextualized and salient to the learners The reoccurrence of
interactions in and for literacy events with teacher guidance is the
socialization process in which interactional competence and literacy develop
These are interactions in which learners negotiate meanings with peers and
instructors as they move from peripheral to full participation in literacy
events (Lave and Wenger 1991 Wenger 1998)
LITERACY AND LITERACY EVENTS
This study focuses on adult learnersrsquo2 development of practices for interaction
in literacy events as part of a modified Sustained Silent Reading (mSSR)
method for the teaching of reading The theoretical perspective on literacy
which informs this research is a literacy practices perspective discussed first by
Scribner and Cole (1981) and developed in the work of the New Literacy
Studies movement (Gee 1990 Street 1998 Barton 2001 cf review by Reder
and Davila 2005) This perspective considers literacy in a holistic manner
as lsquosocially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and
technology for producing and disseminating itrsquo (Scribner and Cole 1981
236) linguistic processing thus is embedded within and inseparable from
social practices or routines in which individuals are engaged
While literacy (reading in particular) is considered the goal of the
classroom interactions which are part of the mSSR investigated for this
project the interactions themselves consisted of students doing literacy in
JOHN HELLERMANN 379
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ownloaded from
literacy events Literacy events may be understood as lsquoany occasion in which a
piece of writing is integral to the nature of participantsrsquo interactions and
their interpretive processesrsquo (Heath 1982 50) Heathrsquos definition captures
both the goal and process of the classroom interactions which are the focus
for this study The use of this term foregrounds literacy as the process of
individuals understanding their own literacy (Street 2001) through their
negotiation both with texts teachers and one another
The literacy events analyzed in this study are
1 book selection and silent reading
2 practices for opening pair interaction for story re-telling
3 filling in and filing reading logs3
THE DATA AND SETTING
The data for this research come from a five-year federally funded project4
which investigates language learning by low-level adult learners of English
The data were collected in two classrooms which were designed to obtain
high quality video recordings Each classroom has six cameras embedded in
the ceiling5 Every class period two learners and the teacher wear wireless
microphones and there are two microphones in the ceiling to capture the
audio from the entire classroom The classroom interactions are coded for
activity and participation and portions of one half of all the recorded class
sessions are transcribed Specially designed software allows for viewing
transcription and codes together with the six camera views of the classroom
simultaneously This allows the researcher as complete a picture of the
classroom environment as currently available using video recording
The entire corpus of learner interaction consists of (at the time of writing)
over 4000 hours of classroom video recordings For analysis I isolated
instances in which the two focal participants in this study were either
wearing or sitting next to a classmate wearing a wireless microphone This
narrowed the data for close analysis to 14 three-hour class periods for
each learner The other class periods in which the learners participated were
also reviewed in order to observe their interaction with other learners and
their teachers Examples of learnersrsquo writing and information gathered from
in-home bilingual interviews were also used to add context to the analysis6
THE FOCAL PARTICIPANTS
At the time these data were collected Eduardo7 was a 51-year-old divorced
man from Mexico where he had had two years of formal education He had
been living in the USA for 14 years with his daughter son-in-law and two
grandchildren and spoke Spanish at home He had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School In the course of five terms of study at the
380 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
Lab School Eduardo logged 182 hours of instruction time giving him a
70 per cent attendance rate
Abby was a 21-year-old single woman from China with 11 years of
education in her home country Like Eduardo she had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School She lived with her parents and spoke
Cantonese at home In her first four terms of study she tallied 190 hours
of class time a 90 per cent attendance rate
These two learners were chosen because of their participation in three
consecutive terms of the mSSR method because neither of them had studied
English before attending the Lab School and because of their different
educational backgrounds Each student was assessed at approximately the
same proficiency level (based on an oral proficiency interview) and started
in a class for beginners I expected (as did their classroom teachers) that
their different levels of education and first language literacy would result in
different levels of participation in the interactive practices for literacy events
in the classroom Describing these differences aids an understanding of
emerging L2 literacy as part of learnersrsquo interactional competence as fostered
by language socialization in classroom literacy events
METHODS FOR ANALYSIS
This studyrsquos emic perspective on classroom discourse language and social
systems is influenced by ethnomethodology interactional sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis This theoretical and methodological perspective
sees language social order and social systems as locally constituted and
re-constituted Participants in any interaction be that mundane conversation
or classroom interaction co-construct a local cultural expertise (Garfinkel
1967) and display that expertise to one another at every moment (Goffman
1959 1961) through their talk-in-interaction From this perspective on social
interaction research on adults who have well-developed skills for social
interaction but little linguistic skill in their lingua franca is a rich area for the
study of the local co-construction of classroom discourse (Macbeth 2003)
This study takes advantage of the recurrent nature of activity in classroom
discourse to understand how the local practices for social interaction of two
learners in similar interactional environments constitute socialization into
literacy over the course of three terms of study The background information
for each participant in the study the categories lsquoMexican-Spanish L1 male
with little educationrsquo or lsquoMandarin-Chinese L1 female with high school
educationrsquo are not used to predict or explain a priori particular interactional
patterns While these categories played a role in participant selection it will
be a task for analysis to uncover how the discursive practices for literacy
of the two participants may or may not differ
The research relies on audio and video recording technology to open
a window onto micro-level details of situations by repeated observation
The descriptive richness and depth of context of this microethnographic
JOHN HELLERMANN 381
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
382 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
JOHN HELLERMANN 383
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
language socialization The perspective of language learning as language
socialization (Ochs and Schieffelin 1979 Schieffelin and Ochs 1986
Kramsch 2002) was established in linguistic anthropology where the first
research focused on children developing language as novices participating in
particular activities and contexts within communities of adults who were
experts in the language and culture of the community Adult learners in
a classroom setting can be seen as engaging in socialization into English and
specifically for this project into literacy events through their interaction with
classroom peers in activities designed by an expert instructor to promote
English literacy This process of socialization into literacy events in turn
allows for the development of learnersrsquo interactional competence in English
Repeated classroom tasks such as the literacy events require learners to
participate in interaction regularly within a classroom community of practice
(Wenger 1998) with one another and their teachers using particular
language forms for particular actions within those literacy events The
increased ability of learners to participate in these literacy events is an
important part of the development of interactional competence as well as
literacy The literacy practices perspective (Scribner and Cole 1981) I am taking
in this paper sees the development of interactional competence as an integral
part of literacy development Literacy becomes accessible to learners in part
through their interaction in classroom literacy events This interaction
guided by a teacher-expert allows the language practices in literacy events
to become contextualized and salient to the learners The reoccurrence of
interactions in and for literacy events with teacher guidance is the
socialization process in which interactional competence and literacy develop
These are interactions in which learners negotiate meanings with peers and
instructors as they move from peripheral to full participation in literacy
events (Lave and Wenger 1991 Wenger 1998)
LITERACY AND LITERACY EVENTS
This study focuses on adult learnersrsquo2 development of practices for interaction
in literacy events as part of a modified Sustained Silent Reading (mSSR)
method for the teaching of reading The theoretical perspective on literacy
which informs this research is a literacy practices perspective discussed first by
Scribner and Cole (1981) and developed in the work of the New Literacy
Studies movement (Gee 1990 Street 1998 Barton 2001 cf review by Reder
and Davila 2005) This perspective considers literacy in a holistic manner
as lsquosocially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and
technology for producing and disseminating itrsquo (Scribner and Cole 1981
236) linguistic processing thus is embedded within and inseparable from
social practices or routines in which individuals are engaged
While literacy (reading in particular) is considered the goal of the
classroom interactions which are part of the mSSR investigated for this
project the interactions themselves consisted of students doing literacy in
JOHN HELLERMANN 379
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
literacy events Literacy events may be understood as lsquoany occasion in which a
piece of writing is integral to the nature of participantsrsquo interactions and
their interpretive processesrsquo (Heath 1982 50) Heathrsquos definition captures
both the goal and process of the classroom interactions which are the focus
for this study The use of this term foregrounds literacy as the process of
individuals understanding their own literacy (Street 2001) through their
negotiation both with texts teachers and one another
The literacy events analyzed in this study are
1 book selection and silent reading
2 practices for opening pair interaction for story re-telling
3 filling in and filing reading logs3
THE DATA AND SETTING
The data for this research come from a five-year federally funded project4
which investigates language learning by low-level adult learners of English
The data were collected in two classrooms which were designed to obtain
high quality video recordings Each classroom has six cameras embedded in
the ceiling5 Every class period two learners and the teacher wear wireless
microphones and there are two microphones in the ceiling to capture the
audio from the entire classroom The classroom interactions are coded for
activity and participation and portions of one half of all the recorded class
sessions are transcribed Specially designed software allows for viewing
transcription and codes together with the six camera views of the classroom
simultaneously This allows the researcher as complete a picture of the
classroom environment as currently available using video recording
The entire corpus of learner interaction consists of (at the time of writing)
over 4000 hours of classroom video recordings For analysis I isolated
instances in which the two focal participants in this study were either
wearing or sitting next to a classmate wearing a wireless microphone This
narrowed the data for close analysis to 14 three-hour class periods for
each learner The other class periods in which the learners participated were
also reviewed in order to observe their interaction with other learners and
their teachers Examples of learnersrsquo writing and information gathered from
in-home bilingual interviews were also used to add context to the analysis6
THE FOCAL PARTICIPANTS
At the time these data were collected Eduardo7 was a 51-year-old divorced
