100 SPRING 2015

A High-Leverage Language
Teaching Practice: Leading an
Open-Ended Group Discussion
Erin Kearney
The State University of New York at Buffalo

Abstract: In response to calls for more practice-based teacher education, this study
investigated the way in which two high-performing novice world language teachers, one
in Spanish and one in Latin, implemented a high-leverage teaching practice, leading an
open-ended group discussion. Observational data revealed a number of constituent
micro-practices. The article offers examples illustrating the way in which the practice
was achieved and also captures the impact of such practices on classroom discourse.
Findings provide an initial basis upon which continued research on high-leverage
teaching practices in the world language education context can be pursued.

Key words: classroom discourse, discourse analysis, interaction with teacher, prepa-
ration and certification

Introduction
Renewed interest in practice-based teacher education has emerged across curricular
disciplines (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Ball & Forzani, 2009; Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009;
Grossman, 2011; Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009; Lampert, 2010; Zeich-
ner, 2012). In particular, stakeholders across the scholarly and practice-based spectrum
have been intent on identifying so-called high-leverage teaching practices (HLTPs), or
“a core set of teaching practices that, when executed proficiently by accomplished
novice teachers, are said to promote higher gains in student learning over other teaching
practices” (Cummings Hlas & Hlas, 2012, p. S76). The current wave of theory and
research focuses attention first on identifying a range of effective teaching practices,
then “decomposing” (Grossman et al., 2009) them into component processes, some-
times referred to as “micro-practices,” and finally using the insights gained from such
analysis to shape approaches to teacher education. As Zeichner (2012) pointed out, the
desire to place teacher practice at the center of teacher education is not new; however,
the novelty of the approach lies in the “grain size” at the heart of the current movement,
which focuses teacher candidates’ attention not on broad guidelines or standards, for

Erin Kearney (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is Assistant Professor of Foreign

and Second Language Education, The State University of New York at Buffalo.
Foreign Language Annals, Vol. 48, Iss. 1, pp. 100–123. © 2015 by American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages.
DOI: 10.1111/flan.12128
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
example, but rather on the work that teachers
perform day to day, moment to moment, at
the level of classroom interaction.
Theorists have posited that an HLTP
first and foremost must have considerable
impact on student learning, although this
clearly can be defined in a multitude of ways
within and across disciplines and arguably
from classroom to classroom and student to
student. What is more, such practices can be
clearly defined and specifically described
such that they can be deconstructed into
constituent parts that novices are able to learn
(Grossman et al., 2009), can draw attention
to “common problems of practice that teach-
ers face” but that might otherwise go unno-
ticed by novices, and can promote continued
learning among new teachers (Hatch &
Grossman, 2009, p. 77). While some have
seen practice-based approaches fitting into
a broader discourse of “social efficiency”
surrounding teaching and teacher education
in the United States (e.g., Zeichner, 1993),
focusing on those practices that are most
likely to have positive impact on students
and that newcomers to the teaching profes-
sion can both learn and successfully imple-
ment also speaks to enhancing quality in
teacher education and, by extension, in
both teaching and learning in classrooms.
This study investigated ways in which
effective teachers in world language class-
rooms have executed HLTPs that have been
suggested by research in other curricular areas.
Specifically, the study addressed one such
practice—leading a group discussion—that
was observed in the instruction of two gener-
ally high-performing novice world language
teachers and sought to deconstruct the process
so as to reveal component micro-practices,
which other novice and experienced teachers
might analyze, practice, and possibly emulate.
Literature Review
An HLTP Approach to Teacher
Preparation, Teaching, and Learning
To better understand the focus on HLTPs, it
is important to explore a number of assump-
tions about teacher knowledge, teacher
101
learning (Johnson, 2006), and the work of
teaching that are fundamental to practice-
based teacher development. First, a focus on
teaching practices is not intended to stand
alone: Engaging novices with core practices
does not exclude other highly relevant ele-
ments of preparing teachers for their pro-
fessional lives. Indeed, advocates of
practice-based teacher education have
been quite careful to emphasize the critical
importance of content knowledge, which
for teachers of a second language is
often defined as their level of language
proficiency, knowledge of cultures, and
understandings of linguistics and second
language acquisition (Council for Accredi-
tation of Educator Preparation [CAEP],
2013; National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards, 2010). In addition,
teacher educators across disciplines have
acknowledged that teacher candidates
must possess a host of relational skills and
dispositions ranging from interacting with
colleagues, administrators, and parents to
teaching in culturally responsive ways
(Waddell, 2014; Zeichner, 2012).
In addition, in approaches to teacher
development that emphasize HLTPs, teach-
ing is viewed as neither an art nor a science.
Rather, it is considered as a complex and
dynamic social practice, largely mediated by
the classroom discourse that a teacher and
students co-construct. As such, the work of
teaching is learnable, but not through the
simple transmission of a set of technical
procedures from experts to novices; rather,
professional formation occurs through so-
cialization into habits of mind and action
and the building of an actionable repertoire
of interpretive frames and teaching moves
so that teachers can interpret and shape the
flow of talk and action in the classroom in
ways that promote and enhance student
learning. Proponents of an HLTP approach
have envisioned experiences in teacher ed-
ucation that would make effective teaching
practices visible and analyzable so that they
can then be practicable and enactable in
personalized ways by individualized teacher
candidates. As Grossman (2011) explained:
102
[I]n making facets of practice visible to
novices, decompositions of practice in
professional education can help devel-
op professional vision…. To develop
such disciplined perception of a com-
plex practice among novices, instruc-
tors must possess a set of disciplinary
categories for describing practice and
during instruction focus students’ at-
tention on these components of prac-
tice. (p. 2839)
A comprehensive practice-based ap-
proach to teacher education, then, would
aim to engage teacher candidates in discov-
ering, learning, using, and reflecting on a
core set of overarching practices. Of greater
importance, it would help teacher candi-
dates and novice teachers recognize the es-
sential elements of these practices, analyze
their use in context-specific situations, and
develop individualized repertoires that
could be called into action in the classroom
when needed. This progression from recog-
nition to analysis and use has been referred
to as a pedagogy of investigation and a ped-
agogy of enactment (Grossman and McDo-
nald, 2008). Such an approach to
developing teacher candidates’ perceptual
abilities and skills seeks to position them
as highly intentional and deliberate decision
makers with regard to their own profession-
al practice.
Initial theoretical and empirical litera-
ture on HLTPs originated in mathematics
education (Ball et al., 2009; Lampert & Ball,
1998) and has since spread to other disci-
plines like science (Windschitl, Thompson,
& Braaten, 201) and English language arts
(Grossman et al., 2009). Work across this
range of curricular areas has resulted in the
identification of 19 core practices that were
determined to be potentially relevant across
disciplines, listed in Table 1 (Teaching-
Works, 2013).
It should be noted that some of the
practices address learners’ reasoning and
understanding of content, while others
focus on relational aspects such as setting
up and managing small group work or
SPRING 2015
implementing routines to support a learn-
ing environment. Most practices in Table 1
show evidence of both. Those practices fo-
cused on instruction, and their component
micro-practices all necessarily involve the
shaping of classroom discourse and interac-
tion. However, they function “at different
grain sizes and some practices are necessarily
entailed in other practices” (http://www.soe.
umich.edu/academics/bachelors_degree_
programs/uete/uete_hlp/).
Questions thus arise around theoreti-
cally defining and clarifying the scope of
fundamental constructs of “practice” and
“micro-practice.” In the quest to establish
a “grammar of practice” as Grossman and
colleagues (2009) advocated, an agreement
on, and a common language around, the
definition and description of a practice
and some consensus on grain size must
emerge while still maintaining flexibility
in the domain of research and avoiding
dogmatic adherence to a fixed sequence of
teaching behaviors. In addition, it is critical
to address the question of what exactly
makes a practice “effective”; i.e., what out-
comes, from short- to long-term and across
a wide range of possible learning targets,
allow us to claim that a practice has had
an impact on student learning. Establishing
reasonable and rigorous means for measur-
ing the impact of practices on learning con-
ditions (i.e., classroom discourse and
interaction, enacted curriculum) and on
learning itself (in the moment and over
longer time scales) is therefore paramount.
One might also inquire whether a practice is
universally high leverage or if there are sig-
nificant individual differences among novi-
ces in their ability to implement a practice
so that it positively impacts student experi-
ence or a particular aspect of learning.
Finally, researchers must ensure the sys-
tematic and rigorous design of investiga-
tions into such practices: to date, several
lists of HLTPs have been generated (e.g.,
Danielson, 2007; Lemov, 2010; Marzano,
2007; Pianta, 2011), but these reflect vari-
ous degrees of rigor and explanatory power
(Zeichner, 2012). Circumspection is
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1 103

