6 research outputs found
Academic language socialisation in high school writing conferences
This study examines multilingual high school writersâ individual talk with their teachers in two advanced English language development classes to observe how such talk shapes linguistically diverse adolescentsâ writing. Addressing adolescent writersâ language socialization through microethnographic discourse analysis, the author argues that teachersâ oral responses during writing conferences can either scaffold or deter studentsâ socialization into valued ways of using academic language for school writing. She suggests what forms of oral response provide scaffolding and what forms might limit multilingual adolescent learnersâ academic literacy. Constructive interactions engaged students in dialogue about their writing, and students included content or phrasing from the interaction in their texts. Unhelpful interactions failed to foster studentsâ language development in observable ways. Although teachers attempted to scaffold ideas and language, they often did not guide studentsâ discovery of appropriate forms or points. These interactions represent restrictive academic language socialization: while some students did create academic texts, they learned little about academic language use