Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015
Classroom Discourse in Second Language
Acquisition and Learning
Ponnammal Aruna Devi
Institute of Distance Education, University of Madras, Chennai, India
Email: [email protected]

based on the zone of proximal development theory of
Vygotsky where learning takes place under guidance and
assistance [3]. Cognition also is a key element in the
enhancement of vocabulary and pragmatic application of
the knowledge of the language. The paper projects
‘English’ as the second language and the discussion is
related to this projection
Abstract—A classroom talk can do wonders in language
learning. It is not a new topic for discussion in Second
Language Acquisition but in teacher-fronted classroom talk
gains pedagogical significance since through the discourse
the teacher aids the learners in getting into the structure
and like causative sentences when exposed as in listening to
stories. But equally the unplanned moment-to moment
unfolding of talk lays bare many discourse functions that
help the learners get insight into the communicative aspect.
A teacher can proffer a social and linguistic ambience in a
classroom. The input from the teacher and the output from
the learners can serve as a rich material for language
acquisition. Acquisition and learning can be viewed as
socialization as well as cognitive process. This paper
considers the social and cognitive aspects in the process of
language learning and acquisition and establishes how a
classroom discourse can aid both the process. But
demarcating a clear line between the two processes is not
the aim of this paper.
II. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND INFANCY
A child from the day of its birth is exposed to the
sights and sounds of the world .The skill of listening and
seeing starts from that day .As the child grows it tries to
internalize the language it hears .The mother or the
caretaker tries to speak with the child irrespective of its
response and initially calls the baby by its name. When
the child cries for milk the mother intuitively knows and
hence satisfies the child by feeding. This is the initial
cognition the child gains. Thus learning takes place
through stimulus-response condition. The child
understands that it should communicate by crying to get
the response of the offer of milk by the mother. So
communication starts by gesture. This is how a child
acquires its first language. Similar ambience is possible
for a second language acquisition in a classroom if the
teacher plans.
Listening is the first activity that takes place in the
acquisition process. They give attention to the tone, the
intonation pattern and the pause between words.
Gradually the people around help him/her to
communicate in single words. When they utter a single
word the child grasps the sound pattern and research
shows that the child is able to identify the syllable
sequence, familiarizing the sequence and if there is a
change the child realizes that as a new word.
For
example if a mother repeats the word ‘cake’ the child can
distinguish ‘ca’ and ‘ke’ and internalizes the syllable
sequence. But if the syllable ‘ca’ is followed with ‘se’
then the child realizes it as a new word and the word
automatically enters the vocabulary repertoire. Speaking
is further advanced to simple sentences like “come,
come”, “This is a ball” “do you want milk” and now the
child notices the sound sequence between words ,the
pause ,the intonation pattern and everything gets
internalized. So even before starting to utter single words
a child gets familiarized with all aspects of the language.
It is quite natural that when a mother utters a sentence
like “this is a ball” she will show the object ‘ball’. This
paves way for relating the sound with the object with
Index Terms—teacher-fronted classroom, unplanned talk,
discourse function, linguistic ambience, cognition.
I. INTRODUCTION
A classroom can be seen as society at large. The
interaction here provides the learners opportunity not
only to acquire and learn but to use the language for
communication also. This interaction may be based on
the three-part sequence of IRF or it may take a different
structure like that of zones of interactional transition [1].
While trying to interact the learners may come across
difficulties in expressing their ideas with clarity and make
efforts to find correct grammatical categories, structures
and apt choice of vocabulary. This effort is based on the
mental process that happens in the brain of the
participants.
Language
knowledge,
either
the
interlanguage or the first language is stored in the short
term memory as well as the long term memory port and
the learners struggle and successfully retrieve the
necessary information for usage. In the process of
participation in the improvised social community in the
classroom cognition plays a significant role. Mercer calls
this as commonsense knowledge [2]. A brief discussion
on the research on classroom discourse emphasizes the
fact that much acquisition and learning of second
language take place in the classroom. The paper deals
with the notion that language learning is a social process

Manuscript received December 10, 2014; revised July 1, 2015;
©2015 Journal of Media & Mass Communication
doi: 10.12720/jmmc.1.1.37-42
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Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015
linguistic structures, vocabulary and semantic domain
[6].It is to be noted that the classroom talk happens as per
plan and also without any plan, spontaneously. When
learners face a situation to communicate they try to do so
with whatever knowledge they have and many research
explains this as a result of poverty of –the-stimulus [7].
mental mapping, identification takes place with all the
visual properties of the object and stored in the memory.