TABLE 1
HLTPs
Practice

1. Making content explicit through explanation, modeling, representations,

and examples
2. Leading whole-class discussion
3. Eliciting and interpreting individual students’ thinking
4. Establishing norms and routines for classroom discourse central to the
subject-matter domain
5. Recognizing particular common patterns of student thinking in a
subject-matter domain
6. Identifying and implementing an instructional response to common
patterns of student thinking
7. Teaching a lesson or segment of instruction
8. Implementing organizational routines, procedures, and strategies to support a
learning environment
9. Setting up and managing small group work
10. Engaging in strategic relationship-building conversations with students
11. Setting long- and short-term learning goals for students referenced to external
benchmarks
12. Appraising, choosing, and modifying tasks and texts for a specific learning goal
13. Designing a sequence of lessons toward a specific learning goal
14. Selecting and using particular methods to check understanding and
monitor student learning
15. Composing, selecting, interpreting, and using information from methods
of summative assessment
16. Providing oral and written feedback to students on their work
17. Communicating about a student with a parent or guardian
18. Analyzing instruction for the purpose of improving it
19. Communicating with other professionals

Source: TeachingWorks (2013)

therefore required with regard to the defini-
tion of practices and micro-practices, the
impact of such practices on student learning
across disciplines and within individual
content areas, and the power of theory
and research findings to reform the practice
of teacher education.
HLTPs That Promote the Learning of
World Languages
While HLTPs theoretically pertain to
all educational settings, as Ball and
Forzani (2011) acknowledged, considering
discipline- and context-specific particular-
ities is a key challenge even as a “common
core” for teacher education is built. Thus,
upon reviewing the initial list of practices,
the need to determine the extent to which
they apply in the field of world language
teacher development and eventual praxis
becomes apparent. For example, when con-
sidering practices that have to do with mak-
ing content explicit and representing
content in the world language classroom,
one might wonder which content is relevant
across different instructional levels, lan-
guages, or learning contexts for learners
104
with different needs and goals. Specifically,
one might consider the relative importance
of language forms, functions, meanings, and
uses as well as cultural representations,
comparisons, and perspectives. Further-
more, making content explicit immediately
causes one to consider the effort that is
required on the part of the teacher to render
content linguistically accessible, meaning-
ful, and relevant. Similarly, a focus on prac-
tices that engage students collectively or
individually with content raises questions,
in the world language context, about the
modes of communication and the language
functions that students will need to control,
and then about all of the instructional sup-
ports that teachers will need to provide to
facilitate students’ opportunities to access,
interpret, and produce spoken, written, and
visual texts in interpersonal, interpretive,
and presentational contexts. These few ex-
amples illustrate the complexity involved in
adapting the 19 HLTPs that were originally
identified to the field of world language
education. The list also prompts consider-
ation of which practices that may be central
to the mission of world language teaching
are potentially not well addressed by this
list: e.g., linguistic proficiency, communica-
tive competence, intercultural competence,
symbolic competence, language awareness,
metalinguistic awareness, multilingual
awareness, or positive attitudes.
Thus, a first phase of research must
(1) define in empirical ways what world
language–specific HLTPs are, (2) identify
the learning opportunities and outcomes
to which those particular practices corre-
spond, (3) analyze how HLTPs are deployed
in classroom discourse, and (4) investigate
ways in which such practices can be learned
and used by novice teachers. A body of class-
room-based empirical evidence (points 1 to 3
in the preceding list) can contribute to the
building of a “grammar of practice” as Gross-
man (2011) has suggested and can then feed
back into discussions and investigations of
teacher education (point 4). Coordination of
research efforts and conceptual work along
all four of these dimensions is required in
SPRING 2015
order for any discipline to adopt a practice-
based view of teaching and to clarify the
interrelationships among teacher prepara-
tion, instructional practice, and learning out-
comes that can productively inform teacher
education programs.
Advancing the conceptual discussion in
world language education, Glisan (2010)
called for more thinking and research in
this area, suggesting that the ACTFL/
NCATE Program Standards for the Prepa-
ration of Foreign Language Teachers
(CAEP, 2013) provide one potentially use-
ful starting point in determining in princi-
ple and in research designs which core
practices would be considered to be high-
leverage for novice teachers. In addition, to
this end, Cummings Hlas and Hlas (2012)
reviewed some of the existing theory and
research to begin to determine which do-
mains might be particularly pertinent to
world language education. Data-driven ap-
proaches to determining high-leverage
practices and generating discipline-specific
descriptions of practices rely on the collec-
tion of classroom discourse data from many
world language classrooms and various out-
comes-related data to confirm practice–out-
comes connections. Only in growing such
an empirical base for descriptions of prac-
tice can a conversation about their potential
use in teacher education be broached.
A number of initial classroom-based
studies have focused on identifying and an-
alyzing core practices in world language
education; others have taken up a line of
inquiry related to what an HLTP approach
to teacher education might look like. Lamp-
ert and Graziani’s (2009) study of how novi-
ces come to enact “ambitious teaching”
emphasized the importance of collaboration
among new teachers of Italian as a world
language enrolled in an international, non-
traditional, school-based teacher education
program in Rome. Troyan, Davin, and Do-
nato (2013) drew on accepted theories of
second language learning, then decom-
posed and investigated three HLTPs: “(a)
using the target language comprehensibly
during instruction, (b) questioning for
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
building and assessing student understand-
ing, and (c) teaching grammar using an
inductive approach followed by co-con-
structed explanations of form-meaning re-
lationships” (p. 162). Continuing that line
of inquiry, Davin and Troyan (2015) decon-
structed two HLTPs, investigated ways to
integrate practice-based experiences on
those HLTPs into their respective teacher
development courses, and evaluated the rel-
ative success new teachers had in executing
the range of specific micro-practices. How-
ever, while moving forward to implement a
practice-based approach to teacher educa-
tion, Troyan et al. (2013, p. 172) also ac-
knowledged that “following the lead of
mathematics teacher preparation, systemat-
ic observation of the classrooms of effective
FL educators is needed to identify the
[HLTPs] that are applicable to our field
and critical to the professional repertoire
of pre-service teachers and novice teachers
in the initial stages of their careers.”
It was precisely a desire to begin map-
ping what effective practices are in world
language education that drove the
research that is reported below. Thus, this
exploratory study sought to capture class-
room discourse and interaction in fine detail
using videotaping in order to record prac-
tices in as phenomenologically neutral a
fashion as possible so as to (1) attempt to
establish empirically the extent to which
particular practices were, or were not,
high-leverage, and (2) decompose them
into micro-practices that might begin to
form a set of descriptive categories for ana-
lyzing and interpreting particular interac-
tions, which might lay the groundwork
for future studies designed to clearly and
precisely connect instructional moves,
micro-practices, and larger patterns of prac-
tice with interactional, proficiency-based,
and other related cognitive and academic
outcomes. Specifically, the study focused
