Book explores cross-cultural classroom dialogue

The guru’s speech seems self-evident—the expert imparts knowledge to the novice, who receives the experience passively like a car or machine receives parts at every stop on an assembly line. In fact, the effective teacher in an era of dynamic and higher education is less a factory worker and more than an active negotiator trying to understand where their students are coming from in order to reach them.

The language class amplifies this challenge as negotiation focuses not only on knowledge itself, but on the means of communication of that knowledge. When the teacher and student come to class with different languages ​​and cultures, successful dialogue becomes even more important.

Dialogue in class is not just the act of teacher and student talking to each other. In an effective dialogue, they negotiate meaning together, resolving any differences in understanding to explore ideas and create new knowledge. A conversational classroom that achieves these goals can be more inclusive and welcoming of all students’ perspectives and knowledge bases. All that said, scholarship in classroom dialogue has largely overlooked the context of language learning, where gaps in linguistic and cultural knowledge require dialogue functions for mutual understanding.

Whether the goal is to understand theories of interpersonal dialogue or to receive guidance on effective teaching, a new book, Dialogue in the Language Classroom: Theory and Practice from Classroom Discourse Analysis, provides a comprehensive framework for teachers and researchers alike. Longtime language teacher and sociocultural researcher Dr. Roehl Sybing analyzes data from classroom ethnography involving an English-speaking teacher and his Japanese-speaking students to explore what makes a teacher talk and classroom interaction.

Using various theories of teaching, learning, linguistic anthropology, and language education, Dr. Saiping examines classroom dialogue in depth to find out how teachers can cross the language divide and engage their students in meaningful dialogue that enhances their learning.

The book looks at the chapter dialogue from multiple angles, and explores multiple discussions in the field of research and education. What role does students’ first language play in the classroom? How do teachers mitigate the energy dynamics in the classroom to empower students and validate their knowledge? How does negotiating meaning in dialogue affect knowledge taught in class? These questions and more deserve more focus in scholarship on language teaching, prompting Dr. Saiping to discuss these issues in exhaustive detail in his new book.

Researchers will benefit from the theoretical development offered by a new look at conversational teaching. Dialogue in the Language Classroom explores not only meaning-making processes traditionally discussed in scholarship in classroom dialogue but also the emotional and critical dimensions of teaching and learning. When a language class deals with issues of language ownership and the nature of experience, this book discusses the importance of validating students and the knowledge they can share in dialogue in ways that can be beneficial at a classroom and policy level.

Practitioners will have a comprehensive guide on how to approach their classroom and engage in meaningful dialogue with students of all subject disciplines and backgrounds. By deconstructing the myth of the successful teacher as the expert who knows everything, the book argues that good teaching requires a dynamic negotiator who can understand the knowledge and cultural norms of their students and participate in building new knowledge through dialogue.

Ultimately, Dr. Seibing aims to challenge prevailing paradigms in language education and theories of dialogue in the classroom. Building on current discussions, this research provides a new perspective on multilingual and multicultural interaction to benefit scholars and educators in various fields.