Teachers’ instructional talk in a partly scripted language intervention targeting young second-language learners: developments over time

Abstract

Despite huge investments in interventions designed to support oral language skills in early childhood and beyond, many of the interventions fail to identify impacts on children’s language learning. Programmes may have limited impact because they do not sufficiently succeed in supporting teachers’ instructional talk, and thus, more efficiently promote children’s language learning. The present study examined the extent to which 15 teachers in Norway implementing a language intervention programme designed to enhance students’ second-language learning in first and second grade demonstrated changes in their instructional talk over the 8-week programme. The programme consisted of scripted parts (labelling pictures of targeted words, repeated exposures), as well as soft scripted parts (word relations and definitions) and minimally scripted parts (narratives and explanations that extended the here-and-now). Teachers received professional development that qualified them to implement the programme. Analysis of modifications in teachers’ instructional talk was based on audio-recorded small-group interactions, comparing characteristics of teacher talk at the beginning and end of the 8-week programme. Results revealed that teachers’ instructional talk developed to include more word definitions and extended discourse, talk categories aligned with the less scripted parts of the intervention. Conversely, teacher talk during the scripted parts of the programme did not change.