Review of social actions for classroom language learning.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Social actions for classroom language learning by John Hellermann (2008). Hellermann's work, based on a sizable corpus of video-recorded classroom interaction, exemplifies how fine details of learner-learner interaction can be documented by fully utilizing the available technology. Readers can also access via the Internet the video clip of each excerpt introduced in this book and thereby confirm prosodic and nonverbal features of the learners' practices discussed in the analysis. Hellermann approaches this set of data, which features adult immigrant English as a second language learners, armed with two major frameworks: community of practice theory and conversation analysis (CA). This book makes a timely contribution to the ongoing debate as to how CA, either alone or combined with a learning theory, can capture language learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)