on the following research questions:
1. Which of the practices that were identi-
fied in previous work as potentially rele-
vant across disciplines were observed in
105
the classroom discourse of high-perform-
ing, novice world language teachers?
2. How can these practices be decomposed
into constituent micro-practices?
3. What range of specific interactional
moves did the teachers employ when
implementing these micro-practices
and with what impact on students’ con-
tributions to classroom discourse?
Methods
Research Design
Broadly speaking, the study adopted an eco-
logical view of the classroom setting (van
Lier, 2000) in which practices were a set of
interactional routines that, along with other
resources in the environment (material, so-
cial, and otherwise), created opportunities
for student learning, and in this case for
teacher learning as well when findings
were brought back into the realm of teacher
education. A range of interactional moves
(i.e., specific verbal and gestural realiza-
tions) served to constitute these routines
in classroom discourse. The use of micro-
ethnographic techniques (Erickson, 2004,
2006) allowed the precise and systematic
identification of patterns in the teachers’
instruction as well as analysis of the unique
interactional realizations of routines from
lesson to lesson.
Participants
The decision to focus on novice teachers in
this study was based on the idea that what
certain high-performing novices are cur-
rently implementing effectively, even with-
out having been prepared through a teacher
education program specifically oriented to
HLTPs, other educators with similar levels
of experience would also likely be able to
do. It was therefore necessary to establish
criteria for defining “novice” and “high-
performing” teachers. The first step was
to identify high schools across a large
region—four counties in western New York
state—whose students, over a three-year
period, had consistently scored 80% or
106
above on the standardized, proficiency-
based statewide assessment for Languages
Other Than English that was in place at the
time the study was conducted (e.g., the
state’s Regent’s Exam). This initial selection
resulted in a pool of six schools. At those six
schools, the students of 21 different world
language teachers routinely achieved high
scores on the statewide assessment. Having
defined a novice teacher for the purposes of
this study as someone who had been teach-
ing for 5 years or fewer, the researcher ob-
tained contact information for these 21
teachers using staff directories that were
available to the general public online and
contacted the 21 teachers by e-mail to de-
termine how long they had been teaching.
This sample selection process yielded a
final pool of three high-performing, novice
world language teachers, two of whom
agreed to be part of the study: a high school
Spanish teacher working in a rural school
district along with all 14 of her fourth-year
students, and a high school Latin teacher
from a suburban school district and 17 of
the 19 total students in his third-year Latin
class. These particular groups of students
were selected from among each teacher’s
other classes because they would be taking
the proficiency-oriented statewide assess-
ment at the conclusion of the academic
year. In addition, since teachers were ini-
tially selected based on their students’ high
scores on this exam, it was believed that the
teaching practices that would be observed
and isolated in these classes would be re-
sponsible, at least in part, for the students’
success. However, pinpointing relation-
ships between specific elements of the
teachers’ practice and particular learning
outcomes (e.g., speaking proficiency, writ-
ing proficiency, cultural understandings)
was never anticipated as possible in this
study. It was rather a general effectiveness
of the novice teachers that was sought
through subject recruitment as it seemed
likely that HLTPs would be more likely to
appear in these teachers’ classrooms than in
classrooms where novice teachers’ students
were not showing similar achievement.
SPRING 2015
Procedures
Once focal classrooms were identified, pre-
liminary observation visits were completed
to obtain a general sense of the physical
environment and the teachers’ rapport
with the students as well as to work out
practical and logistical matters, such as
which curricular units to observe, how to
best videorecord classroom interaction, and
obtaining consent from students. These ini-
tial visits (two for each class) were not
filmed. Data were then collected from ob-
servations, field notes, and videorecordings
of the classroom visits.
Observations
Teachers and students were observed nearly
every day, from the beginning to the end of a
unit as defined by the teachers, during two
observation cycles conducted at different
points in the year. Seven observations in
the Latin class took place in December–Jan-
uary (cycle 1), and four visits took place in
April (cycle 2). Instruction was based on
two chapters from the Latin textbook Ecce
Romani (Prentice Hall, 2005) and included a
set of related stories that students translated
from Latin to English, analyzed for linguis-
tic structures relevant to texts, and reflected
on regarding cultural content drawn from
the various texts, which the teacher aug-
mented by showing clips from documenta-
ries, films, and other dramatic historical
series. In the Spanish class, the two obser-
vation cycles included a longer unit on cit-
ies, a review of relevant grammar structures
and cultural content related to Mexico (10
visits in November—cycle 1), and a much
shorter unit at the end of the school year
(three visits in June—cycle 2) during which
students explored the cultural practice of
creating authentic Mexican artifacts. In
both schools, class sessions were of approx-
imately 40 minutes in duration.
Videorecordings
The camera for digitally recording class-
room sessions was set up such that the
teachers were always in view and usually
facing the camera. However, while most
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
students in the Spanish class could be seen
in the recordings because videorecording
was authorized for them, the camera was
positioned in the Latin classroom to avoid
recording two students from whom permis-
sion to participate in the study was not
granted.
Field Notes
Because it was not possible to anticipate at
the outset of the study what HLTPs might
surface, extensive field notes addressed the
content focus and linguistic functions of
each instructional activity, other features
of teachers’ or students’ engagement with
that content, and concrete features of tran-
sitions from activity to activity. As specific
activity types recurred over the course of
several observations, a much more narrow
focus on specific routines and practices was
developed. Data collection thus produced
13 recordings and sets of field notes for
the Spanish class and 11 recordings and
sets of field notes for the Latin class.
Analysis
As is often the case in qualitative, class-
room-based studies, inductive analysis
was already occurring during the data col-
lection process, with certain interactional
patterns drawing attention as field notes
were composed. Especially in the later ob-
servations, the field notes tended to
describe in more detail instructional pat-
terns and particular moves that seemed
to have considerable positive impact on
student engagement and learning: e.g.,
micro-practices through which the teacher
held students’ attention for sustained,
longer sequences that led students to
participate more and to use language more
accurately and fluently. In addition, other
interactions stood out during observation
because they resembled HLTPs that had
been identified in previous theoretical
and empirical literature; such practices
and micro-practices were annotated using
bracketed analytic comments, such as “the
teacher is eliciting students’ reasoning
107
about grammatical forms in several ways
during this activity.” The field notes there-
fore constituted an initial phase of data
analysis that could then be double-checked,
deepened, and refined when the researcher
viewed videorecordings of the class
sessions.
Next, microethnographic methods
were used to segment the continuous re-
cording of each class session. Segments
were defined essentially as instructional
activities, and the boundaries between seg-
ments were determined using one or more
of the following cues: transition markers
in classroom discourse, other shifts in
attentional focus (gaze, posture), change
of topic, and goal-oriented activity. Seg-