From phonology the child enters into the domain of
semantics unconsciously. So at the infant stage itself it is
into all the components of the language. When sentences
like “there is one ball” and” there are two balls” then they
travel further to look into the grammar-number. At this
stage with the classroom interaction a teacher can
inculcate vocabulary to a maximum extent,
communication with simple sentences, and grammatical
categories. Language learning through cognition takes
place. This type of learning style happens in two different
ways-field dependent or field independent. These
concepts of cognitive learning style were introduced by
Herman Witkin an Americam psychologist in 1962.
Teachers can help the young learners with suitable
contexts and classroom talk so that field dependent
learners will benefit .This style of learning is there at the
kindergarten level. By way of providing visuals and
initiating repetition learning takes place.
Story telling is a common activity that happens in the
process of bringing up a child. Listening skill gets honed
day by day. The LAD of Chomsky explains the
acquisition process [4]. Now research proves that even at
the infant stage almost in the twelfth month itself the
child imbibes grammatical structure of causative
sentences [5], like “he hit the ball” “the monkey gave a
banana to the child”. So one can feel the interplay of
socialization and cognition in helping a child learn a
language. Repetition of words or sentences demand
attention that promotes memory and retention and by
imitating the productive process starts. It is noted that at a
very early stage a child learns grammar and other
complexities mostly by listening to repeated words,
sentences and structures and performing by imitation.
Through a story basic vocabularies can be taught in a
pleasant manner and a teacher will benefit if the “frayer
model” designed by frayer and her colleagues in the
university of Wisconsin in 1969 is used. Acquisition will
be on the way with respect to morphological complexities
and its pragmatic values.
IV. TEACHER INITIATED TALK
In a classroom the teacher initiates the talk. Let’s have
a peep into it. The teacher plans talking about “My
Family”. The initiation will be questioning or directing
individual learners to talk about the family. The teacher
plans the topic, triggers the learners to come out freely by
giving a topic with which they are familiar, directs them
but on the other hand for the speaker it is not a planned
speech. While interfering the spontaneous talk the teacher
can adopt extended silence allowing time for generating
new sentences, promoting the talk with mere gestures or
can use new vocabularies as input.
T: Well Raghul can you tell us about your family? The
child recalls how his/her mother would have told or
introduced the father, brother or sister at home or would
have invited some relatives addressing them as ‘brother’
or ‘sister. If in the same way a teacher introduces the peer
group the recalling takes place and sometimes the child
retrieves from its memory some second language
vocabulary which are often used in any house like
‘mom/mummy, dad/daddy. As the child grows storing
many such words that are commonly and frequently
uttered happens as easy as that happened in L1.In a
country like India English words like “fast” sugar”
“lock/locked” “spoon” “school” Uniform” “crossing a
road” “number” “super” are often uttered in society at
large even by illiterates who had not learnt English.
These words can be heard often everywhere-in a house,
on the road in a bus, in a hotel and this is a good
exposure that gives a basic storage of the second
language vocabulary. Roldan views that even many
technical terms form a part of the daily normal basic
vocabulary [8]. It is easy for a teacher to enhance quantity
of vocabulary storage of the second language with this
base. So when questioned about the family the answer
easily comes in single words. If a teacher guides a child
with an inclusive term like “we” in a sentence like
Teacher: See Raghul like your family we (pointing to
the entire class) are also a family and you have so many
sisters and brothers here then the child slowly tries to
understand the usage of the pronoun in many aspects-the
grammatical function regarding the marker of person,
number and the proximity or closeness exhibited by
words explicitly. Psychologically confidence is also
instilled in the learner’s mind that would mound their
expression, remove hesitation and fear and with less
inhibition they participate in the talk. A simple talk takes
the learners to the functional aspects of pronouns as well
as the communicative validity or the interpersonal
metafunction. Many components of language can be
acquired in this way. Let us have a look into the
following talk.
III. CLASSROOM TALK
Real communication is a practical application of the
knowledge of grammar and vocabulary of a language in
real life situations. A classroom is transformed as a real
world when such situations are created by a teacher with
prudently planned strategies. When a classroom is
improvised to be a mini cosmos the learners become a
member of the society and learns a language in a social
context. Learning grammar is not an end but a way to
face real situations and apply the knowledge gained for
effective communication and interaction. Hence a teacher
demarcates creating ambience for acquisition and space
for application. So the classroom is utilized for two
important functions- one for acquisition/learning in a
formal way and the other one is communicating or
interacting with the knowledge gained. Communicative
competency develops gradually by the communicative act
in the classroom that goes beyond the knowledge of the
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Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015
Teacher: Are you seeing the picture in my hand?