man from Mexico where he had had two years of formal education He had
been living in the USA for 14 years with his daughter son-in-law and two
grandchildren and spoke Spanish at home He had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School In the course of five terms of study at the
380 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Lab School Eduardo logged 182 hours of instruction time giving him a
70 per cent attendance rate
Abby was a 21-year-old single woman from China with 11 years of
education in her home country Like Eduardo she had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School She lived with her parents and spoke
Cantonese at home In her first four terms of study she tallied 190 hours
of class time a 90 per cent attendance rate
These two learners were chosen because of their participation in three
consecutive terms of the mSSR method because neither of them had studied
English before attending the Lab School and because of their different
educational backgrounds Each student was assessed at approximately the
same proficiency level (based on an oral proficiency interview) and started
in a class for beginners I expected (as did their classroom teachers) that
their different levels of education and first language literacy would result in
different levels of participation in the interactive practices for literacy events
in the classroom Describing these differences aids an understanding of
emerging L2 literacy as part of learnersrsquo interactional competence as fostered
by language socialization in classroom literacy events
METHODS FOR ANALYSIS
This studyrsquos emic perspective on classroom discourse language and social
systems is influenced by ethnomethodology interactional sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis This theoretical and methodological perspective
sees language social order and social systems as locally constituted and
re-constituted Participants in any interaction be that mundane conversation
or classroom interaction co-construct a local cultural expertise (Garfinkel
1967) and display that expertise to one another at every moment (Goffman
1959 1961) through their talk-in-interaction From this perspective on social
interaction research on adults who have well-developed skills for social
interaction but little linguistic skill in their lingua franca is a rich area for the
study of the local co-construction of classroom discourse (Macbeth 2003)
This study takes advantage of the recurrent nature of activity in classroom
discourse to understand how the local practices for social interaction of two
learners in similar interactional environments constitute socialization into
literacy over the course of three terms of study The background information
for each participant in the study the categories lsquoMexican-Spanish L1 male
with little educationrsquo or lsquoMandarin-Chinese L1 female with high school
educationrsquo are not used to predict or explain a priori particular interactional
patterns While these categories played a role in participant selection it will
be a task for analysis to uncover how the discursive practices for literacy
of the two participants may or may not differ
The research relies on audio and video recording technology to open
a window onto micro-level details of situations by repeated observation
The descriptive richness and depth of context of this microethnographic
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analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
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his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
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4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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niversity on October 7 2014
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
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Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
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The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
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Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
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Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
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1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
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Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
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Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
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Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
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Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
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C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
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Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
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Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
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Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
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Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
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Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
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Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
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Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
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Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
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Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
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Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
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Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
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Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
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Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
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of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
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Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
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Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
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Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
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Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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literacy events Literacy events may be understood as lsquoany occasion in which a
piece of writing is integral to the nature of participantsrsquo interactions and
their interpretive processesrsquo (Heath 1982 50) Heathrsquos definition captures
both the goal and process of the classroom interactions which are the focus
for this study The use of this term foregrounds literacy as the process of
individuals understanding their own literacy (Street 2001) through their
negotiation both with texts teachers and one another
The literacy events analyzed in this study are
1 book selection and silent reading
2 practices for opening pair interaction for story re-telling
3 filling in and filing reading logs3
THE DATA AND SETTING
The data for this research come from a five-year federally funded project4
which investigates language learning by low-level adult learners of English
The data were collected in two classrooms which were designed to obtain
high quality video recordings Each classroom has six cameras embedded in
the ceiling5 Every class period two learners and the teacher wear wireless
microphones and there are two microphones in the ceiling to capture the
audio from the entire classroom The classroom interactions are coded for
activity and participation and portions of one half of all the recorded class
sessions are transcribed Specially designed software allows for viewing
transcription and codes together with the six camera views of the classroom
simultaneously This allows the researcher as complete a picture of the
classroom environment as currently available using video recording
The entire corpus of learner interaction consists of (at the time of writing)
over 4000 hours of classroom video recordings For analysis I isolated
instances in which the two focal participants in this study were either
wearing or sitting next to a classmate wearing a wireless microphone This
narrowed the data for close analysis to 14 three-hour class periods for
each learner The other class periods in which the learners participated were
also reviewed in order to observe their interaction with other learners and
their teachers Examples of learnersrsquo writing and information gathered from
in-home bilingual interviews were also used to add context to the analysis6
THE FOCAL PARTICIPANTS
At the time these data were collected Eduardo7 was a 51-year-old divorced
man from Mexico where he had had two years of formal education He had
been living in the USA for 14 years with his daughter son-in-law and two
grandchildren and spoke Spanish at home He had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School In the course of five terms of study at the
380 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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Lab School Eduardo logged 182 hours of instruction time giving him a
70 per cent attendance rate
Abby was a 21-year-old single woman from China with 11 years of
education in her home country Like Eduardo she had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School She lived with her parents and spoke
Cantonese at home In her first four terms of study she tallied 190 hours
of class time a 90 per cent attendance rate
These two learners were chosen because of their participation in three
consecutive terms of the mSSR method because neither of them had studied
English before attending the Lab School and because of their different
educational backgrounds Each student was assessed at approximately the
same proficiency level (based on an oral proficiency interview) and started
in a class for beginners I expected (as did their classroom teachers) that
their different levels of education and first language literacy would result in
different levels of participation in the interactive practices for literacy events
in the classroom Describing these differences aids an understanding of
emerging L2 literacy as part of learnersrsquo interactional competence as fostered
by language socialization in classroom literacy events
METHODS FOR ANALYSIS
This studyrsquos emic perspective on classroom discourse language and social
systems is influenced by ethnomethodology interactional sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis This theoretical and methodological perspective
sees language social order and social systems as locally constituted and
re-constituted Participants in any interaction be that mundane conversation
or classroom interaction co-construct a local cultural expertise (Garfinkel
1967) and display that expertise to one another at every moment (Goffman
1959 1961) through their talk-in-interaction From this perspective on social
interaction research on adults who have well-developed skills for social
interaction but little linguistic skill in their lingua franca is a rich area for the
study of the local co-construction of classroom discourse (Macbeth 2003)
This study takes advantage of the recurrent nature of activity in classroom
discourse to understand how the local practices for social interaction of two
learners in similar interactional environments constitute socialization into
literacy over the course of three terms of study The background information
for each participant in the study the categories lsquoMexican-Spanish L1 male
with little educationrsquo or lsquoMandarin-Chinese L1 female with high school
educationrsquo are not used to predict or explain a priori particular interactional
patterns While these categories played a role in participant selection it will
be a task for analysis to uncover how the discursive practices for literacy
of the two participants may or may not differ
The research relies on audio and video recording technology to open
a window onto micro-level details of situations by repeated observation
The descriptive richness and depth of context of this microethnographic
JOHN HELLERMANN 381
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analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
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his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
