Carla Meskill
State University of New York at Albany
ABSTRACT
Active communication with others is key to human learning. This straightforward premise
currently undergirds much theory and research in student learning in general, and in second
language and literacy learning in particular. Both of these academic areas have long
acknowledged communication's central role in successful learning with the exact intricacies of
instructional conversations and the forms these take having been the focus of close analysis
(Cazden, 1988; Gee, 2001; Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur, & Prendergast, 1997; Tharp &
Galimore, 1991; van Lier, 2000). In this examination of computer-supported classroom discourse,
specific forms of instructional conversation employed by a veteran elementary teacher of
beginning-level English language learners (ELLs) are examined.