Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This text is about what really happens in language classrooms.

This paperback edition is about what really happens in language classrooms, both those in which language is the topic of instruction and those where it functions primarily as the medium of instruction. In this collection of 19 original papers, the authors utilize a variety of research methods, with an emphasis on the collection and analysis of data. Chapters investigate such issues as language-related anxiety, curriculum renewal, classroom interaction, teachers' on-line decision-making, and sociopolitical concerns affecting life in schools." (Publisher's Website)

CONTENTS:

Section I. Teaching as doing, thinking and interpreting
Chapter 1. The best laid plans: teachers' in-class decisions to depart from their lesson plans
Kathleen M. Bailey Chapter 2. Hidden voices: insiders' perspectives on classroom interaction
David Nunan Chapter 3. Teaching style: a way to understand instruction in language classrooms
Anne Katz Chapter 4. Redefining the relationship between research and what teachers know
Donald Freeman

Section II. Classroom dynamics and interaction
Chapter 5. In or out of the action zone: location as a feature of interaction in large ESL classes in Pakistan
Fauzia Shamim Chapter 6. Reticence and anxiety in second language learning
Amy B. M, Tsui
Chapter 7. A window on the classroom: classroom events viewed from different angles
David Block

Section III. The classroom and beyond
Chapter 8. Socializing with the teachers and prior language learning experience: a diary study
Cherry Campbell Chapter 9. Sardo revisited: voice, faith, and multiple repeaters
Martha Clark Cummings Chapter 10. Language learning diaries as mirrors of students' cultural sensitivity
Sabrina Peck Chapter 11. "I want to talk with them, but I don't want them to hear": an introspective study of second language anxiety in an English-medium school
Mick Hilleson

Section IV. Curricular issues
Chapter 12. Look who's talking now: listening to voices in curriculum renewal
Ian Harrison Chapter 13. U.S. language minority students: voices from the junior high classroom
Marguerite Ann Snow, John Hyland, Lia Kambi-Stein and Janet Harclerode Yu
Chapter 14. Voices for improved learning: the ethnographer as co-agent of pedagogic change
Peter A. Shaw Chapter 15. Registration and placement: learner response
Peter Sturman

Section V. Sociopolitical perspectives
Chapter 16. Conflicting voices: language, classrooms and bilingual education in Puno
Leo Van Lier Chapter 17. The functions of code switching among high school teachers and students in Kwazulu and implications for teacher education

Ralph D. Adendorff Chapter 18. Different languages, different practices: socialization of discouse competence in dual-language school classrooms in Hungary
Patricia A. Duff
Chapter 19. The tapestry of diversity in our classrooms
Denise E. Murray