ments were identified using time markers
obtained from the videorecordings and
labeled according to the instructional ac-
tivity that anchored the particular portion
of classroom interaction. Segments were
further coded to indicate (1) whether the
instructional activity had more to do with
learners using language or their engage-
ment with language as an object of consid-
eration, and (2) which ACTFL standards
(if any) seemed to be addressed by the
instructional activity (see example video
log in Figure 1).
Once this second level of analysis was
completed, the 19 HLTPs (TeachingWorks,
2013) were sorted into two groups: the first
group included 11 practices that focused on
the enactment of instruction, which also
encompassed the three practices proposed
in Troyan et al. (2013) because they con-
cern engaging students with content and
checking for students’ understandings of
content; the second group included the
eight other practices that focused on other
domains, such as pre-instructional plan-
ning, communicating with parents, or pro-
fessionalism. The 11 practices most
concerned with instruction itself were re-
named after an initial coding process so as to
best reflect the world language–specific the-
oretical and research literature. For exam-
ple, “making content explicit through
explanation, modeling, representations,
108
FIGURE 1
Sample Video Log
and examples” became “explaining lan-
guage and second language cultures,” and
“eliciting and interpreting individual stu-
dents’ thinking” became “building students’
ability to use language for communicative
purposes.” Videorecordings were reviewed
again and classroom activity was further
coded to determine which, if any, of the
11 HLTPs were demonstrated.
Once the range of practices was identified
from the full video data set, three core prac-
tices emerged: “leading a group discussion,”
“explaining language and second language
cultures,” and “building students’ ability to
use language for communicative purposes.”
This article addresses the first of these—“lead-
ing a group discussion”—because it was the
only practice that was frequently demonstrat-
ed in both teachers’ classrooms. “Leading a
group discussion” was also an important prac-
tice to decompose because of its potential
impact on students’ opportunities to analyze
SPRING 2015
and compare languages; examine and com-
pare cultural practices, products, and perspec-
tives; and use language for communicative
purposes. Thus, this practice could be a sig-
nificant building block that novice teachers
could employ to help students access a range
of world language–specific content. Finally,
video segments that were coded as “leading a
group discussion” were transcribed and then
analyzed using line-by-line analysis, to deter-
mine if there were constituent micro-practices
and how these micro-practices were interac-
tionally achieved (Hall, 2004).
Results
Definition: Leading a Group
Discussion in the World Language
Classroom
Previous work on HLTPs noted that leading
whole-class discussions focuses on building
and clarifying students’ understandings of
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
content and is designed to involve as many
students as possible (Boerst, Sleep, Ball, &
Bass, 2011; Ghousseni, 2009; Teaching-
Works, 2013). In the world language class-
room, both the content and the function of
whole-class discussions can vary widely.
Based on observations of the novice Latin
teacher and Spanish teacher who participat-
ed in this study, the following definition is
proposed:
Leading a group discussion in the world
language classroom calls on the teacher
to engage all learners in sustained con-
versation so as to explore specific
content.
Such content might be based on the
theme of a curricular unit (e.g., city life,
marriage practices in ancient Rome) or
might engage students in making cultural
comparisons (e.g., elements of the ancient
vs. modern worlds). Regardless of the con-
tent focus, data showed that leading a
group discussion required intentional in-
structional micro-practices on the part of
the teacher to elicit, support, and sustain
students’ contributions in ways that not
only focused on meaningful content but
were also sensitive to learners’ developing
linguistic proficiency and cultural compe-
tence. While there is some evidence pre-
sented below that the teachers’ micro-
practices impacted students’ involvement
in the discussion and sometimes farther-
reaching understandings of content, the
examples from both classrooms are not
intended to be interpreted as exemplary
practices. Rather, these excerpts and the
analysis they illustrate offer a descriptive
starting point for the field of world lan-
guage education, a point that is revisited in
the Discussion section.
Spanish: Leading a Group
Discussion
In the Spanish teacher’s classroom, a regu-
lar Friday activity engaged students in
tertulias (gatherings). Analysis of this
109
recurring activity revealed a number of
micro-practices, including pre-discussion
practices (providing a tool to guide stu-
dent participation, previewing relevant
structures and terminology), during-
discussion practices (launching of the
discussion, eliciting and scaffolding of
students’ contributions, loosening dis-
course control, accepting student-initiated
topics), and practices for closing the discus-
sion. Each of these micro-practices is dis-
cussed and supporting detail is provided
below.
Pre-Discussion Micro-Practices
On the day before these open-ended dis-
cussions, the teacher distributed a set of
guiding homework questions concerning
the theme of the unit and spent a few
minutes at the end of class clarifying
any grammatical or lexical items in
those questions that might be unfamiliar
to students. As homework, students
were to think about their responses to
the questions and to prepare notes, which
served the dual purpose of focusing stu-
dents on developing the substance of the
ideas they would share in discussion
while also prompting them to attend to
the linguistic functions they would need
to express those ideas. The repeated use
of these strategies suggested two micro-
practices for the pre-discussion phase of
the lesson: (1) providing a tool to guide
student preparation and participation, and
(2) previewing relevant structures and
terminology.
During-Discussion Micro-Practices
Excerpts from tertulias during which the
class discussed the relative advantages and
disadvantages of living in cities vs. towns
and their own experiences with cities illus-
trate additional micro-practices that the
teacher employed to target the development
of learners’ interpersonal communicative
abilities. The first excerpt shows how the
micro-practice launching a group discussion
was achieved through a series of interac-
tional moves:
110
T: Solo charlamos, est
a bien. Recuerda
necesitas decir algo inteligente. Algo
inteligente es la clave. No una palabra
o “S
ı, me gusta la ciudad.” Esta no
representa el conocimiento de espa~nol
cuatro. OK? ¿Algunas personas
trataron de usar la gram
atica?
S
ı ? ¿S
ı ? ¿Un poquito? OK si, el
condicional, el futuro. No, est
a bien.
Primero, ¿alguien aqu
ı creci
o en una
ciudad o todos crecieron en [town
name]?¿S
ı?1
To launch the discussion, the teacher
first downplayed any anxiety students may
have had about speaking, telling them “It’s
just a chat; it’s fine.” This type of affective
move on the teacher’s part was quite com-
mon in the Spanish classroom. The teacher
also explicitly discussed her expectations
for students’ contributions to the discus-
sion, what others have referred to as
the micro-practice of “purpose setting”
(Boerst et al., 2011), which was further
clarified to mean that the students should
say something “intelligent” and use more
than one-word answers and simple
phrases. She also alerted them to the forms
that might be needed by referencing the
grammar that had been previewed at the
end of the previous class session and that
was reflected in the guiding questions for
which students had ostensibly made notes
as part of their assigned homework. Finally,
in this excerpt, the teacher formally opened
the discussion by asking a question to
which any student could volunteer an an-
swer. This question, which functioned to
launch the discussion, also demonstrates
the type of focused questioning in which
the teacher routinely engaged over the
course of the group discussion in order to
elicit student participation. That the teacher
coordinated these interactional moves and,
exclusively in Spanish, set up discourse
conditions for the subsequent discussion
(norms for participation and language use,
SPRING 2015
T: We’re only going to chat; it’s fine.