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4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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Lab School Eduardo logged 182 hours of instruction time giving him a
70 per cent attendance rate
Abby was a 21-year-old single woman from China with 11 years of
education in her home country Like Eduardo she had not studied English
before coming to the Lab School She lived with her parents and spoke
Cantonese at home In her first four terms of study she tallied 190 hours
of class time a 90 per cent attendance rate
These two learners were chosen because of their participation in three
consecutive terms of the mSSR method because neither of them had studied
English before attending the Lab School and because of their different
educational backgrounds Each student was assessed at approximately the
same proficiency level (based on an oral proficiency interview) and started
in a class for beginners I expected (as did their classroom teachers) that
their different levels of education and first language literacy would result in
different levels of participation in the interactive practices for literacy events
in the classroom Describing these differences aids an understanding of
emerging L2 literacy as part of learnersrsquo interactional competence as fostered
by language socialization in classroom literacy events
METHODS FOR ANALYSIS
This studyrsquos emic perspective on classroom discourse language and social
systems is influenced by ethnomethodology interactional sociolinguistics
and conversation analysis This theoretical and methodological perspective
sees language social order and social systems as locally constituted and
re-constituted Participants in any interaction be that mundane conversation
or classroom interaction co-construct a local cultural expertise (Garfinkel
1967) and display that expertise to one another at every moment (Goffman
1959 1961) through their talk-in-interaction From this perspective on social
interaction research on adults who have well-developed skills for social
interaction but little linguistic skill in their lingua franca is a rich area for the
study of the local co-construction of classroom discourse (Macbeth 2003)
This study takes advantage of the recurrent nature of activity in classroom
discourse to understand how the local practices for social interaction of two
learners in similar interactional environments constitute socialization into
literacy over the course of three terms of study The background information
for each participant in the study the categories lsquoMexican-Spanish L1 male
with little educationrsquo or lsquoMandarin-Chinese L1 female with high school
educationrsquo are not used to predict or explain a priori particular interactional
patterns While these categories played a role in participant selection it will
be a task for analysis to uncover how the discursive practices for literacy
of the two participants may or may not differ
The research relies on audio and video recording technology to open
a window onto micro-level details of situations by repeated observation
The descriptive richness and depth of context of this microethnographic
JOHN HELLERMANN 381
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analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
382 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
JOHN HELLERMANN 383
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4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
384 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
analysis (McDermott and Roth 1978 Erickson and Schultz 1981 Streeck
1983 Streeck and Mihus 2005) is the result of a detailed description of
behaviors that are immediately observable and interpretable to the
participants in the interaction themselves the talk and other communicative
resources (contextualization cues Gumperz 1982) for the interaction These
constitutive cues for contextualization include body posture gesture gaze
the manipulation of objects in the immediate environment turn-taking
and the sound production of language (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996
Ochs et al 1996) Conversation analysis (Sacks et al 1974 Atkinson and
Heritage 1984) is utilized in this microethnography to make detailed
descriptions of the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction and to highlight
the perspectives on the interaction of the participants themselves
SOCIALIZATION INTO CLASSROOM LITERACY PRACTICES
Book selection and silent reading
Considering reading and literacy as a social process (Scribner and Cole 1981
Heath 1983 Brandt 1990 Reder 1994) one basic achievement in the
development of practices for carrying out literacy events done in the
language classroom and in an L2 is the ability to participate in the assessment
of the material that one reads Such preliminary moves into reading and
literacy are taken for granted by those of us living and working in literacy-
saturated social and psychological worlds However for learners with few
literacy skills these beginning practices may represent a major shift in their
conceptual understanding of the world (Goody 1977 Ong 1982) The first
literacy event in the mSSR method is selecting a book that is at an
appropriate linguistic level and which might be interesting to the reader
For learners with low-level literacy in their first languages without guidance
from the instructor (as the Sustained Silent Reading protocol states) this
could be an especially daunting task
The first data excerpts focus on Eduardorsquos engagement with the literacy
events over the course of his first two terms in the mSSR method On the
first day of the mSSR activities after the teacher instructed learners about
doing silent reading in the classroom everyday she invited learners to go to
the book carts8 to choose something to read At this point most learners got
out of their seats and went to the back of the classroom to choose a book
Eduardo however remained seated As other learners selected books from
the carts and desks (adjacent to Eduardorsquos desk) he reached over to a basket
of books and selected a book without looking at it and then read this book
for the entire twenty-minute silent reading period9 For a learner with very
low level decoding skills in English and with little experience with a reading
practice like choosing a book it may be that for Eduardo the significant part
of the book selection activity was having a book in his temporary possession
at his desk Reaching over to the book collection while remaining seated at
382 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
JOHN HELLERMANN 383
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4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
384 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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ownloaded from
next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
his desk achieved that goal in an efficient way However by week 4 of the
mSSR activity during the book selection Eduardo got out of his seat to look
at the books without hesitation and began to take some time in the selection
process He looked through the collection of books before choosing one to
read and even changed books during the silent reading period showing the
development of an understanding of the discriminating part of the task of
choosing a book Throughout the second and third terms of the mSSR
Eduardo often looked through several different books at his desk during the
silent reading period and sometimes even selected a book to read that he had
brought to class Such a change in book selection practices may display
Eduardorsquos greater discernment of quality or appropriateness of reading
material in the L2 or at least his interest in particular material It also could
show how Eduardorsquos low-level reading skills made the task of staying with
one book and actually reading that one book (which the teacher asked
learners to try to do) somewhat tiresome
Eduardorsquos increased level of participation in this literacy event was made
possible by the daily recurrence of the activity and his hearing the
instructions repeated by the teacher on a daily basis while seeing his peers
perform the task of book selection in every class period By being part of
the interaction in the classroom community of practice Eduardo was able
to move from having somewhat limited participation in the event in the
beginning of the first term of the mSSR (selecting a book without looking
at it) to more complete participation by the end of the term
By the first day of the second term of the mSSR in a class which was
made up of a few newcomers to the school and to the mSSR activity we see
that Eduardo had become socialized into the practices for the mSSR and
displayed expert status in the mSSR activity by being the first learner to
stand up and select a book after the teacherrsquos invitation After arriving at the
book cart he even helped the teacher set out the books to aid in the
selection process10 As the teacher instructed the new learners to take just
one book Eduardo held up and pointed to a book to simultaneously model
the teacherrsquos instructions for the new learners11 When he returned to his
desk after selecting his own book he even explained to a new learner what
the book selection and the mSSR activity entailed While the first two
displays of expertise were non-verbal (helping the teacher display the books
and modeling the selection of one book) Excerpt (1) shows Eduardo
explaining the mSSR to a new learner
(1)12
[1-6ndash03 A 204 20315mdash20359 Term II week 1]13
1 E ((looking to new class member)) one book
2 (20)
3 E es que todos los dias trienta minutos eh ponse
itrsquos that every the day thirty minutes she puts
every day for thirty minutes she puts
JOHN HELLERMANN 383
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ownloaded from
4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
384 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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ownloaded from
next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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ownloaded from
he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
4 pon allı is every day thirty minutes reading
put there
there
5 para leer para por lo que no entiendas o lo
for read for for the what no you understand or the
read for what you donrsquot understand or
6 que quieres tu saber ella te lo dice puedes notar
what you want you to know she to you it tell you can write
what you want to know she can tell it to you to write down
7 N ( )
8 E Sı especialmente para practicar si para la persona
yes especially for practice if for the person
yes especially to practice if for the person
9 para lo que no puedes entender
for the what no you can understand
for what you canrsquot understand
10 que quieres saber tu que es ella te dice mhm
that you want to know you what it she to you tells mhm
what you want to know is what she tells you
11 dice sin verguenza que preguntarle porque ella
she says without embarrassment that to ask her because she
she says to ask without embarrassment because she
12 la pagane y la verguenza por eso venimos
the they pay and the embarrassment is why we come
the they pay her and the embarrassment is why we come
13 porque no sabemos
because no we know
because we donrsquot know
Eduardorsquos display of expertise and his offering support to a newcomer to the
class (Wenger 1998 Duff 2002) shows the social nature of classroom literacy
events The practices for literacy of the mSSR are embedded in several social
contexts in this case the classroom (Eduardo as learner expert) and a
linguisticcultural (Eduardo as Spanish speaking peer) Eduardorsquos social
interaction for this literacy event was accomplished in two languages
Eduardo mentions the core features of the mSSR (one book everyday thirty
minutes and reading) in the language of instruction while his interpretation of
the activity and his understanding of the teacherrsquos role are given in the
language he shares with his peer (Spanish) Eduardorsquos use of English
oriented to the language of the task and purpose of the task itself while his
use of Spanish fit the immediate social context of the literacy activity
Eduardo helping a Spanish-speaking newcomer to the English language class
384 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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ownloaded from
physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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ownloaded from
he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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This example shows Eduardo working through two of Rederrsquos (1987) three
modes of engagement with literacy functional and social14 In this act of
offering help to a newcomer Eduardo displays his functional engagement
with the mSSR literacy event by helping the teacher set out books and
modeling the practice of choosing a book His awareness of the mSSR event
as beneficial and one in which the entire class engages motivates him to give
