‘Sharing Time’ with young learners

Although "Sharing Time" is a popular and widespread activity in English for Young Learners (L2) classrooms around the world, there have so far been no research studies of the interaction that is generated and its relationship to learning processes. The aims of this study were to find out how interaction is organized during "Sharing Time" and what kinds of learning it promotes. Audio recordings of 18 complete sessions of Sharing Time in a second grade class in a private English-medium international school in Abu Dhabi were fully transcribed and qualitative analysis of the transcripts was undertaken together with a simple coding system. The focus of the interaction is found to be on topic, meaning, and fluency, rather than form and accuracy. The teacher has no prior knowledge of the topic of the interaction and works collaboratively with the learner to develop the topic and sometimes upgrades the learners' structure and vocabulary. Sharing Time conforms to a social constructivist learning model.

[1]  S. House.  An introduction to teaching English to children , 1997 .

[2]  Sarah Elisabeth Rilling,et al.  Understanding Communication in Second Language Classrooms , 1996 .

[3]  H. Mehan,et al.  Learning Lessons, Social Organization in the Classroom , 1979 .

[4]  Josef Hellebrandt,et al.  The Classroom and the Language Learner , 1990 .

[5]  D. Fernie,et al.  First the Look and Then the Sound: Creating Conversations at Circle Time. , 1989 .

[6]  J. Bruner.  Child's Talk: Learning to Use Language , 1985 .

[7]  Lynne Cameron,et al.  Teaching Languages to Young Learners: Preface , 2001 .

[8]  Children's informal talk and the construction of meaning , 1991 .

[9]  J. Hall,et al.  Second and foreign language learning through classroom interaction , 2000 .

[10]  K. Gallas.  When the Children Take the Chair: A Study of Sharing Time in a Primary Classroom. , 1992 .

[11]  Sara Delamont,et al.  Qualitative studies in education , 1995 .

[12]  Judith L. Green,et al.  Ethnography and Language in Educational Settings , 1981 .

[13]  Daniel Martin.  Mentoring in one's own classroom: An exploratory study of contexts , 1997 .

[14]  Paul Seedhouse,et al.  Learning talk : a study of the interactional organisation of the L2 classroom from a CA institutional discourse perspective. , 1996 .

[15]  R. Ellis.  Classroom Second Language Development: A Study of Classroom Interaction and Language Acquisition , 1985 .

[16]  Jayne Moon.  Children Learning English , 2006 .

[17]  J. Atkinson,et al.  A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement , 1985 .

[18]  Amy Tsui Bik-may.  An Analysis of Different Types of Interaction in ESL Classroom Discourse. , 1987 .

[19]  Susan Halliwell,et al.  Teaching English in the Primary Classroom , 1993 .

[20]  M. Galton,et al.  The Use of Discretionary Time in the Primary School. , 1998 .

[21]  Nancy H. Hornberger,et al.  Creating Successful Learning Contexts for Bilingual Literacy , 1990, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[22]  Jenny Cook-Gumperz,et al.  The Social construction of literacy , 1986 .

[23]  Christine W. Burns,et al.  Are You Sitting too Comfortably? A Critical Look at ‘Circle Time’ in Primary Classrooms , 1994 .

[24]  John J. Gumperz,et al.  The Social Construction of Literacy: Interactional sociolinguistics in the study of schooling , 2006 .

[25]  C. Rogers,et al.  A Way of Being , 1967 .

[26]  Willis Edmondson,et al.  The classroom and the language learner , 1989 .

[27]  Jane R. Willis,et al.  English for primary teachers: a handbook of activities and classroom language , 2001 .

[28]  Paul Seedhouse.  The relationship between context and the organisation of repair in the L2 classroom , 1999 .

[29]  Abdullah T. Alsafi.  Psychological reality and the role of the teacher in early-education sharing time , 1994 .

[30]  G. Noblit,et al.  Children's Discourse Patterns and Power Relations in Teacher-Led and Child-Led Sharing Time. , 1996 .

[31]  C. Brumfit,et al.  Teaching English to Children: From Practice to Principle , 1990 .

[32]  Amy Snyder Ohta,et al.  Second language acquisition processes in the classroom , 2001 .

[33]  C. Rogers.  Becoming a person , 1956 .

[34]  David Paul,et al.  Teaching English to Children in Asia , 2003 .