This volume examines how oral and written language function in school learning, and how oral texts can be successfully inter-connected to the written texts that are used on a daily basis in schools. Rather than argue for the prominence of one over the other, the goal is to help the reader gain a rich understanding of how both might work together to create a new discourse that ultimately creates new knowledge. Talking Texts:

Provides historical background for the study of talk and text

Presents examples of children’s and adolescents’ natural conversations as analyzed by linguists

Addresses talk as it interfaces with domains of knowledge taught in schools to show how talk is related to and may be influenced by the structure, language, and activities of a specific discipline.

Bringing together seminal lines of research to create a cohesive picture of discourse issues germane to classrooms and other learning settings, this volume is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, classroom teachers, and curriculum specialists across the fields of discourse studies, literacy and English education, composition studies, language development, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.