instructions to a newcomer to the classroom community in that learnerrsquos L1
with key terms for the task in English displaying a social engagement with
literacy
While these observations of book selection and reading behavior do not
make claims about the development of decoding skills lexical acquisition
or memory and cognitive skills enhanced by L2 literacy development this
micro-ethnographic approach does uncover the habitus (Bourdieu 1991) of
the L2 literacy development in the classroom that is the behavioral practices
which establish a context in which other code-related skills become possible
In the book selection literacy event we see evidence of Eduardo moving
from peripheral to full participation (Lave and Wenger 1991) in his greater
discrimination in book selection The ability for Eduardo to explain the mSSR
activity to a newcomer to the class also shows the concomitant developing
interactional competence through socialization into classroom literacy events
By the end of three terms of attending classes which included the mSSR
activity Eduardo has acquired some of the social processes within the
context of the classroom community that involve him (Brandt 1990) in
literacy
In contrast to Eduardo presumably because of the literate practices learned
in her first language and culture for Abby socialization into L2 book
selection and reading perseverance was something that required less time In
her first mSSR session after the teacherrsquos instructions about selecting a book
Abby was the first learner to get out of her seat and go to the book cart
At the book cart she picked out one book and skimmed through it before
returning it She selected a second book looked through it briefly took the
book back to her seat and kept it for the entire period At the end of the class
period after the teacher suggested that students could reserve their book for
the next class period by putting a name card in the book Abby did this
highlighting her ability to engage with a text from the first day of the mSSR
This type of engagement with the text (book selection and reserving the book
for the next class period) contrasts notably with Eduardorsquos indiscriminate
book selection on the first day of the mSSR
Other evidence that Abby was able to take advantage of her experience
with L1 literacy was her use of several strategies for reading that Eduardo
did not use during the silent reading period These included the use of an
electronic dictionary to help her understand unfamiliar words and quietly
reading to herself during the time for silent reading15 The use of the
dictionary was part of systematic note taking by Abby who wrote out
unfamiliar words in columns in her notebook with the Chinese equivalents
JOHN HELLERMANN 385
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
386 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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niversity on October 7 2014
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
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Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
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Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
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Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
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Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
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Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
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The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
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Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
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Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
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1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
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Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
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Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
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Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
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Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
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Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
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C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
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Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
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Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
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Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
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Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
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Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
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Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
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Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
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Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
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Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
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Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
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Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
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Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
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Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
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Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
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Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
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Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
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tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
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Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
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Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
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Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
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Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
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Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
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Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
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Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
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and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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next to them16 These skills were done without instruction from the
teacher and displayed her self-directed strategies for acquiring the L2 lexicon
While Eduardo also wrote in his notebook he usually wrote out full
sentences and phrases Watching him writing and seeing his notebooks from
time to time on camera I observed that Eduardo did not display the
experience of taking notes nor the strategic language learning skills that
Abby exhibited Conversations with the classroom teachers also suggest that
Eduardorsquos notes were not helpful to him because of their unsystematic
nature17 While Eduardo did begin using a dictionary in term three
regarding the mechanics of decoding written text the evidence suggests that
Abbyrsquos educational background played a large role in allowing her to
participate more completely from the start in the silent reading than
Eduardo18
Opening the post-reading story re-telling
Research in conversation analysis has explored how conversationalists
start their social interactions through orderly practices in their talk
(Schegloff 1968 1998 2002 Schegloff and Sacks 1973 Button and Casey
1984) While this line of research has focused on native speaker interaction
adult learners of English face the same fundamental problem as native
speakersmdashhow to get an interaction underway Adult learners of English
may bring a repertoire of strategies for social interaction from their life
experiences in other languages and cultures but whether adult learners of a
language as socially competent adults bring a sense of universal pragmatics
(Habermas 1976) to the classroom is an ongoing empirical question The
study of interaction in the context of adult learners using a lingua franca to
start activities provides a rich environment for the exploration of basic turn-
taking and conversational practices used in institutional settings
After the thirty minutes of silent reading another regular task in the
mSSR activity was peer re-telling in which the teacher instructed learners
(sometimes supplying question prompts) to tell their deskmate something
about the book they had just been reading The evidence gathered from the
two adult learners of English in this analysis suggests that differences in a
level of interactional competence in the L2 can be seen in the way the
learners engage in basic conversational skills such as opening an interaction
Two notable differences between these two learners are seen in the overt
negotiation over interlocutor selection and turn allocation at the beginning of
a task and the orientation to other activities that they are in the process of
finishing up Abbyrsquos interactions are characterized by opening moves which
display a greater range of linguistic and pragmatic skills than Eduardorsquos
Her opening moves also display notable development over the course of
three terms in the mSSR classes
A crucial first step to interaction in this literacy event for learners without
a large repertoire of linguistic code skills is the achievement of mutual
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physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
physical orientation for doing dyadic interaction19 Highly proficient speakers
of a language have a range of speech acts which they can use to subtly gain
a partnerrsquos attention while beginning learners almost without exception
rely on mutual physical orientation and object manipulation to start
their dyadic interactions (Hellermann 2004 2005) Eduardo and Abby also
both accomplished these subtle alignments for opening their re-telling
activities unproblematically in most instances Coordinating a mutual
physical orientation for re-telling entails the participants shifting their
posture slightly toward one another moving their books into a shared
space for re-telling and pointing to items in their books The interactions
between Eduardo and Lai Min another student in Excerpts (2) and (3)
occur at the beginning of Eduardorsquos second term in the mSSR The excerpts
are presented to show Eduardorsquos perseverance in opening this particular
literacy event demonstrating how he sees the establishment of mutual
orientation to a space for re-telling to be a necessary part of the re-telling
(Excerpt 2) and highlighting his manipulation of the books themselves
(Excerpt 3) as objects which are fundamental to the accomplishment of this
literacy event
(2)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24800 Term II week 6]20
1 T you need to speak to Eduardo
2 E ((taps Lai Min on shoulder and waves his hands motioning her
3 to move toward him))
4 L yeah ((leans back turns head slightly toward Eduardo))
5 E ((pages through his book))
6 L ((looks down to her book looks around class looks over
7 at E leans a little bit toward E))
8 L ((looks away from E)) [((leans forward away from E))
9 E [((looks toward L)) ((puts down his
10 book takes off glasses))
In (2) after the teacherrsquos directive to Lai Min to do the re-telling activity
with Eduardo (line 1) Eduardo makes a clear non-verbal summons
(shoulder tap) and invitation (waving motion) to Lai Min to begin the
re-telling activity in lines 2ndash3 Lai Min makes a minimal verbal and non-
verbal response (line 4) as Eduardo looks in his book Then as Eduardo is
paging through his book Lai Min looks at her own book looks around the
class looks to Eduardo and then looks away Lai Min does not make any
verbal moves to start the interaction and her visual orientation to various
places does not focus on an interaction space Besides the slight head
turn (line 4) and slight lean toward Eduardo (line 7) there is no clear
postural alignment to the space between herself and Eduardo When
