Investigating Classroom Discourse presents language use and interaction as the basis of good teaching and learning, and provides teachers and researchers with the tools to analyse classroom discourse and move towards more effective instruction.

The book provides an overview of the existing approaches to describing and analysing classroom discourse and identifies the principal characteristics of classroom language, by focusing mainly on the second language classroom. Other contexts featured include primary and secondary classrooms as well as higher education settings.

Using spoken corpora, such as classroom recordings and reflective feedback interviews from a sample group of teachers, Steve Walsh demonstrates the SETT (Self Evaluation of Teacher Talk) as a framework for analysing discourse within the classroom, and highlights the improvements SETT promotes.

Investigating Classroom Discourse will appeal to applied linguists, teachers and researchers of TESOL, as well as practitioners on MEd or taught doctorate programmes.

Review

Useful reading for all teacher trainers/educators. - Teacher Trainer

Clearly written and coherent...A ready readership might include language teachers in training, postgraduate students and classroom researchers interested in language classroom discourse. This book would also make instructive reading for non-experts charged with inspecting L2 classrooms, a group growing in number. - Educational Review

This promises to be an excellent series...the series proposal is correct in its identification of a need, and the combination of approaches promised in each book is refreshing (Susan Hunston, University of Birmingham)

I expect this to be a high quality book series, accessible to students, and addressing topics that are of general interest to students. Given the absence of a comparable book series, I would expect that the books would be comercially successful (Doug Biber, Northern Arizona).