Learners: yes I see.
Teacher: Are you all seeing the picture in my hand?
Learners: yes I/we see the picture
Teacher: What do you see in the picture?
Learners: I see one dog eat something/some long,
mm……
Teacher: What is the dog eating? Learners: the dog
eating…….. Teacher: Is the dog eating a bone? Learners:
Yes it eating a bone Teacher…is eating a bone? Learners:
Yes it is eating a bone
This picture if replaced with another showing a cat
drinking a milk the teacher offers space for vocabulary
enrichment, deciding the right choice of words to indicate
different actions of consumption and the realization of
grammatical morphs(tense and aspect) attached to the
lexical base. Similarly children will acquire
morphological usage for grammatical functions like the
use of ‘s’ for third person singular verbs as in he/she
sings [9], against ‘ they sing’. Such patterns if repeated
will be easily acquired at the primary level.
knowledge of grammatical categories like tense, modals,
auxiliaries, and focus structure as happened in the above
talk. It can be observed that though the teacher is present
in the class there is no interference in the later half of
the talk but when there is a need the intervention is
made and the learner Kate is indirectly motivated to
repeat the focus structure “it is I” to understand how the
structure renders effective communication. Effective
learning takes place if one can use language immediately
after taking the cue from the teacher in the classroom talk.
The situation above is not a planned one but springs
naturally in the classroom and in such momentary
unfolding talk the learners gets an opportunity to talk and
learn informally [10]. The teacher utilizes this informal
talk as an input and prudently inculcates whatever is
possible. Moreover the learner also surprisingly gets an
opportunity to use immediately what he/she has learned
in the classroom. This also helps in retention and
recalling easy for later usage beyond classroom. This
kind of spontaneous talk among students along with the
teacher standing outside the zone but ready to
maintain contingency support is a real boon to the
learners. A teacher plays many roles –directing the
students in a particular way, asking a student to repeat
new structures as had happened in the above talk, or
try to project a learner’s answer that went unnoticed [11].
Apart from the grammatical aspects words selected by the
teacher in a discourse can also trigger the comprehension
of experiential meaning and here is an excerpt from
“Classroom Discourse: A Functional Perspective” [12].
Eg: “You should consider this”
“You have to follow this”.
The words “consider” and “have to” show different
response, the first one makes the hearer feel fine and the
latter exhibits some constrain. Ample opportunities can be
created to realize the usage of synonyms and their
applications. The usage of different prepositions by a
teacher with pictures as in
Do you see the girl dash against the wall?
Do you see Harry Potter walking into the wall to
platform number one?
Educate the learners about the communicative aspect
and such examples help learning through mental
mapping.
The same picture can be used for descriptive task
where one or two categories from grammar and discourse
functions can be taught to the learners. While describing
an event like a girl dashing against a wall the child at a
higher grade will definitely use the creative imagination.
The task of description needs elaboration and this
automatically leads the learner use more verbs in a single
sentence that take arguments and give space for
information package. Simple task of describing one’s
family, house or garden will definitely make the learners
use another grammatical category named ‘quantifier’.
Teacher: Hari, can you describe your garden? Learner;
I have a beautiful garden. I have planted many flower
plants….
Teacher: Many, how many five, six or seven
V. SPONTANEOUS TALK
A teacher can utilize normal situations that arise in a
school. Even while designating some works in a school
day celebration she/he can teach them the tense and
modal application for apt communication. For the annual
day celebration of a school a teacher asks the cultural
secretary to be the coordinator and instruct on the
programs to be staged. They decide to have a play by
Shakespeare, a dance, and an advertisement show. The
cultural secretary then selects the members of three teams
and convenes a meeting.
Here is a classroom talk that can happen in such a
situation.
Teacher: You have to coordinate the programs and
present the item to me for selection. The choice
is/are/was/were yours and you are/will be/shall be
responsible for the show. Select the participants, discuss
with them and start the rehearsal as early as possible.
Present/show/display the items to the committee for
selection.
Student (John): Yes mam I shall/can/will/may take the
responsibility. Mam can/shall/may /will we have one
more item as I feel we have enough time for that.
Teacher: No. We won’t be comfortable
John convening a meeting and giving instructions to
each team –drama, dance, and advertisement
John: You are/am in charge of advertisement show.
