The Context of Cooperation in Academic Discourse [microform] / Linda Brodkey

Teachers should begin to think about how they mete out responsibility for spoken and written discourse in the classroom. Research indicates that most teachers initiate and sustain a question-answer-evaluation pattern. This pattern is doubly enacted in the composition course in writing as well as speaking. Unfortunately, this pattern may also condition students not to ask questions, and to believe that the only circumstances under which they should write is when a teacher asks them a question. However, since questions and answers are an important part of academics and since students need to have skills in recognizing and answering questions to be successful, what is required is a practice that would allow students to think, speak, and write for themselves, but as students of academic culture (i.e., as "serious" students). By adopting the approach to content of a cultural anthropologist, students--especially foreign students--have an edge as observers, since very little they see strikes them as natural. Further, since foreign students are observing the very culture they need to learn about, class discussions and essays can draw on their culture shock and loneliness within an academic frame. And while the teacher, in class discussions, may still be the manager and the critical interlocutor, the students themselves begin to consistently frame essay questions suitable for everyone. (CRH)