This paper offers an examination of classroom language learning from the perspectives of research and teaching. It addresses two questions: (1) What are the specific contributions of the classroom to the process of language development?; and (2) In what ways might the teacher exploit the social reality of the classroom as a resource for the teaching of language? The paper explores the classroom as a special social situation and identifies certain aspects of classroom language learning that seem to be neglected by current research. It offers also new directions for research and proposals for language teaching deduced from particular social and psychological characteristics of classroom life.

The paper begins to explore the nature of the cognitive processing involved in foreign language learning. The notion of a “discourse world” as a set of elements against the background of which a unit of talk makes sense is introduced, and the claim is made that several such “discourse worlds” may be seen to coexist in classroom discourse, in part because of participants' “awareness” (on some level) of why they are there. The notion of a discourse world is then given a psychological interpretation in terms of frame-theory, and the view is argued that the simultaneous activation of several such frames is central to the business of understanding language, and to language learning. The classroom, it is argued, offers rich opportunities for the training of such multi-level perception of foreign language input, with consequent gains in learning. From this perspective Krashen's Monitor Theory is found implausible.

This article takes a social-theoretical view of the reality created by a foreign language in the classroom. It examines the interaction of teacher and learners in their various activities along a continuum that extends from instructional to natural discourse and is determined by the way participants present themselves to one another and negotiate turns-at-talk, topics, and repairs. Suggestions are made for broadening and diversifying the discourse options in the classroom to enrich the social context of the language learning experience.

One way of characterizing communication in the FL classroom is in terms of what at a given time is in primary focus. Adopting a basic distinction between transactions with a focus on the FL code (meta transactions) and transactions with a focus on socio-literary or other non-linguistic content (content transactions), I argue that meta talk constitutes a largely neglected area of classroom research and address two aspects of this, each of which highlights significant aspects of meta talk: (1) The occurrence of scaffolded constructions, i.e., syntagms distributed over several turns at speech; and (2) the norms holding for talk about talk, i.e., what counts as an argument about the FL code. Following an exemplification from Danish classroom data (English and German as L2), I conclude by discussing the learning and pedagogical potential of each of these types of meta talk.

Repair, defined in this paper as modifications of trouble sources which have manifested themselves in the discourse, is an important activity in FL learning and communication, both in educational and non-educational contexts. It is argued that studies of repair in the FL classroom should include all repair activity rather than focus on one specific repair type, viz., the teacher's correction of learners' errors. In this study the four repair types suggested by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) are analyzed, and a further distinction is made according to whether the trouble source is produced by the teacher or a learner. It is shown that different preferences for repair patterns vary with the type of classroom activity (language-centered vs. content-centered activities), and it is discussed how these preferences relate to repair in non-educational learner-native speaker discourse.

Two questions are fundamental to research on second language learning in instructional settings: (1) Does second language instruction have a positive influence on acquisition? and (2) If so, what factors in instruction make a difference, how, and for whom? This paper considers theory and research on second language classroom behavior that is aimed toward answering the second question, given evidence that the answer to the first one is affirmative.

Theory suggests that the provision of comprehensible input, a focus on formal aspects of the target language, and the learner's opportunity to practice the target language, all may contribute to L2 development. Empirical research is reviewed to explore what modifications of teacher speech might influence comprehensibility, whether amount of exposure to target forms is related to learners' development, and which instructional behaviors might lead to productive practice with and knowledge about the target language.

The shift in language classroom organization from teacher-fronted to student group work has received a growing amount of theoretical and empirical support (cf. Long, 1983; Long, Adams, McLean, and Castanos, 1976; Taylor, 1982). However, this practice is becoming so popular that it is in danger of turning into yet another ESL bandwagon. The following study was conducted, therefore, to evaluate the role of group work in the classroom, specifically in regard to its possible effects on classroom second language acquisition. Comparisons were made of three ESL classrooms during group vs. teacher-fronted classroom interaction on decision-making tasks.

Analysis focused on three broad categories: (1) grammaticality of input, (2) negotiation of input, and (3) individual input/production. Significant differences between the two participation patterns were indicated only in the increased amount of input and production for individual students during group interaction. Task, rather than participation pattern was shown to be a more important variable with regard to parameters (1) and (2). These results suggested that group work has a useful but somewhat restricted role in classroom second language acquisition.