Another student (Kate): but I, I did it last year Teacher:
Yes, it is he…..mm say that,
Kate: It is I who did it last year, please give the
chance to me; I’ll do a good job
John: ok and now Shila you take up the dance show
and the drama to you Leela. Ok I hope by this day next
week we would/should/might have completed the
rehearsal and get ready for the screening test
Even with a natural discourse that emerges based on
situations a teacher can make the learners acquire the
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Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015
“the learners can go through an array of words
belonging to different parts of speech like nouns,
adjectives, adverbs, and learn grammatical categories
tense aspect, modals, quantifiers, syntactical structures
like active voice and passive voice, semantic anomalies
exc. A formal teaching can be followed by an informal
talk introducing the artistic value and make the learners
understand aspects like imageries, word pictures,
metaphors for clarity of expression. Look at the
following talk.
Teacher: Can anyone tell us all a small story? Learner1:
yes I can
Learner2: hmm I, I want
Teacher: Yes one by one
Learner1: I saw a cat running fast, fast fast….
Teacher: very fast, fast like an arrow
Learner: yes, yes
The entire class: Does a cat run like an arrow? Teacher:
yes the cat is an arrow
So by way of questioning the teacher apart from
preplanning interferes with strategies like the above and
new space for teaching learning process fall in through
rich input and a wise teacher is able to educate on two
important figures of speech-simile and metaphor. Fleeting
strategies thus emerge even from unplanned informal talk.
At a higher level learners a teacher benefits by taking
some excerpts from any prescribed fiction which has the
advantage of a display of an array of linguistic elements
at play in their functional aspects. The content serves as a
rich repertoire of vocabulary and the enrichment emerges
out of cognitive process. “Abstract categories and
schemas emerge from representations of these utterances
in memory” [14]. The usage based theory emphasizes the
fact that language structures can be imbibed based on the
patterns found frequently in the input. Any structure,
pattern, lexemes and grammatical usage frequently
visited are fixed in the minds of the learners. Several
cognitive process promote the acquisition and Bybee talks
of these processes- chunking, memorizing, identifying,
mental mapping and any input can be utilized by the
teacher[15].
Let’s have look at an excerpt from a short story
often prescribed
The Gift of Magi
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling
and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached
below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.
And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once
she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or
two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old
brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of
skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: “Mme. Sofronie. Hair.
Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and
collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white,
chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”
Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.
“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and
let’s have a sight at the looks of it”.
Learner um... I think eigth, very colorful I like them
very much. Every day I water the plants .I get many good
smell out of them.
Teacher: How big is your garden Hari?
Hari: um… I think, very big, enough for all plants
Teacher: Do you love your garden?
Hari: yes, so much
The course of dialogue can lead to the learning of
many categories-quantifiers, and that leads to quantifiers
attached to countable and uncountable nouns.
Look at another task in a classroom
Teacher: Hari look at the picture and narrate the
incident
Learner: Yes mam I see a girl walking and .mm the n I
find her go fast and she dashing and blood comes from
her head and she is falling down.
Though unconsciously the child is using many verbs, if
repeated in similar tasks the teacher can make the child
understand that the use of more number of verbs in a
sentence help to give as many information as possible.
VI. TEXT AND TALK
A teacher can also initiate a talk with textual excerpts.
At the primary level it might be a small poem/rhyme, or
a story. A novel or any prose text can be used at a
higher level to introduce many linguistic categories used
for apt communication. At the primary level a poem like
Wordsworth’s “Solitary Reaper” prompts the study of
synonyms and antonyms.
Solitary Reaper
Stop here or gently pass (Antonyms) Behold her
single in the field
Yon solitary highland lass
Reaping and singing by herself (progressive aspect)
Alas she cuts and binds (Antonyms)
………………………………………………………
When textual words are taken for study learners tend to
store new words in a memory port either in a
phonological short-term memory PSTM or in
Phonological long- term memory PLTM and such
storage process triggers L1 and L2 learning [13]. Signing
of rhyme at the primary classroom proves to be so
effective because each word is pronounced with force
and a sound pattern emerges which aids in the memory
storage process. While listening to the rhymes children
note the syllabic division though there is no formal
knowledge. They simply listen how sounds are uttered
at a stretch with a single breath or how is it divided and
uttered with a pause. This attention also leads to
vocabulary enrichment as with the guidance of phonemic
sequence they identify new words.
Similarly listening to stories and narrating a story at
this age is a rich strategy. A story lends space for so
many activities. A child can try to negotiate meaning,
create imaginary characters, give a new setting, describe
objects, narrate episodes and all these demand
communicative skill. A teacher can trigger the
performance as the foundation for competency would
have been laid partially with formal teaching. To give
an example from a story like “The Fox and the Grapes
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Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015
Question: Did you highlight the important points?