Remember you need to say
something intelligent. Something
intelligent is key. Not a word or
“Yes, I like the city.” This is not the
knowledge of Spanish 4. OK? Some
people tried to use the grammar,
yes? Yes? A little? OK so the
conditional, the future. No, it’s fine.
First, was anyone here born in a city
or everyone was born in [town
name]? Yes?
a topical focus) promoted the development
of students’ ability to practice communicat-
ing interpersonally.
While the teacher initially elicited stu-
dent contributions to the group discussion
by relying on the list of guiding questions, as
the discussion unfolded she had to increas-
ingly manage contingencies, including un-
expected topics and opinions from students,
and maintain coherence and direction in
the conversation while also following up
on and scaffolding student contributions
in ways that were sensitive to the students’
developing and uneven levels of linguistic
proficiency (see Davin and Troyan, 2015,
for more on this point). A second excerpt
from the same discussion demonstrates how
the specific micro-practice scaffolding stu-
dents’ contributions was deployed and how
it served to support students’ developing
abilities in interpersonal communication.
After several students had offered their
views, the teacher asked if anyone else
had an opinion to share. When a student
then entered the conversation for the
first time, the teacher followed up on and
scaffolded her remarks through a range of
particular interactional moves.
In order to provide scaffolding for the
student’s contributions to the discussion
in this excerpt, first the teacher echoed
the student’s comments by verbatim re-
peating of “not with your family”; this
interactional move encouraged the student
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
S: Me gustar
ıa vivir en la ciudad pero no
con mi familia.
T: No con tu familia? No?
S: Mi familia futuro.
T: ¿La familia en el futuro? ¿Como tu
esposo?
S: When I have, yeah, when I have.
T: En espa~nol, se~norita.
S: Cuando tengo…
T: Cuando tenga, subjuntivo cuando
tenga.
S: Cuando tenga chiquitos.
T: Chiquitos, ni~nos, muy bien, ¿No
quieres vivir en la ciudad con ni~nos?
¿Por qu
e?
S: C
omo se dice “it’s not safe”?
T: You tell me. C
omo se dice “it’s not
safe”?
S: No seguro. No seguros.
S2: Inseguro.
T: Espera. No es segura, no es segura.
S
ı. OK,
OK. Um Jena, tienes opini
on de la
ciudad versus [town name]?
[all names used herein are
pseudonyms]
to retake the floor and elaborate. In addi-
tion, in this excerpt as well as many others,
the Spanish teacher followed up by asking
a series of clarification and probing ques-
tions. For example, the teacher inquired
specifically about the future family the
student had mentioned and whether this
included a future husband. Initially, these
queries led to a simple “Yeah” in English.
However, thanks to the teacher interject-
ing advice on the grammatical form and
vocabulary the student might use, over
several turns the student developed the
idea that she did not see herself living
in a city once she had children. In this
sequence, while the teacher’s Spanish was
not always target-like, it was tailored to
her students’ proficiency levels and facili-
tated their participation in discussion.
Her various interactional moves were
111
S: I would like to live in the city but
not with my family.
T: Not with your family? No?
S: My future family.
T: Your future family? Like your
husband?
S: When I have, yeah, when I have.
T: In Spanish, Miss.
S: When I have…
T: When I have, subjunctive, when I
have.
S: When I have little ones.
T: Little ones, children, very good.
You don’t want to live in the city
with children? Why?
S: How do you say “it’s not safe”?
T: You tell me. How does one say
“it’s not safe”?
S: Not safe.
S2: Unsafe.
T: Wait, it is not safe; it is not safe.
Yes. OK,
OK. Um Jena, do you have an
opinion on the city versus [town
name]?
multifunctional: They invited the student
to elaborate on and extend the content of
the conversation and promoted the ex-
pression and exchange of opinions while
also facilitating the linguistic realization
of the student’s ideas by providing the
forms the student needed and the space
to speak at greater length. Both of these
elements are central to developing stu-
dents’ ability to engage in interpersonal
communication.
Another example drawn from the class
discussion illustrates the during-discussion
practice accepting student-initiated topics.
After one student, Guillermo, spoke at
some length about living in a city on the
West Coast in early parts of his life, the
teacher asked if anyone else was raised in
a city. A student answered the teacher’s
question but then initiated her own topic.
112
T: Alguien m
as creciste en una
ciudad o solo Guillermo?
S: Yo crec
ı en [small city]. [Small
city] no es grande, pero…
T: Es m
as una ciudad de [town
name], ¿no?
S2: S
ı es las afueras de [small city]
pero [small city] es en las
afueras de [big city]. Son dos
afueras.
T: S
ı. Muy bien. ¿Y te gust
o la vida de
[smallcity] m
as que…?
S: S
ı.
T: ¿Por qu
e te mudaste a [town
name] aqu
ı?
S: Porque mi padre, um, trabajado,
trabajaba.
T: Trabaja
S: Trabaja en [small town]
T: Ah.
S: Porque, uh, mudamos.
T: Nos mudamos.
S: La madre de Guillermo trabaj
o en
mi escuela en [small city].
T: No me digas. ¿Entonces conociste
a Guillermo antes de ir a..?
S: No, no.
T: ¿No?
S: No pero conoce la madre.
T: Conoc
ı la madre, ah. Interesante,
pero el resto todos crecieron en
[town name]? Est
a bien.
S: [town name]!
Although in the initial portions of the
excerpt the student followed the teacher’s
lead by responding to the topic introduced
by her questions—being raised in a city—
the student proposed a new piece of in-
formation when she said “La madre de
Guillermo trabaj
o en mi escuela en [town
name],” and the discussion took a new
direction. At this point, the student’s con-
tribution was linked to previous talk
about Guillermo, the first student who
spoke, and work, which brought this stu-
dent to her current residence in a small
SPRING 2015
T: Anyone else raised in a city or only
Guillermo?
S: I grew up in [small city]. [Small
city] is not big, but…
T: It’s more a city than [town name],
no?
S2: Yes, it’s the suburbs of [small
city] but [small city] is in the
suburbs of [big city]. They are two
suburbs.
T: Yes. Very good. And did you like
the life in [small city] more than…?
S: Yes.
T: Why did you move to [town
name] here?
S: Because my father, worked,
worked.
T: Works
S: Works in [small town].
T: Ah.
S: Because, uh, moved.
T: We moved.
S: Guillermo’s mother worked in my
school in [small city].
T: No way. Then you met Guillermo
before going to…?
S: No, no.
T: No?
S: No but knew his mother.
T: I knew his mother, ah. Interesting,
but the rest, everyone grew up in
[town name]? That’s fine.
S: [town name]!
town, but the shift came in proposing a
particular, new detail: that Guillermo’s
mother worked in the school the female
student had attended. Once she proposed
this new information, the teacher took on
a new conversational role—commenting
on the student’s topic—rather than initi-
ating topics herself. One result of this
change in the interactional dynamics is
that the teacher and student then had to
negotiate meaning around this topic, as
evidenced by the back-and-forth through
which they clarified whether the student
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
also knew Guillermo when she was living
in the other town. In addition, on occa-
sions like this one when students initiated
topics or stories and the teacher ceded
traditional teacher-led talk that is typical
in all classrooms in favor of student-led
discourse, space also opened for students
to develop the ability to speak more
spontaneously in the second language, a
marker of proficiency in interpersonal
communication.
Closing the Discussion
In addition to using pre-discussion and dur-
ing-discussion micro-practices, the Spanish
teacher also made interactional moves to
bring closure to whole-group discussions.
In the following excerpt, the teacher, across
several turns and in conjunction with the
students, closed the group discussion on life
in cities and towns.
T: Para concluir, en el futuro cuando en
dos a~nos te vas a universidad, vas a
tomar la oportunidad para visitar una
ciudad?
Ss: Si.
T: Durante la universidad por favor, todos
ustedes, me prometan, que vas a tomar
la oportunidad para visitar la ciudad,
otros pa
ıses porque hay m
as que
[town name], hay m
as que el estado
de Nueva York.
S: S
ı, s
ı mucho.
T: OK. Pero hay m
as que este pueblo y
hay m
as que el estado de Nueva York.
Necesitas ir a otros lugares en los


