Scaffolding Discourse Skills in Pre-primary L2 Classrooms

Abstract

This chapter reports on an observational study of children’s talk with their teachers and its impact on the acquisition of English as a foreign language (L2) (In this paper the term (L2) is used most times to refer to “second/foreign language”, which means any additional non-native language. L1 refers to speakers’ mother tongue) in pre-primary bilingual education classrooms. The focus is the nature of teacher-child classroom discourse, including an analysis of child L2 emerging grammars. The data, comprising classroom observation, field notes and 30 h of audio-recordings over a period of one school year indicate (1) that English grammar construction is driven by oral classroom discourse, and (2) that the practices which facilitate talk amongst teachers and child learners are determinant to help learners during the developmental process. The emerging child English L2 grammars are determined greatly by instructional classroom discourse. During teacher-child interaction, a wide range of teaching and learning discourse strategies were observed: questions, repetition, language mixing, recast, elicitation, explicit correction, expansion, formulaic expressions, metalinguistic feedback and clarification request. Findings suggest that teacher-child communicative interactions help language development by facilitating comprehension and by having an impact on the L2 grammar construction. Finally, the chapter brings together classroom discourse and child L2 acquisition by proposing a range of pedagogical practices to boost conversational skills during teacher-child oral interactions.