Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Classroom Interaction
Date: March 1, 2010
Summary: Listen to this interview with authors Lesley A. Rex and Laura Schiller of the Oakland (MI) Writing Project. They discuss the finer points of classroom interaction, including how to study it and how to use that knowledge to improve teaching and learning.
For Your Bookshelf
Authors Lesley A. Rex and Laura Schiller sat down with NWP to discuss their new book, Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Classroom Interaction.
(28 minutes)
Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Classroom Interaction 
Routledge, 2009, 184 pages.
Lesley A. Rex is professor at the University of Michigan and associate director of the Oakland Writing Project. Laura Schiller is a literacy coach for the Oakland Intermediate School District and a director of the Oakland Writing Project.
Together they have been using discourse analysis in professional development programs for many years. This book grew out of their experience using the tools of discourse analysis as a way for educators to explore and improve their teaching.
Excerpt from Interview
I know it [discourse] seems like a very heavy duty word and it is. I mean, an easier way of saying it might be talk, but we wanted to keep with discourse analysis and discourse for a number of reasons. The first is that like fish in water, we swim in a sea of words, but it's not clear to us most of the time that that's what we're actually doing.
I mean, just like the fish we take it all for granted. It seems normal. It seems invisible to us. And so there has to be a way of making us aware of the words that we're swimming in. And that's what discourse analysis does. It says, 'Look. Look at how you're talking, look at how you're writing, look at the effect of what you say, look at how it affects your students, look at how it affects the worlds that you're creating that your students feel they can step into or not.