Estados Unidos, en Europa, en Africa,
por todo el mundo, por todo el mundo.
S: [begins singing Canadian national
anthem]
T: “O Canada,” s
ı. Tambi
en. Pero hay
mucho m
as.
S2: Oh, I didn’t even [unintelligible]
S3: That was fantastic right there.
T: S
ı. Entiendo. Eres muy c
omico. Pero,
es una lecci
on de vida.
113
Interactionally, the teacher set up the
sequence for closing the discussion by ex-
plicitly signaling the end of the discussion,
saying “para concluir.” She then posed one
final question focused on the students’ fu-
tures and the broader theme of visiting pla-
ces beyond their familiar surroundings. A
series of teacher comments then functioned
to broaden the scope of the discussion,
which to that point had centered on the
details of the students’ individual lives and
experiences, to a more overarching and re-
flective commentary. One student re-
sponded to her advice by jokingly singing
the Canadian national anthem. The teacher
then acknowledged that she understood his
humor but reasserted that she wanted to
communicate a “life lesson” to them
through the discussion.
Although the goal of this study was not
to determine the extent of the direct and
T: To conclude, in the future when in
two years you go to the university,
are you going to take the
opportunity to visit a city?
Ss: Yes.
T: During college, please, everyone,
promise me you will take the
opportunity to visit cities, other
countries because there is more than
[town name]; there is more than
New York state.
S: Yes, a lot.
T: OK. But there is more than this town
and there is more than New York
state. You need to go to other places
in the United States, in Europe, in
Africa, all over the world, all over the
world.
S: [begins singing Canadian national
anthem]
T: “O Canada,” yes. But there is much
more.
S2: Oh, I didn’t even [unintelligible]
S3: That was fantastic right there.
T: Yes. I understand. You’re very funny.
But, this is a life lesson.
114
measurable impact of the teacher’s use of
these micro-practices on students’ develop-
ing proficiency, it is clear from analysis of
the interactions that students did engage in
turn taking, were able to express their ideas
spontaneously and using nonformulaic lan-
guage, and were able to extend the conver-
sation thanks to the teacher’s scaffolding,
which was used to keep the conversation
going and to involve all learners. In addi-
tion, transcriptions revealed several instan-
ces during which students initiated
conversation on a new topic and voluntarily
directed comments and questions to each
other, using many of the same scaffolding
practices that were modeled by the teacher.
Latin: Leading a Group Discussion
In contrast to the Spanish class, where cul-
tural topics were also taken up but cultural
texts were rarely analyzed, the Latin class
included regular activities during which the
teacher structured interaction to draw out
students’ interpretations of cultural repre-
sentations and to engage them in discussion
of cultural meanings. Analysis of recurring
discussion activities revealed a number of
micro-practices, again including a pre-dis-
cussion micro-practice (providing tools to
guide the students’ reading/viewing of
texts), several during-discussion micro-
practices (eliciting students’ interpretations
through focused questioning, supporting
students’ interpretations, referencing/invit-
ing students to make intertextual links,
commenting on text genres and symbolic
forms) and the micro-practice closing the
discussion. Each of these micro-practices is
discussed and supporting detail is provided
below. All but one of the excerpts below
are taken from an observation during which
the class watched the concluding scenes
of the movie that they had viewed at
more length the day before. At the close
of the film, the teacher invited students to
share similarities and differences they noted
between the film and the story of Elektra—
a figure in Greek mythology—about whom
they had read in Latin in the textbook.
SPRING 2015
Pre-Discussion Micro-Practice
Like the Spanish teacher, the Latin teacher
prepared students by focusing them on infor-
mation and language that was relevant and
that would facilitate their eventual participa-
tion in the discussion. As the teacher transi-
tioned to a focus on the Elektra story, he
referenced the notes sheet that he had provid-
ed for them, an example of the micro-practive
tool to guide students’ reading/viewing of texts:
T: OK, so first please take out your Elek-
tra video sheet. We still have about five
minutes left in the film for us to see and
then we’ll have a brief discussion about
how it compares to our reading, OK?
So everyone should have film sheets out
and in front of you on your desk to be sort
of jotting down similarities and differen-
ces in the last couple minutes. [starts
movie, which plays for five minutes]
During-Discussion Micro-Practices
When the film ended, the teacher first en-
gaged in the micro-practice launching the
discussion:
T: OK, so uh, with your film sheets out
and in front of you who wants to start
the discussion of what similarities and
or differences that you noticed in be-
tween the film and the reading that we
completed last week? S1?
The Latin teacher launched the discus-
sion through several interactional moves.
He first referenced the guiding notes sheet,
which provided support for students as they
recalled details that would be needed to
make comparisons. He also reminded
them of the type of analytic activity in which
they should be engaged—a comparison—
by stating that the discussion focused on
“what similarities and or differences that
you noticed between the film and the read-
ing we completed last week.” The teacher
did not immediately nominate a specific
student to speak but rather opened the floor
to whomever wanted to make the first
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
comparison between the film and text ver-
sions of the Elektra myth and waited for
students to respond.
After several students responded and
cited a number of differences that they
had observed, a student offered the follow-
ing remark with regard to the film version:
S5: For a difference the um they didn’t
have, they didn’t put in the Furies and
everything.
T: Yeah as far as we can tell Orestes
seems to just be wandering around
somewhat aimlessly. He doesn’t seem
to be under any torment in the way that
we see in the reading, right, with the
kind of invisible Furies hounding him
for the guilt of killing his mother. S6?
S6: We don’t see Athena or Minerva
forgiving him.
T: Right, so there’s no sort of gods kind
of directly involved in the action here.
They only really kind of reference the
oracle at Delphi. I don’t even know if
they mention Apollo by name, so
there’s really no kind of intervention
of the gods.
In this short exchange, the student
stated that in the film “they didn’t put in
the Furies and everything.” The teacher
then employed the micro-practice scaffold-
ing students’ contributions using the specific
interactional move recasting and extending
the student’s interpretation: after first agree-
ing with the student’s observation, the
teacher expanded in more detail the vague
“and everything” portion of the student’s
remarks, citing specific elements of the
story. The teacher also elaborated and mod-
eled the analytic act of comparison by offer-
ing not only a description of the content from
the movie but also the content from the
reading. In the turn at talk that immediately
followed, another student added that in the
film, “We don’t see Minerva or Athena for-
giving him,” which the teacher then recast in
115
more fluent analytic terms as a lack of the
“intervention of the gods.” Recasting stu-
dents’ interpretations often took this form
in the Latin teacher’s classroom, in which
he modeled a more detailed and descriptive
account and specifically demonstrated the
analytic process of comparison.
Another way in which the Latin teacher
commonly scaffolded students’ contribu-
tions to discussion was through the
micro-practice drawing attention to symbolic
forms. In order to offer interpretations of
cultural texts at all, learners need some
knowledge of which relevant forms are
used to construct symbolic meaning. In
the following excerpt, from another lesson
on a Roman emperor named Domitian, the
teacher made several connections between
particular linguistic forms—caesar, augus-
tus, dominus et deus, damnatio memoriae—
