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Cooperation between English as a second or other language (ESOL) and content-area teachers, often difficult to achieve, is hard to assess linguistically in a revealing way. This article employs register analysis (which is different from, but complementary to, genre analysis) in a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective to show how an ESOL teacher uses the same content-area task as a cooperating science teacher so that she can provide a theory-practice cycle similar to that of the science teacher, but at a level that reflects and builds on the language abilities of her students. The task allows her to assess her students formatively and help them develop relevant meanings in the register of science. We argue that the development of register through related tasks in content classes and language classes provides a principled basis for cooperation and that register analysis offers revealing insights into cooperation and formative assessment between language and content teachers.

How can foreign language education integrate the learning of language with learning of content, and culture on a systematic basis, when assessment typically focuses on language in isolation from meaning? Examining developmental data gathered over a three-year period from elementary students in a Chinese program in North America, we explore the integrated assessment of teacher support and student discourse development. We show how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) offers a theory of language and learning that incorporates content, and culture and provides theory and analysis tools for integrated assessment of teaching and learning. (Contains 5 figures and 4 tables.)

Conflict and miscommunication between English as a Second Language (ESL) parents and teachers has had a major impact on educational policy, but few empirical studies examine it as discourse. This study examines communication between ESL parents and high school ESL teachers in a "Parents' Night" (PN) event organised to increase understanding of the ESL programme. It examines an intercultural communication view and a "dialogue across differences" view, using a more comprehensive systemic functional linguistics view to describe the discourse of the event and locate it in its contexts. It explores explanations for a conflict that occurred, draws implications about the role of each view and considers prospects for the future development of ESL parent-teacher communication.

Using a functional view of language and drawing on extensive classroom data, this article examines a high school science class to see how language was used to connect theory and practice in science register. The article tracks the teaching/learning paths from the introduction to the science topic and teaching of the theory (e.g., technical terms) to problem-solving activities (the practice) that necessitate the use of the terms. Research implications include (1) the value of a functional perspective which looks at science learning as a social practice for both a sharper understanding of issues of science language and content integration and a greater ability to analyze the role of language in learning science and (2) the significance of the theory-practice contrast for student learning. Assessment implications include the research potential for greater understanding of the development of scientific discourse in science classes as well as richer conceptions of the linguistic connections between students' practical experience and theoretical understanding of science. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article uses a functional view of language to frame and analyze issues of language and content in mainstream classrooms. Describing a Western Canadian grade one/two science class, it examines how a teacher and her class of young ESL students were able to build up a simple theory of magnetism in a scientific register, link its technical terms to their practical experience, and apply the theory to explain and extend their experience of magnets. She thus created a new blend of theory and practice in their activity of doing science. The study demonstrates the value of a functional perspective on social practice, leading to a sharper understanding of issues of language and content learning in mainstream classrooms and a greater ability to analyze relevant data. Educational implications include a richer understanding of the connections between students' practical experience and their theoretical understanding.

There is now widely recognized support for classroom-based formative teacher assessment of student performance as a pedagogically desirable approach to assessment which is capable of promoting learning. However, the highly localized and socially co-constructed nature of this type of assessment has raised conceptual and research issues that transcend the theoretical and epistemological concerns of the more established standardized language assessment. One such issue concerns the part played by classroom spoken discourse in the teaching-assessment interaction between teachers and students. This article argues that there is a need to develop theoretically informed research approaches to study how this type of assessment is accomplished through teacher-student discourse in the classroom. Using data collected in two multiethnic and multilingual elementary classrooms we present an analysis, drawing on systemic functional linguistics, to suggest an approach to empirical research and to discuss a number of teaching-learning and research methodological issues.

Examines cooperative learning in relation to goals for second language (L2) development, first language (L1) maintenance, and content learning. Investigates how Chinese immigrant students perceive these goals and how they use the L1 and L2 to acquire content knowledge during cooperative learning activities. (Author/VWL)

Suggests a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach offers a distinctive perspective and characterization of content based language learning. Analyzes grammatical scaffolding by a teacher of causal explanations that form work by a group of second language students on a project on the human brain. Shows how SFL analysis reveals different aspects of recast sequences of data than does a focus on form approach. (Author/VWL)

Illustrates through the concept of causality how thinking and language are connected. Suggests that an approach to instruction that understands the foreign or second language as a medium of learning provides a deeper vision of the processes of language as a medium of learning. (Author/VWL)

Investigation of preschoolers' (20 native and 20 non-native English speakers) understanding of English speakers' gestures found that the subjects understood about half of all the gestures, with non-native subjects understanding less than native subjects. Level of comprehension was affected by age as well as by cultural familiarity. (Author/CB)

A program to help ESL teachers of vocationally oriented students develop the relationship between language learning and employment in courses they are involved in is described, its organization outlined, and its evaluation presented. Content about employment and development of teachers' information access skills were important elements. (MSE)

‘Broadbanded’ concerns about mainstream literacy standards ignore English as a Second Language (ESL) students' need for language support and development; for example, schools expect learners to write about narratives but provide little systematic attention to the language needed. This article presents the collaborative efforts of an ESL professional and a mainstream classroom teacher, drawing attention to their sophisticated design of a unit of work, a novel study, that scaffolds ESL (and non-ESL) students' content and language development. Mohan's ‘Knowledge Framework’ (Mohan 1986, 2001) was used as a heuristic tool to analyse and discuss the ‘what’ of the unit—that is, the language and content demands—and the neo-Vygotskian Early and Hooper model (Early and Hooper 2001) was used to analyse the —how—. The teachers integrated language and content by creatively extending and varying these basic heuristics, systematically relating meaning in discourse to wording, at the macro-level of activity/social practice, at the micro-level of written and oral expression, and points in between. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's response to the comments made on his paper "Academic Writing and Chinese Students: Transfer and Developmental Factors." According to the author, he had tried to differentiate between the study of cross-cultural differences in rhetoric and the study of student writing in a second language. The author says that the focus of his article was on the lack of evidence regarding the claim that the Chinese expository paragraph is indirect. There was the working assumptions made by the comments that there is a comparison between notions of paragraph and exposition in Chinese and English.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to a letter to the editor about the article "Academic Writing and Chinese Students: Transfer and Developmental Factors," which was published in the September 1985 issue.