Eduardo stops paging through his book and looks to Lai Min in line 9
JOHN HELLERMANN 387
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
he sees that her posture is not aligned to a mutual re-telling space and
he takes off his glasses and puts down his book seemingly aborting the
re-telling sequence
(3)
[A2ndash13ndash03 204 24835 Term II week 6]21
11 L ((looks at Ersquos book looks at board)) tee shuh ss tee shup
12 E ((opens another book)) ((puts book mark in it and closes it))
13 L ((looks at E))
14 E ((puts on glasses))
15 L ((opens her book))
16 E ((opens the second book points to something in the book))
17 L ((looks toward E))
18 E ( )
19 L ((L leans in toward E looking at book))
20 E Saigon Saigone Saigone
21 L ((points to Ersquos book)) Saigon
22 E Saigon Vietnam
23 L uh
24 E Saigone Vietname S( ) Vietnam
25 L mm
26 E Saigone
27 L Saigon ((leans away from E))
28 E ((looks at Lrsquos book and reads something from it)) [(prayer)
29 L [((moves her
30 book toward E))
In (3) after this aborted opening Lai Min appears to read something from
the board out loud (line 11) while Eduardo handles another book on the
table in front of him After Lai Min glances at Eduardo in line 13 Eduardo
puts on his glasses opens the book he has just been handling and points to
something in the book (line 16) which Lai Min orients to by leaning
in toward Eduardo to look at the page to which he is pointing After some
back and forth repetition of the word Eduardo is pointing to (Saigon) Lai Min
ends the focus on Eduardorsquos book by leaning away from the common
interactional space (line 27) Eduardo takes this as a cue to switch roles and
to now share information from Lai Minrsquos book In line 28 Eduardo reads
something from Lai Minrsquos book and she moves it closer to him to aid his
reading
While Extracts (2) and (3) show Eduardo initiating openings for the
re-telling literacy event and non-verbally orienting to the interaction with his
peer he was usually not the most verbally-active participant in his dyadic
388 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
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5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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ownloaded from
first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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ownloaded from
books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
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Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
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Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
interactions for re-telling When he self-selected to start a re-telling it was
when there were long pauses or notable lack of initiation from his partner
(as in (2) and (3)) By the end of term two of the mSSR however there
is evidence of Eduardo making a reciprocal verbal elicitation for a re-telling
As Excerpt (4) shows after finishing his own re-telling and completing
a closing sequence to that telling (lines 4ndash7) Eduardo reciprocates in eliciting
a re-telling from his partner (line 8)
(4)
[B 5ndash13ndash03 23601 term III week 7]22
1 E fis
2 J flying fish ((flapping left hand like flying))
3 E this is flying fi[s() this (of the)
4 J [yeah yeah yeah yeah
5 J mm mm
6 E mm hmm
7 J mm hmm
8 E what is your
9 (20) ((J picks up his book))
10 J eh (started started) this story
11 E the mountain the mountain ((reads Jrsquos book cover))
While the elicitation in line 8 is abbreviated Eduardorsquos partner (Jin) orients
to line 8 as an elicitation by picking up his own book (line 9) and beginning
his re-telling (line 10) As Jin starts the re-telling Eduardo orients to the title
of the book as an important part of the re-telling event by reading the title of
Jinrsquos book (line 11)
Two aspects of the openings for the re-tellings that the other focal student
of this study Abby displayed but that did not occur in Eduardorsquos interactions
were her pre-activity talk checking on whether the peer was ready to do
the task and then talk about interlocutor assignment for the activity
Abby became more active in initiating these opening moves over the course
of the three terms of the mSSR Excerpts (5)ndash(7) show examples of this
development In (5) which comes from the very beginning of the second
term in the mSSR we see Abby interact with Fernando but not initiate the
interaction
(5)
[1-10ndash03 B 24452 Term II week 2]23
1 F whose talk to me
2 (10) ((Fernando facing Abby Abby turns to Fernando))
3 F ((to Abby)) you oh
4 (25)
JOHN HELLERMANN 389
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
5 F hhyeah okay
6 ((Abby sneezes))
7 F bless you () god bless you a[gain
8 A [thank you
9 F again [god bless you
10 A [huh hah hah [uh hih hih hih hih hhuh
11 F [eh huh heh heh heah
12 (20)
13 F what () is your book
14 A eh () my book is () my my book is easy () easy story press
15 F oh press [mm hmm
16 A [yeah ease story pres[s
17 F [eh
18 (35)
19 A what is (your) story
In line 1 Fernando makes the first verbal move to establish the peer
dyad and achieve mutual physical orientation asking about a partner
and after a sequence involving sneezing in line 13 Fernando asks the
first elicitation question for the activity Abby responds to each elicitation
non-verbally in line 2 and with the title of her book in line 14 Abby orients
to the activity of finding out about one anotherrsquos books by asking
the reciprocal question more specifically asking about Fernandorsquos lsquostoryrsquo in
line 19
The next example of one of Abbyrsquos opening move sequences comes from
the fifth week of the second term of the mSSR Excerpt (6) shows Abby
engaging in more pre-task opening talk (lines 3 and 6) interlocutor selection
(line 8) and the launch of the task (line 10)
(6)
[2703 B 204 24353 Term II week 5]24
1 T you need to talk ladies
2 (10)
3 Ab todayrsquos uh February ((looks to Ana then back to notebook))
4 An ((shifts posture toward Abby))
5 (70)
6 Ab seventh
7 (140) ((both ss write)
8 Ab I talk to you ((turning to Ana))
9 (250) ((Ana continues writing))
10 Ab my () my book uh life story one
11 (20)
12 An ((shifts posture a bit to A))
390 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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ownloaded from
box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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ownloaded from
first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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ownloaded from
books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
13 Ab are you finished
14 An go (go ahead) please () where is () where is your story
After the teacher exhorts the learners (line 1) to begin their pair task
(the story re-telling) Abby announces the date and after Ana shifts her
posture toward Abby proposes the pair assignment (line 8) Since the
learners sit at desks in pairs the pair assignment is somewhat of a given so
Abbyrsquos turn in line 8 may also act as a proposal for turn allocation If
interlocutor assignment is relatively self-evident the turn lsquoI talk to yoursquo is at
least a move to attempt to get Ana to enter the interaction and may be an
explicit move to tell Ana that she Abby is starting the activity There is no
uptake by Ana after this proposal and after a rather long pause (line 9) Abby
launches the task self-selecting to re-tell her story first When there is no
verbal uptake by Ana in line 11 after Abbyrsquos turn Abby orients to her
partnerrsquos preparation for the task and asks if Ana has finished (line 13) her
preparatory work (writing notes) Ana orients to Abbyrsquos question as a pre-
request to check whether Ana is ready to start her re-telling by encouraging
Abby to continue directly eliciting information about the location of her
story in line 14
The final excerpt from the third term of the mSSR illustrates Abbyrsquos further
development of interactional practices for opening the re-telling activity In (7)
while Inez is writing in her notebook Abby shifts her posture to Inez and asks
a question (line 2) which is preliminary to a question for the assigned activity
(7)
[5-9ndash03 B 206 24121 Term III week 7]25
((Teacherrsquos prompt for the interaction lsquoDo you like books about a story or
information what kind of book are you reading nowrsquo))
1 A ((shifts posture toward Inez))
2 I are you ready
3 (70) ((Inez is writing in her notebook))
4 I yeah sorry
5 (30)
6 I ((re-positions her posture to face Abby then gestures with
7 right hand pointing to Abby and back to herself))
8 (30)
9 A ((Abby looks at the board and reads the question)) what type
10 of a book are you reading now
11 ((Inez begins her re-telling))
While Abbyrsquos question in line 2 orients to the necessity of the completion of
the preparatory work for the re-telling literacy event it also works as part
of the opening for the re-telling task itself Inez finishes writing in her
notebook and orients to Abbyrsquos question as an opening to the assigned
JOHN HELLERMANN 391
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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niversity on October 7 2014
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
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Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
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Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
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Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
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Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
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1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
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Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
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Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
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Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
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Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
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Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
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Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
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The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
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145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
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Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
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Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
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Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
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Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
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Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
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Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
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Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
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Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
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Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
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Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
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401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
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McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
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Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
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Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
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Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
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532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
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Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
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R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
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Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
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Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
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Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
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Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
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Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
