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Second language curricula vary in their relative emphases on process and product and on the control exerted by the teacher and learner. Discourse analysis can be used to gain insight into classroom interaction. One model for this kind of analysis classifies utterances according to the structural predictions created by the preceding utterance, giving four minimal interaction units: initiation (I), response (R), response/initiation (R/I), and feedback (F). The typical classroom interaction takes the form I, R, F. Illocutionary acts (acts through which something is done when being uttered, e.g., "I promise") make up an illocutionary structure here as in other forms of discourse. Discourse may be seen as a goal or as a means in the classroom; the ideal is to achieve both functions. In product-based curricula, the teacher controls discourse, which is then necessarily limited. In process-based curricula, the responsibility of learning is given to the students, who have more illocutionary freedom and whose discourse better approaches the language outside the classroom. (MSE)

The way that students use mental representations when acquiring new knowledge can be exploited more systematically in the teaching of language for special purposes (LSP). A variety of modes of representation exist, including those in the external sensory world, that are received through the different senses and individual representational systems. Each individual's unique system can be determined from his choice of words or eye movements. In addition to possessing different representational tendencies in different subjects, humans have dominant modalities for each of these problems. It is important in LSP teaching to find out the students' most widely used representational system, and the system that most favors the assimilation of concepts in the specific subject area. The role of representations in concept formation must be linked with the basic process of memory. The theory of semantic, as distinguished from episodic, memory has implications for the format of knowledge representation and its organization. The basic concepts of a language are acquired extentionally, associating linguistic symbols with events and accumulating associations with time, reinforcing concept storage. This is exemplified in the concept of derivatives in mathematics. (MSE)