Journal of Applied Languages and Linguistics

Research Article

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TITLE: Let’s Encourage Classroom Talk across the Curriculum

Author: Prof Kirti Kapur, National Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi, India

Professor of English

Department of Education in Languages

National Council of Educational Research and Training, New Delhi, India

kkapur07@gmail.com, kkapur07@yahoo.com

Published online: 31 December 2019, pp. 24-41

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Citation:

Kapour, K. (2019) Let’s Encourage Classroom Talk across the Curriculum, Journal of Applied Languages and Linguistics, 3(3), pp. 24-41.

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Abstract

A study on Language across the Curriculum was undertaken in the year 2018-19 under Educational Research and Innovative Committee (ERIC) at the National Council for Educational Research Training in India. The guiding principles of the study were - to help children use language effectively as a tool for thinking collaboratively, and to develop classroom-based involvement such that collective thinking contributes to the development of an individual child's intellectual ability. Improvement of classroom talk/dialogue requires attention to the speaking skills of the teacher as well as children's oral capacities. It emphasizes that students will learn to reason, discuss, argue and explain via meaningful tasks/dialogue. This, in turn, develops their higher order thinking and articulacy. Cognitively-challenging classroom talk/dialogue can lead to gains in language across the curriculum as well. It has been observed that when teachers’ pedagogical moves are restricted to a repetitive drill of their disciplines it is also a failure to recognize the distinctive role of spoken language in learning and development. The study shows that learnercentered tasks involve them in meaningful dialogue and help develop critical thinking, reasoning ability and problem-solving across the curriculum. Oral language interventions consistently show positive benefits for learning. The takeaways from this discussion should be able to inspire similar experiments in pedagogy across learning contexts.

© Applied Language Studies House Publications 2019. All rights reserved.

Keywords: classroom talk; thinking collaboratively; child’s intellectual ability; critical thinking; language interventions

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