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Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
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Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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re-telling task by answering Abbyrsquos question and apologizing for not starting
immediately (line 4) After Inez repositions her body and non-verbally
initiates a negotiation of turn allocation for the re-telling (lines 6 and 7)
Abby self-selects to elicit the re-telling from Inez by reading one of the
teacherrsquos prompts from the board (lines 9ndash10)
Abbyrsquos socialization to the mSSR re-telling activity can be seen in the
development of opening moves in the re-telling interactions with her peers
in Excerpts (5)ndash(7) The interaction from earlier in the mSSR (Excerpt (5))
shows Abby not actively initiating dyad assignment pre-task talk and task
launch In terms two and three the excerpts show her more actively
involved in starting these re-telling activities Her task-preliminary organiza-
tional talk and task launching later in the second and third terms of the
mSSR suggest that she is now more comfortable with the re-telling literacy
event and with the language as a whole
These excerpts of Abbyrsquos interaction in the re-telling literacy events show
two common moves by more advanced learners for opening dyadic
interactions (Hellermann 2004 forthcoming) the orientation to the previous
task completion (in Excerpt (6) lsquoare you finishedrsquo and Excerpt (7) lsquoare you
readyrsquo) and interlocutor selection (in Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) As other
research in conversation shows such moves for opening talk enable
participants to work out basic features of talk-in-interaction such as avoiding
simultaneous talk and ensuring that the talk about to happen is the start of
something new not from the previous topic (Button and Casey 1984)26
The interactions by Abby and Eduardo in the re-telling literacy events also
show evidence for the learnersrsquo development of interactional competence
through their socialization into literacy events27 While both Abby and
Eduardo orient to the beginnings of the re-telling events creating spaces for
appropriate mutual participation for the event from the start of the mSSR
we see evidence for a change in their participation in the re-telling events
over the course of the three terms of the mSSR Eduardo uses a speech act
(lsquowhat is yourrsquo) in a more sophisticated modality (verbal rather than non-
verbal) to reciprocate an elicitation for a re-telling in his interaction with Jin
in Excerpt (4) In Abbyrsquos later interactions she explicitly orients to the
boundaries of the events by inquiring as to her partnersrsquo readiness to
participate (Excerpts (5) and (6)) and negotiates roles for participation
(Excerpt (6) lsquoI talk to yoursquo) and turn allocation (Excerpts (6) and (7))
Learner reading logs and filing of reading logs
A basic literacy skill activity that the teacher built into the mSSR classes was
having learners chart their reading activity in a reading log and then file their
own reading logs alphabetically in a file box at the end of every lesson In
the third class period of the first term some evidence of Eduardorsquos lack of
basic literacy skills appeared during the filing activity Near the end of this
class period the teacher asked learners to put their reading logs into a file
392 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
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I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
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New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
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Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
box organized by their first names Eduardo and another learner went to
the file box at the front of the room and stood by the box with their reading
logs looking for the appropriate place to put the logs After some time
Eduardo looked over to Carla (a learner from Brazil) and held out his right
hand palm up Carla oriented to this gesture as a request for help and got out
of her seat to help the two learners showing them the place in the files to
put their logs28 A bit later in this class period as the learners were packing
up to leave the class Eduardo solicited the teacherrsquos help in understanding
the name of the process of filing (Excerpt (8)) In so doing he is building on
the co-constructed filing practice with his classmate
(8)
[10-3ndash02 A 204 25149 Term I week 2]29
1 E want to ask (you something) ((walking to file box))
2 T yes you want to ask me something
3 E somebody ((puts hand in file box then touches head)) somebody
4 T file
5 E file file
6 T uh huh this is what () please file file you papers
In Exerpt (8) Eduardo is standing next to the teacher and utters a
pre-question (Schegloff 1980) in line 1 as he walks to the file box Once at
the box in line 3 he says lsquosomebodyrsquo a bare noun phrase which projects a
predicate Eduardo produces that predicate by modeling the relevant action
a hypothetical learner filing a paper This is followed by a gesture of his
hand to his head (which Eduardo commonly used to indicate that he did not
remember a particular word in English) and a repetition of the same bare
noun phrase In line 4 the teacher orients to Eduardorsquos talk as a request for
a word to name the action of putting the reading log into the box The fact
that this interaction is elicited by Eduardo shortly after his request for help
from Carla suggests that Carla may have helped him put the reading log
in the right place but did not give Eduardo the English word for that action
It is Eduardorsquos interactions with both a peer and with the teacher which
help him co-construct a name for this literacy event
While Eduardorsquos success in filing his reading log was sporadic throughout
the rest of this first term at the beginning of the next term on the first day
of class the teacher explained again that the reading logs were to be filed
alphabetically She explained and modeled this while standing next to the
file box to assist learners After explaining and modeling the procedure to the
class she reminded Eduardo again several minutes later lsquoyou need to put this
[reading log] away young manrsquo Several minutes after that Eduardo held up
his reading log showing it to the teacher as other learners were going to the
file box to file their logs She responded affirmatively and Eduardo went to
the file box The teacher said his name Eduardo said lsquoersquo (the first letter of his
JOHN HELLERMANN 393
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niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
first name) and put the reading log in the appropriate place in the file box
Having participated in one term of the mSSR and the literacy event of filling
in and filing reading logs (the term in which it was just noted that he was
given support by a peer and the teacher) the reinforcement of the rules the
modeling by the teacher as well as the personal reminder and reassurance
given by the teacher guided Eduardo into full participation in this literacy
event Later in this second term and in the third term as well Eduardo
was able to file the log independently By the beginning of the third term
(4103) he was also able to tell a newcomer to the class the purpose of the
reading log
Based on conversations with his teachers the evidence from his reading
logs and his interactions with other learners in the re-telling literacy event
Eduardo seemed to have developed a genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
reading In a more complex literacy skill involving the reading logs there is
evidence that Eduardo developed the ability to orally evaluate the books
he read adopting a term introduced by the teacher to describe several of
his books lsquoso-sorsquo In the later part of the first term of the mSSR Eduardorsquos
reading log was sporadically filled in and he wrote in Spanish for the
assessment portion of the log (Figure 1)
By the second term of the mSSR Eduardo was reading some books during
the silent reading period in class for four class periods in a row (an indication
of persistence and interest) and assessed one book (The Orange Grove) in his
reading log as lsquovery goodrsquo Through this assessment Eduardo displayed
part of a personal identity as a literate person in English But even by the
third term of the mSSR classes Eduardo did not elaborate on the assessments
of his books as the reading log prompted learners to do In a row at the top
of the reading log learners were to answer the question lsquoDid you like it
[the book]rsquo and then write why The teacher provided another written
prompt in the box that learners checked for a positive assessment lsquoYes
because rsquo In this place though Eduardo always indicated that he liked the
Figure 1 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the first term of the mSSR
394 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
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ownloaded from
books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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niversity on October 7 2014
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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ownloaded from
ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
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ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
books that he read he did not specify why he liked them giving evidence
of the limitations of his ability to evaluate his reading (as Figure 2 shows)
In contrast to Eduardo Abby did not have trouble filing her reading log
On the day the teacher explained to learners how they should file their
reading logs she used Abby as an example lsquoFor example Abby file your
paper under lsquolsquoArsquorsquo for Abbyrsquo In subsequent class periods Abby displayed
competence at filing her reading log in the appropriate slot in the file box
The content of Abbyrsquos reading logs also differed from Eduardorsquos in notable
ways Where Eduardo always checked the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo when
evaluating the level of difficulty of the books he read in most cases Abby
checked the lsquojust rightrsquo box and just a few times the box marked lsquoeasyrsquo for
the books she read Figure 3 shows one of her reading logs from the third
term of the mSSR
The notations in Abbyrsquos reading log in Figure 3 suggest that she was
choosing books that were appropriate to her ability (the box labeled
lsquojust rightrsquo is marked consistently) Also Abby was able to give some detail
(although limited) when prompted by the teacher for the reasons behind
her assessment of a book In response to the teacherrsquos written prompt on
the reading log lsquoyes I liked it because rsquo Abby had two responses she used
lsquoyes I did because interestingrsquo or lsquoyes I did because easyrsquo Abby indicated
Figure 2 Part of Eduardorsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
JOHN HELLERMANN 395
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niversity on October 7 2014
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these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
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APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
these more expanded assessments both in the second and third terms of the
mSSR classes
An important question for research on language socialization and
interactional competence in a classroom setting is to what degree these
processes result in increased engagement with literacy outside the classroom
A telling insight gained from the learnersrsquo in-home L1 interviews suggests
that for both these learners the socialization into literacy events in the
classroom lead to increased participation in literacy outside the classroom
In the interviews conducted with each learner before the start of the mSSR
treatment when asked what and how much they read in English for
pleasure Abby indicated that she read student picture books for ninety
minutes a week Eduardo reported reading newspapers for thirty minutes
a week In interviews conducted in June of 2004 after the learnersrsquo
completed their participation in the mSSR Abby reported reading
newspapers and books for 7 hours a week and Eduardo newspapers and
magazines for 2 hours a week Along with the development of interactive
practices in classroom literacy events highlighted in this paper these findings
show a remarkable increase in these learnersrsquo engagement with literacy
outside the classroom and evidence of their emerging identities as individuals
literate in English
Figure 3 Part of Abbyrsquos reading log from the third term of the mSSR
396 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
