Interactional Organization and Pedagogic Aims of Reading Aloud Practices in L1 Education

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the students’ and teachers’ activities of reading aloud as it occurs in and through interaction in L1-classrooms in the sixth grade with 12-year-old students. Our data consists of video-recorded classroom interaction in Finnish comprehensive schools. The method adopted is conversation analysis. This analysis encompasses read-alouds with reference to genre, source of the text and recipients’ visual access or non-access to the text. According to our analysis, the reading aloud a text is used to create a shared reference point in classrooms in terms of allocating turns, emphasizing the importance of the content or ideology of the text, deepening the knowledge and motivation for learning, fostering writing skills, or merely to enjoy the text or to fill up lesson time. In the discussion we reflect on read-alouds as a pedagogical tool for developing literacy skills in a classroom setting.

Keywords

• Read-aloud practices
• literacy
• classroom interaction
• conversation analysis