and their possible symbolic meanings in the
Roman cultural imagination:
T: He’s incredibly arrogant. He ruled
Rome in sort of a tyrannical fashion,
along the lines of Caligula or Nero rath-
er than more like Titus. He actually
demanded that the people referred to
him not just with the title of “caesar” or
“augustus” or something like that but
actually “dominus et deus” that was
sort of Domitian’s preferred title, and
of course based on our knowledge of
Latin what does this phrase actually
mean?
S: Master and god.
T: Master and god. So he is actually
being sort of asked to be addressed as
a god. He is actually also intensely para-
noid, sort of like Tiberius and Caligula,
and has his enemies sort of executed. So
again, we’re sort of back to the same
atmosphere of treason and trials as un-
der Caligula. He had an extremely poor
relationship with the Senate, but also
like Caligula he was sort of well liked by
certain sections of the population. The
army and the lower classes were sort of
116
really big fans of Domitian. Domitian
was sort of really generous with the
Imperial treasury. He gave lots of cash
handouts and he was sort of militarily
competent enough to keep peace on the
frontiers of Rome. There weren’t sort of
barbarians spilling over their borders.
They were defended by the soldiers, so
the soldiers liked Domitian as well.
However, due to his immense unpopu-
larity with the Senate, he was actually
murdered in the year 96 and underwent
the process of damnatio memoriae after
that. Who can remind us from our Cal-
igula video what that process refers to?
S: Isn’t it like destroying his memory,
like all the statues and stuff?
T: Exactly. It’s sort of a damnation or
destruction of the memory of Domitian
either by destruction of the statues,
chiseling out inscriptions with his
name, and sort of painting over depic-
tions of him on sort of frescoes and
friezes.
As the Latin teacher and his students
discussed Domitian, naming practices and
specific self-given titles were woven into an
account of an emperor’s relationship with
various strata of Roman society and the
types of perspectives they might hold to-
ward him, during his life and then after-
ward. The literal meaning of the title
dominus et deus was connected, the teacher
explained, to a broader “atmosphere of trea-
son and trials” during Domitian’s reign, and
ultimately, the teacher referenced the sym-
bolic act of damnatio memoriae, a cultural
practice that he asked the students to de-
scribe. Culturally and symbolically forms
became relevant to the class discussion,
but it was only as a result of the teacher’s
interactional moves of supplying the lin-
guistic forms that index symbolic meanings
that these surfaced in the conversation.
Note that in a subsequent class session, a
student referenced the practice of damnatio
memoriae but in relation to modern times;
SPRING 2015
such a remark evidenced his knowledge of
the Roman cultural practice but also dem-
onstrated his ability to relate this practice to
events in the modern world, in line with the
ACTFL’s Cultures and Comparisons stand-
ards. The impact of drawing students’ atten-
tion to symbolic forms and practices, then,
could surface well beyond the discussion in
which the teacher first highlighted them.
During discussions in the Latin class,
an additional micro-practice—making con-
nections among texts—was also frequently
observed. In the following excerpt, the
teacher noted that a detail that a student
had mentioned from the film was also pres-
ent in a particular stage version of the story
and then wove an even more complex pic-
ture of how various texts that address the
Elektra myth are related to each other:
T: And that actually is accurate to the
Euripides version. We have to keep in
mind that we’re sort of looking in a
weird way at four texts [writing on
board]. We have the original play by
Aeschylus, which gave us our Hamilton
reading, and the slightly later version of
Euripides which gives us our, our film
version. So something like all four of
these is like this general story that we’re
trying to kind of pick apart.
The student comment prompted the
teacher to remark that the class needed to
keep in mind that they were dealing
with multiple representations of the same
story—two plays, the textbook reading, and
the film. As he mentioned these texts, he
listed them on the board and drew arrows to
demonstrate how the plays acted as sources
for the two other texts. Beyond the specific
information the teacher provided to stu-
dents by making reference to the larger
group of related texts, he also demonstrated
that considering a number of texts that
share similar content, themes, or genres as
a group can provide a deeper field of analy-
sis and result in a greater understanding of
both the single texts under consideration
and the myth as a whole. Furthermore,
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
the diagram on the board served as an addi-
tional tool to guide students’ participation.
Commenting on typical features of text
genres was an additional micro-practice that
was frequently observed in whole-class dis-
cussions in the Latin classroom. When a
student noted a particular detail from the
film that differed from the written versions
that the class had been working with, the
teacher took the opportunity to point out a
common practice in plays written in Latin:
S7: In the movie it said that Agamem-
non was, you know, one of the gods’
favorites where in the play, it said he
was cursed and his family.
T: Mmhm, yeah, I mean the whole sort
of house of Atrius is like the story of this
curse that goes sort of one generation to
the next, starting all the way back right
with Atrius’s grandfather, Tantalus, the
whole sort of…
S7: And they don’t really mention that.
Tantalus never comes up. Or any of his
ancestors.
T: Right, yeah, no, that’s right. They
would have mentioned that a lot more
in the sort of written plays. They liked
doing this sort of referencing of other
earlier myths.
As the teacher explained the particular
case of Agamemnon and the “house of At-
rius,” a history that is potentially important
to the theme of being cursed emerged.
When the student noted that this chain of
characters and family history was missing in
the film version, the teacher highlighted a
textual feature that students should learn to
expect in Latin plays—the referencing of
earlier myths and stories. In this excerpt,
the meaning of the textual feature was per-
haps more clear to students because it was
based on a particular example: that is, stu-
dents could notice that the representation of
Agamemnon as a character was different in
the play—he was tragically and perhaps
117
unavoidably cursed—than in the film ver-
sion, something that the referencing of ear-
lier myths made more clear.
Closing the Discussion
After approximately 10 minutes of compar-
ative discussion of the film and text versions
of the Elektra story, the Latin teacher stated:
T: All right, anything else on the film
before we proceed with what we’ve got
left for today? OK.
In far more abbreviated form than the
Spanish teacher’s multiturn approach to
closing the discussion presented above,
the Latin teacher simply asked if students
had any further comments. In doing so,
however, and also in alluding to the class’
remaining activities for the day, he interac-
tionally signaled the close of the discussion.
Commonalities and Differences
Overall, classroom observations revealed
that these high-performing novice teachers
repeatedly relied on a coherent and repeated
set of micro-practices that, taken together,
constituted their approach to enacting the
HLTP leading a discussion. Similarities and
differences in these routines are illustrated
in Table 2.
Discussion
The practice of leading an open-ended
group discussion was observed in two Span-
ish lessons and four Latin lessons on a
range of topics and for different purposes;
however, although the practice was interac-
tionally realized in somewhat different ways
in the Spanish and Latin classrooms, obser-
vational data showed that many of the
micro-practices were in fact quite similar.
First, both novice teachers did not appear to
expect high school learners to possess the
knowledge and skills that would be needed
to express their thoughts extemporaneous-
ly, at least not without numerous supports,
both planned and spontaneous, provided by
118 SPRING 2015