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httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
CONCLUSIONS
The findings uncovered in this study show two learnersrsquo development of
interactional competence through their socialization into classroom literacy
events This socialization occurred through the learnersrsquo engagement in
discursive practices in repeated literacy events which were part of a modified
sustained silent reading program The discursive practices for the literacy
events occurred within the context of the entire classroom community of
practice (Wenger 1998) and afforded learners the opportunities to move from
peripheral to more full participation in English literacy This community of
practice included (1) the teachers who provided instructions and support for
the activities through explicit instruction and modeling (2) learner peers
who also modeled appropriate interactive and language behavior and were
the interlocutors with whom some of the literacy practices were negotiated
and (3) the texts themselves which became a mediating object the third
part in a triadic dialogue for literacy (van Lier 2002) comprised of learnerndash
teacherndashtext or learnerndashlearnerndashtext
While neither learner had studied English formally before enrolling in
classes at the Lab School this study shows that Abby the learner with a high
school education from her home country was familiar with some of the
practices for literacy events including alphabetical filing book selection
and book assessment This research also showed that over the course of
three terms doing the mSSR activities Abby developed a wider range of
interactional practices for opening the dyadic interactions involved in the
story re-telling
Eduardo on the other hand began his participation in the mSSR activities
with much less experience with classroom literacy events having had just
two years of education in his home country The literacy events which were
part of the mSSR afforded Eduardo (van Lier 2000) the opportunity to
engage with literacy and by participating at first peripherally Eduardo
quickly understood and participated more fully in the book selection literacy
event Through interaction with his peers and the teacher in term two basic
literacy skills such as alphabetizing and filing his reading log developed
Though his teachersrsquo initial impressions suggested that he got very little
from his participation in the mSSR a review of his reading logs and his
participation in class show that Eduardo acquired knowledge of literacy
through a transformation (Lave and Wenger 1991) of his understanding of
and participation in literacy events
The development of these learnersrsquo interactional competence can be seen
in Eduardorsquos pursuit of understanding the practice of filing his reading log
which he accomplished through interaction with several members of the
classroom community This change in his participation in filing the logs
shows how learning is a situated practice accomplished through repeated
interactions with the entire classroom community In the analysis of the
story re-telling activities both Eduardo and Abby exhibited an increased
JOHN HELLERMANN 397
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niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
ability to use talk to initiate interaction by negotiating interlocutor
assignment and turn allocation to open their re-tellings Again the repeated
practice of the re-tellings afforded the learners opportunities to negotiate
a particular classroom and social action (opening a face-to-face interaction)
and both learners developed interactional skills that allowed them to
participate in the practice more fully
A quantitative analysis of standardized assessment measures30 for all the
learners at the Lab School shows that students who participated in the mSSR
method improved in their English language literacy skills to the same degree
as students who participated in classes which used a traditional skills-based
method for the teaching of reading (Reder et al forthcoming) This result
leads one to question what classroom practices might have contributed to
the increase in scores for each group Qualitative micro-analyses such as this
study are a first step toward understanding the discursive practices of the
mSSR classrooms which led to increases in those standardized tests of literacy
skills Also while we know that first-language education is a factor in
successful second language acquisition (Cole et al 1971) we know little
about how classroom interaction between experienced and inexperienced
learners differs In order to address this question this analysis used existing
social categorizations for participant selection (their degree of previous
education in their first language environment) and focused on two students
who would be categorized differently But the use of these macro-level
categorizations was not intended to reify the association of the characteristics
of each category to individual members Rather they were used to define
places from which to empirically examine the interactional language
behavior of members of each category This examination was done through
micro-analyses of the two studentsrsquo participation in the discursive practices
in mSSR literacy events that help L2 literacy develop The focus on the
day-to-day classroom interactions of the two learners allowed us to see
different paths to L2 literacy for learners who have different educational and
literacy experiences and uncover the complex interaction within a classroom
community of practice which results in the changes reported in traditional
language assessment measures
Final version received November 2005
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the entire staff at the National Labsite for Adult ESOL at Portland State
University for their involvement in maintaining the Lab School as a place for adults to learn
English and as a state of the art research facility I would also like to thank Kathy Harris Sandra
Banke Reuel Kurzet Steve Reder Dominique Brillanceau and three anonymous readers for
their feedback on various versions of the paper
398 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
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Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
APPENDIX A
Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis (adapted from Schegloff
2000)
I Temporal and sequential relationships
[ Overlapping or simultaneous talk
frac14 lsquolatched utterancesrsquo no break or pause between utterances
(05) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence represented in tenths of a second
() A dot in parentheses indicates a lsquomicropausersquo
II Aspects of speech delivery including aspectsof intonation
period indicates a falling intonation contour not necessarily the end ofa sentence
question mark indicates rising intonation
a comma indicates lsquocontinuingrsquo intonation
Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the soundjust preceding them The more colons the longer the stretching
- A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption word
Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis either byincreased loudness or higher pitch The more underlining the greater theemphasis
The degree sign indicates that the talk following it was markedly quiet orsoft
The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch
45 The combination of lsquomore thanrsquo and lsquoless thanrsquo symbols indicates that thetalk between them is compressed or rushed
54 Used in the reverse order they can indicate that a stretch of talk ismarkedly slowed or drawn out
hhh Outbreath
hh Inbreath
(( )) Descriptions of events ((cough)) ((sniff)) ((telephone rings)) ((foot-steps))
(word) All or part of an utterance in parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty
Creaky voice
NOTES
1 In order to get around the unwieldy
and theoretically-loaded terminology
for describing the use acquisition
and learning of a language that is
not the home or first language of the
participants of this study I will use
JOHN HELLERMANN 399
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
the abbreviation lsquoL2rsquo throughout the
paper to refer to a language that is
being attained through formal instruc-
tion For the students in this study
lsquoL2rsquo refers to English It may not be
however that English is these
studentsrsquo lsquosecondrsquo language as the
abbreviation implies
2 Students in the current study were in
lsquolevel Arsquo classes at the data collection
site SPL level 0ndash2
3 In Sustained Silent Reading
(McCracken 1971 Pilgreen 2000)
students are given a set time in the
classroom to read silently without
interruption by the teacher or other
students and without evaluation of
what is read and how it is read
The method was altered slightly at
the data collection site to meet the
needs of beginning adult language
learners and included activities
like post-reading re-telling activities
and studentsrsquo use of reading logs
to record their assessments of their
reading
4 The National Labsite for Adult ESOL
at Portland State University is sup-
ported in part by grant R309B6002
from the Institute for Education
Science US Dept of Education to
the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy The
Labsite is a partnership between
Portland State University and Portland
Community College The school
and research facilities are housed at
Portland State while the registration
curriculum and teachers of the
ESL students are from Portland
Community College
5 One reviewer asked about the inabil-
ity to see learnersrsquo eye gaze with
cameras embedded in the ceiling
While this is a problem when
students are sitting directly under
the two mobile cameras which
follow students wearing the wireless
microphones most often students
are sitting in a position where
studentsrsquo faces can be seen quite
directly For details of the data
collection see Reder et al (2003)
6 The Labsite Student Study (LSS)
conducts in-home interviews with a
subset of students in the lab school
(70 per year) in their home lan-
guages over the course of four
years regardless of whether the
student remains in lab school classes
or not The primary purpose of
the LSS study is to understand
language use and literacy develop-
ment outside the classroom context
and factors which influence program
persistence
7 All names used in this study are
pseudonyms
8 The teacher had different types of
books on a cart that she wheeled into
the room every class period She took
books off the cart and spread them
out on desks at the back of the room
9 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoselectsbookclass1]
10 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardohelping]
11 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoshowing]
12 Sarah Ouellette helped with the
Spanish transcription and provided
the translation to English Transcrip-
tion conventions are included in
Appendix A lsquoTrsquo indicates the class-
room teacher in all transcripts
13 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoexplaining]
400 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
14 At the time of this excerpt Eduardo
was a novice in Rederrsquos (1987) third
mode of literacy engagement
technical still struggling with basic
technical issues like decoding English
language lexicon
15 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyreading]
16 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbynotetaking]
17 The classroom teachers noted the
frustration of doing mSSR with
students who have very low first
language literacy because of her
inability to help students organize
their reading in instances like note
taking (Banke and Brillanceau 2004)
18 A literacy assessment test (BEST
Literacy) was administered in the
classroom in terms one and two of
the mSSR program While the scores
increased for each learner for
Eduardo the increase is not as great
as Abbyrsquos Eduardorsquos overall literacy
score went from 35 in term one
to 42 in term two which is an
increase of one student performance
level (from 3 to 4) Abbyrsquos scores
increased from 45 in term one to
56 in term two which indicates
a jump from student performance
level 4 to 6 For information
on characteristics of student language
abilities at different student perfor-
mance levels (SPLs) see pp 5ndash6 of
wwwcalorgcaelaesl_resources
Part4-5pdf
19 One of the pedagogical advantages of
doing a dyadic re-telling in a lan-
guage classroom is that even if one
student doesnrsquot understand the
instructions for the task in an activity
like the mSSR the peerrsquos act of
posture shift moving a book into
a common space and looking
toward the partner strongly invite
collaboration in some interaction and
it is collaboration that is perhaps
the most important aspect of the
re-telling activity (Pilgreen 2000)
especially for language learners
20 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening1]
21 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoopening2]