Answer a: Yes
Answer b: Yes, with a marker
This text also gives space for learning metaphors like
“rosy wings” and “mammoth task”. By way of explaining
the ‘fob chain’ the author gives a picture of Jim for whom
the gift is purchased. Vocabulary enrichment can be made
by looking into the synonyms of words like ransacking’,
‘buy’, ‘found’, ‘quietness’, ‘grand’, ‘hurried’.
Down rippled the brown cascade.
“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with
a practiced hand.
“Give it to me quick,” said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings.
Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the
stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim
and no one else. There was no other like it in any of
the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It
was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design,
properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not
by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should
do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she
saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him.
Quietness and value—the description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she
hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his
watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in
any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes
looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap
that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a
little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons
and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the
ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is
always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task
[16].
(Adapted from e book)
Now this story yields space for lot of oral discussion in
a classroom. At the concept level the teacher is
comfortable with giving topics for the learners to talk
about- birth day celebration, the joy of gifting, window
shopping, true love, divinity of sacrifice etc. Learners at
any level will be able to talk on these topics and this
makes participation easy and enjoyable. Here is an
imaginary classroom.
VII. CONCLUSION
A classroom talk thus provides learning space and
acquisition ambience for L2 learners at all levels. The
teacher fronted talk and the learner fronted talk serves
equally in motivating the learners into the learning
process. A teacher creates a discourse universe where the
context provided is conducive for the learning process.
With an input from the teacher the learners give the
output with mistakes and ambiguities but that again serve
as an input for refinement in language use. At the
kindergarten level opportunities lay in front of young
children to grasp the phonology and morphology of the
language in stress free manner by listening, visualizing
and repeating in chorus. The cognitive style of learning
here is field dependent. The learning experiences they
gain here make them field independent in the following
years in the classroom. Formal teaching is also done by
the teacher but stepping aside from the routine devoting
some time and indulging in an informal talk with the
learners the teacher aids the language acquisition process.
At the primary and middle school level along with
learning, creative process is also induced .So the
classroom experience is bifurcated between gaining the
knowledge and application of that knowledge. This is
made possible by both –well planned talk as well as
spontaneous talks in the classroom. Generated contexts
and contents are the powerful tools in the hands of the
teachers and if handled properly miracles can happen
within the four walls to equip the learners to face the
open world.
Teacher: We all celebrate our birthdays isn’t?
Students: yes mam.
Before another question is raised some students say
that they celebrate by cutting cakes, wearing new dress
and receive gifts from mom, dad, other family members
and friends. Since it is an enjoyable topic students talk
without inhibitions and share their views. Some may
narrate their experiences and the talk moves on. With
such an exciting opening a teacher can very well
concentrate on many linguistic categories and
vocabulary. At the opening of the excerpt a query is
made by Della and the answer given tells about the
profession with the usage of simple present tense. The
word “quick” is a communicative signifier as it expresses
the mental attitude of Della and without this word the
readers know nothing about her emotions. If students are
asked to give sentences with and without such words the
communicative strategies can be acquired. For example a
teacher can give an example and the ask them to generate
more examples of that sort to make them learn how to
communicate the intentional information qualitatively and
quantitatively.
©2015 Journal of Media & Mass Communication
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©2015 Journal of Media & Mass Communication
Ponnammal Aruna Devi was born on
15.01.1958 in Trivandrum, Capital of the state
of Kerela. Ponnammal Aruna Devi received
B.A. (1978) and M.A. (1980) in English from
Annamalai university, Tamil Nadu, India.
Aruna devi received her doctorate for the
thesis “A contrastive Analysis of Tense
system in English and Tamil” from the
University of Madras. Aruna Devi presently
an Associate professor of English, Institute of
Distance Education, in the university of Madras is specializing in the
field of applied linguistics and computational linguistics.
She has published papers in this field in the national and international
level. She has produced one Ph. D on Stylistics, three of her candidates
have submitted their theses and are awaiting their Viva Voce
examination. She has done a major UGC project on “Computer aided
language teaching of English with special reference to speaking and
reading skills”. She is now into a project as a honorary consultant on
“The Development of Tamil-English Machine Translation”. She has
authored a book titled Acquisition Of English as Second Language: An
Exploration, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, by Neithal Pathippagam, 2009.
She is member of Board of Studies for English in her own institute, in
Tamil Nadu Open University and two other colleges in Tamil Nadu. She
is serving as a subject expert in the recruitment committee for the
selection of college faculty and a member as well as convener in many
Inspection committees. She is the subject coordinator for Soft Skills
program in the University.
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