Language -Learning: The Importance of Access to Community

摘要: This article is based on data derived from a four-year ethnographic study that followed two cohorts of ESL learners enrolled in mainstream Canadian primary classrooms kindergarten through grade 2. It draws sociocultural theory, the work Russian scholars Vygotsky and Bakhtin developed North America by Lave Wenger (1991), Rogoff (1994), others. In article, we examine classroom practices appear to offer our participants access linguistic resources their community those which have limited these resources. Choral small group activities are contrasted with Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences show contrasting possibilities for access. We argue speech situations ludic or playful, that, Bakhtin's (1981) terms, ever new ways mean, children possibility appropriating words others finding voices utterances themselves.