22 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoorientsstorytelling]
23 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbyopening1]
24 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbypretasktalkterm2]
25 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Abbystartingretelling2]
26 While more empirical evidence is
warranted a provisional claim
can be mentioned here that such
re-telling activities and perhaps
in classroom pair activities in
general are organized with a two-
part move like that displayed in
(6) lsquoquery about readinessrsquo and
lsquoturn allocationrsquo before the first task
question
27 Notably absent from Abbyrsquos and
Eduardorsquos peer re-tellings are any
verbal greeting sequences Even
when one of the pair moves across
the room to sit with another student
Abby and Eduardo did not exchange
greetings with their partner for their
JOHN HELLERMANN 401
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
task This is something that other
students did as part of their openings
28 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksstudentforhelpfiling]
29 Video clip available at [http
wwwlabschoolpdxeduViewer
viewerphpfrac14HellermannAppLingamp
clfrac14Eduardoasksaboutfiling]
30 The assessment measures were the
BEST Plus and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary tests
REFERENCES
Atkinson J M and J C Heritage 1984
Structures of Social Action Studies in Conversation
Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University Press
August G 2001 The Road to Second Language
Reading How do we get there Unpublished
PhD Dissertation City University of New York
New York
Banke S and D Brillanceu 2004 lsquoLiving
in Interventionrsquo Unpublished manuscript
Barton D (2001) lsquoDirections for literacy
research Analysing language and social practices
in a textually mediated worldrsquo Language and
Education 152ndash3 92ndash104
Bernhardt E B and M L Kamil 1995 lsquoInter-
preting relationships between L1 and L2 reading
Consolidating the linguistic threshold and the
linguistic interdependence hypothesesrsquo Applied
Linguistics 161 15ndash34
Bourdieu P 1991 Language and Symbolic Power
Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
Brandt D 1990 Literacy as Involvement The Acts
of Writers Readers and Texts Carbondale IL
Southern Illinois University Press
ButtonG andNCasey1984 lsquoGenerating topics
The use of topic initial elicitorsrsquo in J M Atkinson
and J C Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action
Studies in Conversation Analysis Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Canale M and M Swain 1980 lsquoTheoretical
bases of communicative approaches to second
language teaching and testingrsquoApplied Linguistics
1 1ndash47
Carrell P L 1991 lsquoSecond language reading
Reading ability or language proficiencyrsquo Applied
Linguistics 122 159ndash79
Chow P and C Chou 2000 Evaluating
Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes [Web]
I-TESL-J Available httpitesljorgArticlesChow-
mSSRhtml
Cole M J Gay J A Glick and D W Sharp
1971 The Cultural Context of Learning and Think-
ing An Exploration in Experimental Anthropology
New York Basic Books
Couper-Kuhlen E andMSelting 1996 Prosody
in Conversation Interactional Studies Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Duff P 2002 lsquoThe discursive co-construction
of knowledge identity and difference An
ethnography of communication in the high
school mainstreamrsquo Applied Linguistics 233
289ndash322
Erickson F and J Schultz 1981 lsquoWhen is
a context Some issues and methods in the
analysis of social competencersquo in J Green and
C Wallat (eds) Ethnography and Language in
Educational Settings Norwood NJ Ablex
Felser C L Roberts T Marinis and R Gross
2003 lsquoThe processing of ambiguous sentences by
first and second language learners of Englishrsquo
Applied Psycholinguistics 243 453ndash89
Garfinkel H 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology
Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall
Gee J P 1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies
Ideology in Discourses London Falmer Press
Goffman E 1959 The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life New York Anchor Books
Doubleday
Goffman E 1961 Encounters Two Studies in
the Sociology of Interaction Indianapolis Bobbs-
Merrill
Goody J1977 TheDomestication of the SavageMind
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Grabe W and F L Stoller 1997 lsquoReading and
vocabulary development in a second language
A case studyrsquo in J Coady and T Huckin (eds)
Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition A
Rationale for Pedagogy Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
402 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Gumperz J J 1982 Discourse Strategies
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Habermas J1976 lsquoSome distinctions in universal
pragmatics A working paperrsquo Theory and Society
32 155ndash67
Hall J K 1993 lsquoThe role of oral practices in
the accomplishment of our everyday lives
The sociocultural dimension of interaction
with implications for the learning of
another languagersquo Applied Linguistics 142
145ndash66
Hall J K 1995 lsquo lsquolsquoAw man where you goinrsquorsquorsquo
Classroom interaction and the development
of L2 interactional competencersquo Issues in Applied
Linguistics 62 37ndash62
Hall JK1997 lsquoA consideration of SLA as a theory
of practice A response to Firth and Wagnerrsquo
Modern Language Journal 813 301ndash306
He A W and R Young 1998 lsquoLanguage
proficiency interviews A discourse approachrsquo in
R Young and A W He (eds) Talking and Testing
Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral
Proficiency Amsterdam John Benjamins
Heath S B 1982 lsquoWhat no bedtime story means
Narrative skills at home and schoolrsquo Language
in Society 11 49ndash76
Heath S B 1983 Ways with Words Language
Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms
Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Hellermann J 2004 lsquoPractices for opening dyadic
interactionrsquo paper presented at the annual
conference of the American Association for
Applied Linguistics Portland OR
Hellermann J forthcoming lsquoThe development of
practices for action in the classroom diadic
interaction focus on task openingsrsquo Modern
Language Journal
Hood S and H Joyce 1995 lsquoReading in the
adult ESL curriculum and classroomrsquo Prospect
102 52ndash64
Hymes D 1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics
An Ethnographic Approach Philadelphia
University of Pennsylvania Press
Kramsch C 1986 lsquoFrom language proficiency
to interactional competencersquo Modern Language
Journal 70 372ndash66
Kramsch C 2002 lsquoHow can we tell the dancer
from the dancersquo in C Kramsch (ed) Language
Acquisition and Language Socialization An ecological
approach London Continuum
Lave J and E Wenger 1991 Situated Learning
Legitimate Peripheral Participation Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Lerner G H 1995 lsquoTurn design and the organiza-
tion of participation in instructional activitiesrsquo
Discourse Processes 19 111ndash31
MacBethD2003 lsquoHugh MehanrsquosLearning Lessons
reconsidered On the differences between the
naturalistic and critical analysis of classroom
discoursersquo American Educational Research Journal
401 239ndash80
McCraken R A 1971 lsquoInitiating sustained silent
readingrsquo Journal of Reading 148 521ndash4 582ndash3
McDermott R and D Roth 1978 lsquoThe social
organization of behavior Interactional
approachesrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 7
321ndash45
Markee N 2000 Conversation Analysis Marwah
NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Ochs E and B Schieffelin 1979 Developmental
Pragmatics New York Academic Press
Ochs E E A Schegloff and S A Thompson
1996 Interaction and Grammar Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
Ong W J 1982 Orality and Literacy The Technolo-
gizing of the Word London Routledge
Palacios I G 2002 An ESLLiteracy Center
A qualitative study of perspectives and practices
of immigrant adults and literacy facilitators
Unpublished PhD Dissertation Indiana
University Pennsylvania Indiana PA
Pilgreen J L 2000 The SSR Handbook How to
Organize and Manage a Sustained Silent Reading
Program Portsmouth NH BoyntonCook
Pulido D 2003 lsquoModeling the role of second
language proficiency and topic familiarity
in second language incidental vocabulary
acquisition through readingrsquo Language Learning
532 233ndash84
Reder S 1987 lsquoComparative aspects of functional
literacy development Three ethnic American
communitiesrsquo in D Wagner (ed) The Future
of Literacy in a Changing World Oxford Pergamon
Press
Reder S 1994 lsquoPractice engagement theory
A sociocultural approach to literacy across
languages and culturersquo in B M Ferdman
R M Weber and A G Ramırez (eds) Literacy
Across Languages and Cultures Albany NY State
University of New York Press
Reder S and E Davila (2005) lsquoContext
and literacy practicesrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 25 170ndash87
Reder S K A Harris and K Setzler 2003
lsquoA multimedia adult learner corpusrsquo TESOL
Quarterly 373 546ndash57
JOHN HELLERMANN 403
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from
Reder S K A Harris R Kurzet
D Brillanceau S Banke and JHellermann
forthcoming Using a modified Sustained Silent
Reading for low-level adult ESOL students
Boston National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy
Sacks H E A Schegloff and G Jefferson
1974 lsquoA simplest systematics for the organiza-
tion of turn-taking for conversationsrsquo Language
504 696ndash735
Sagarra N 2000 The longitudinal role of working
memory on adult acquisition of L2 grammar
Unpublished PhD Dissertation University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Schegloff E A 1968 lsquoSequencing in conversa-
tional openingsrsquo American Anthropologist 70
1075ndash95
Schegloff E A 1980 lsquoPreliminaries to prelimin-
aries lsquolsquoCan I ask you a questionrsquorsquo rsquo Sociological
Inquiry 50 104ndash52
Schegloff E A 1998 lsquoReflections on studying
prosody in talk-in-interactionrsquo Language and
Speech 413ndash4 235ndash63
Schegloff E A 2000 lsquoOverlapping talk and the
organization of turn-making for conversationrsquo
Language in Society 291 1ndash63
Schegloff E A 2002 lsquoOpening sequencingrsquo
in J E Katz and M Aakhus (eds) Perpetual
Contact Mobile Communication Private Talk Public
Performance Cambridge Cambridge University
Press
Schegloff E A and H Sacks 1973 lsquoOpening up
closingsrsquo Semiotica 8 289ndash327
Schieffelin B B and Ochs E (1986) lsquoLanguage
socializationrsquo Annual Review of Anthropology 15
163ndash91
Scribner S and M Cole 1981 The Psychology of
Literacy Cambridge MA Harvard University
Press
Segalowitz N C Poulsen and M Komoda
1991 lsquoLower level components of reading skill in
higher level bilinguals Implications for reading
instructionrsquo AILA Review 8 15ndash30
Streeck J 1983 Social Order in Child Communica-
tion Amsterdam John Benjamins
Streeck J and S Mihus 2005 lsquoMicroethno-
graphy The study of practicesrsquo In K L Fitch
and R E Sanders (eds) The Handbook of
Language and Social Interaction Marwah NJ
Lawrence Erlbaum
Street B 1998 lsquoNew literacies in theory
and practice What are the implications for
language in educationrsquo Linguistics and Education
10 1ndash24
Street B V 2001 Literacy and Development
Ethnographic perspectives London Routledge
Tang H 1997 lsquoThe relationship between reading
comprehension processes in L1 and L2rsquo Reading
Psychology 183 249ndash301
Treville M C 1996 lsquoLexical learning and reading
in L2 at the beginner level The advantage of
cognatesrsquo The Canadian Modern Language Review
531 173ndash90
Van Lier L 2000 lsquoFrom input to affordance
Social-interactive learning from an ecological
perspectiversquo in J Lantolf (ed) Sociocultural
Theory and Second Language Learning Oxford
Oxford University Press
van Lier L 2002 lsquoAn ecological-semiotic
perspective on language and linguisticsrsquo in
C Kramsch (ed) Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization An ecological approach
London Continuum
Wenger J 1998 Communities of Practice Learning
Meaning and Identity Cambridge Cambridge
University Press
Yang J 2000 lsquoOrthographic effect on word
recognition by learners of Chinese as a Foreign
Languagersquo Journal of the Chinese Language
Teachers Association 352 1ndash18
YoungR1999 lsquoSociolinguistic approaches toSLArsquo
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19 105ndash32
Young R 2000 lsquoInteractional competence
Challenges for validityrsquo Paper presented at the
annual conference of the American Association
for Applied Linguistics Vancouver BC
Young R F 2002 lsquoDiscourse approaches to oral
language assessmentrsquo Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 22 243ndash62
404 INTERACTIVE PRACTICES FOR DEVELOPING L2 LITERACY
at Monash U
niversity on October 7 2014
httpapplijoxfordjournalsorgD
ownloaded from