TABLE 2
The Spanish and Latin Teachers’ Micro-Practices in Leading Group Discussions
Spanish Teacher’s Latin Teacher’s
Micro-Practices Micro-Practices

Pre-discussion practices
Providing tools to guide students’ Providing tools to guide students’
participation in the discussion participation in the discussion
Previewing relevant grammar and
terminology students may need
During-discussion practices
Launching the discussion Launching the discussion
 Stating goals of the interaction  Stating goals of the interaction
 Making explicit the expectations  Referencing and/or asking guiding
for student contributions questions
 Referencing and/or asking
guiding questions
 Reminding students of relevant
second language forms

Eliciting student contributions Eliciting student contributions through

through focused questioning
Scaffolding students’ contributions:
 Asking a chain of probing
questions to keep students
talking
 Echoing students’ statements to
aid their extended and more
elaborate talk
 Providing linguistic scaffolds
through clarification requests,
provision of alternate terms,
recasts, etc.
focused questioning
Scaffolding students’ contributions:
 Asking for support/evidence for a
statement or interpretation
 Recasting and extending students’
interpretations
 Drawing attention to symbolic
forms

Accepting student-initiated topics in

the discussion
Attending to involving all students
in the discussion
Commenting on typical features of text
genres
Making connections among topics, student
contributions, and texts related to the
topic at hand
Closing the discussion Closing the discussion
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
the teacher. Rather, the teachers created and
required that students complete specific
pre-discussion tasks. Similarly, both teach-
ers used specific strategies to launch the
discussion, scaffold students’ participation
throughout the discussion, extend the dis-
cussion by ceding the floor or by asking
probing questions, and finally close the
discussion.
Given that the Latin students mostly
used their native language, the Latin teacher
was able to employ micro-practices that
demanded higher-level and more abstract
thinking as well as more complex use of
language from his students. To do so, he
modeled ways to make connections across
multiple cultural texts and representations,
drew students’ attention to symbolic forms,
and alerted them to recurring features of
particular genres of Latin literature. While
the Spanish teacher’s goals certainly focused
first on developing students’ interpersonal
communication skills, in the Latin class-
room, these micro-practices may have
been motivated by the teacher’s desire to
develop students’ higher order thinking, in-
crease their awareness of different genres, or
enhance their ability to make literary and
cultural comparisons. However, in spite of
what may appear to be widely differing
goals, these novice teachers drew on a simi-
lar set of micro-practices to support stu-
dents’ learning.
That the two teachers demonstrated
some similarities in employing micro-prac-
tices as they led group discussions does not
suggest, of course, that different types of
instructional supports and more extensive
and intentional deployment of various mi-
cro-practices would not be desirable. In fact,
examination of classroom data and certain
of the excerpts presented above point to
areas for potential further development in
each teacher’s instructional practice. For
example, better balancing of teacher talk
and student talk during group discussions
in both classrooms and more intentionally
inviting students to hypothesize about the
symbolic meanings of cultural forms and
practices in the Latin classroom (rather
119
than simply explaining these) could sup-
port greater development of oral proficiency
and deeper cultural knowledge and insight,
respectively. Leading discussions around
the interpretation of cultural texts in the
Spanish teacher’s classroom and employing
more grammatically, lexically, and syntacti-
cally complex Spanish would likely open up
new terrain for learners’ development of
linguistic and cultural knowledge and pro-
ficiencies. To ensure that learners have op-
portunities to engage in conversational
exchanges that are linguistically, as well as
cognitively, demanding and that function to
enhance their proficiency levels, the teacher
must also possess a high level of proficiency
in the second language. The Advanced Low
ACTFL proficiency level now commonly
required in many teacher education pro-
grams and for certain states’ licensure
(and Intermediate High in speaking and
listening for less commonly taught lan-
guages) begins to address this issue. How-
ever, as the Spanish teacher’s use of
language during discussion demonstrates,
regardless of proficiency rating, a teacher
will likely encounter both expected and
unexpected language needs as students con-
tribute to conversation. As a result, teacher
education programs would do well to equip
novices with the habit of reviewing ahead of
time vocabulary and other linguistic struc-
tures and functions likely to be relevant to
any given discussion, and to develop strate-
gies for dealing with the emergent nature
and unexpected turns of open-ended dis-
cussion with students.
The two novice teachers’ practices can-
not, based on the data collected, be linked
systematically to student outcomes, wheth-
er these relate to language proficiency or
cultural understandings. The proficiency-
based measure that is administered to stu-
dents at the end of the school year does not
distinguish these outcomes in any meaning-
ful way, and no additional measure was
collected through this study. Furthermore,
factors other than teachers’ instructional
practice likely contribute to students’ per-
formance on such tests (such as students’
120
socioeconomic status and levels of adapta-
tion to test-taking), rendering them inade-
quate, or at least incomplete, measures of
the impact of teachers’ practices. As a result,
though it is essential to clearly establish,
with the support of data documenting stu-
dent learning, which practices are effective
and can thus be considered candidate
HLTPs in the field of world language edu-
cation, more narrow studies with careful
designs will be required. Nonetheless, anal-
ysis of discourse and interaction in the two
classrooms has value insofar as there is now
some empirical evidence of how a particular
HLTP—leading a group discussion—can
take shape in the context of world language
education as well as some suggestion of
which discipline-specific goals may be
well-served by this practice (i.e., developing
oral proficiency—including fluency and the
ability to produce extended, unplanned
speech—and cultivating skills for interpret-
ing cultural texts). In essence, descriptive
categories in the form of micro-practices
around this practice for world language ed-
ucation can be further elaborated, revised,
and tested. In addition, scrutiny of the in-
structional moves that were used to enact
leading a group discussion provides a foun-
dation for both identifying approaches that
support students’ learning and determining
the behaviors and routines that can be re-
fined and improved, thus contributing to a
research-based framework for practice-
based teacher education. Beyond the confir-
mation that leading a group discussion is
relevant to world language education and
initial indications that certain micro-practi-
ces are likely to serve objectives central to
the field, the data presented in this article
help theorists, researchers, and teacher ed-
ucators imagine the type of analysis that
could occur in teacher education programs
when novices reflect thoughtfully on their
own and others’ classroom discourse, goals,
and evidence of student learning.
Findings from this study have impor-
tant practical implications for world lan-
guage teacher educators as well as for
researchers. Broadly speaking, this explor-
SPRING 2015
atory study provides support for a focus on
the relationship between classroom dis-
course, teachers’ practices, and student
learning (see Figure 2), in both teacher
education and research. While relatively
little is known empirically about the in-
structional discourse of world language ed-
ucation classrooms—especially with regard
to which practices are common, the range of
forms these take, for what local purposes
they are enacted, with the intention of meet-
ing which goals and standards, with what
impact on student learning, understand-
ings, and outcomes, etc.—there is some
consensus that world language teachers’
discourse tends toward the pedagogical
rather than the natural (Gil, 2002; King-
inger, 2000), although these need not be
viewed as mutually exclusive (Brooks,
1993). However, focused attention to world
language classroom discourse and the ways
it relates to particular instructional practi-
ces as well as student learning is imperative
for research and practice. Specifically, for
those involved in teacher education, it
seems essential to focus novice teachers’
attention on the relationship between goals,
practices, and micro-practices and then to
intentionally offer opportunities to observe,
analyze, plan, carry out, and reflect specifi-
cally on these aspects of their teaching. For
theorists and researchers, identifying links
between goals that are common in world
language education (developing communi-
cative proficiency, cultural understandings,
etc.) and particular practices and micro-
practices also seems to offer a fruitful line
of inquiry, although additional research is
needed to elaborate on and refine these
findings to enrich the inventory of success-
ful micro-practices and create a repository
of examples that illustrate the range of in-
teractional realizations in real classrooms.
Research that links particular practices with
specific learning outcomes as well as inves-
tigations in the classrooms of high-perform-
ing experienced teachers and a host of
instructional contexts (distinguished by
language, grade level, proficiency level,
etc.) would greatly expand the knowledge
Foreign Language Annals
VOL. 48, NO. 1
FIGURE 2
The Interrelationship of Classroom Discourse, Teachers’ Instructional Practices,
and Student Learning
of HLTPs specific to world language
education.
Conclusion
Effective teachers shape classroom dis-
course in deliberate ways and intentionally
structure opportunities for student learn-
ing. However, it is unlikely that novices
naturally know how to go about creating
such learning environments. In studying
connections among teacher education, in-
structional practices, classroom discourse,
and opportunities for student learning as
well as ultimately students’ actual learning
outcomes, world language teacher educa-
tors will have much more nuanced informa-
tion for supporting novices’ increasingly
sophisticated professional pedagogical
knowledge and daily practice. This effort
requires extensive and coordinated research
that is based on and contributes to a grow-
ing consensus concerning high-quality in-
structional practice in world languages,
much of which may reasonably be based
121
on the ACTFL Standards (Magnan, 2008;
Troyan, 2012). Regardless of which goal
area or learning outcome, work must be
undertaken to better understand the rela-
tionships that link particular approaches to
teacher education with subsequent instruc-
tional practices and eventual student out-
comes. By shifting the focus from what
teachers need to know to how they might
act in the classroom, researchers, teacher
educators, and novice and experienced
teachers alike can examine teaching prac-
tice in depth and at length across a ranges of
interactions and contexts. Engaging in this
type of research is, at the core, what it means
to develop individual and collective “pro-
fessional vision” (Goodwin, 1994) in the
field.
This study of the behaviors of two high-
performing novice teachers offers a first step
in mapping a core set of world language
teaching practices by fashioning initial de-
scriptive categories for continuing research
on a particular practice: leading a group
discussion. At the same time, it raises
122
many new questions for researchers and
teacher educators, not the least of which
are questions at the core of the profession:
What are the aims of world language educa-
tion? Through what types of interactions
and experiences in classrooms can these
aims be addressed? What types and levels
of outcomes can reasonably be expected of
learners who acquire a new language in
school settings? And, important to discuss,
how can new teachers learn to envision the
classroom and to behave instructionally in
ways that support these objectives? Delib-
erately focusing on instructional practices
and subsequently making the component
micro-routines both visible to and enactable
by novice teachers may provide a rich re-
search-based foundation for practice-ori-
ented teacher development and result in a
cadre of more intentional and successful
practitioners.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Joan Kelly Hall for her
valuable input on this research midway
through the project as well as Amber Zepper
and Amanda Barbour for their assistance
with data collection and transcription.
This project was also supported by an
ACTFL Research Priorities grant.
Note
1. In excerpts from classroom discourse,
minor inaccuracies in the teacher’s use
of Spanish that did not have an impact
on the structure or flow of the discussion
have been corrected.
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Submitted November 19, 2014
Accepted December 16, 2014