Children's Peer Talk

'Child language researchers and early childhood educators have long focused on the opportunities to learn inherent in adult-child interactions. The chapters in this book make clear that peer interactions offer similarly rich, but very different, opportunities to acquire communicative and language skills. Readers of this book will understand the value of attending carefully to those opportunities and to the skills they promote.' Catherine Snow, Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education

'A major contribution demonstrating how talk children produce for each other provides important resources for learning a second language, discursive literacy, vocabulary learning, cognitive, linguistic and social development, with important implications for reorganizing classroom dynamics.' Marjorie Harness Goodwin, University of California, Los Angeles

'People live and develop in discourse communities. In the present volume, we learn how children's peer groups and peer activities serve as sites of learning and growth. This in-depth account forms an exciting and most welcome contribution to the literature.' Roger Slj, University of Gothenburg

Asta Cekaite is Professor of Child Studies in the Department of Thematic Research at Linkpings Universitet, Sweden. Shoshana Blum-Kulka (1936-2013) was Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication and the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Vibeke Grver is Professor of Education in the Department of Education at Universitetet i Oslo. Eva Teubal is Professor Emerita of Early Childhood Education at the David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem.

1. Children's peer talk and learning: uniting discursive, social and cultural facets of peer interaction. Editors' introduction Asta Cekaite, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Vibeke Grver and Eva Teubal; Part I. Children's Peer Talk and Extended Discourse: 2. 'Now I said that Danny becomes Danny again' - a multifaceted view of kindergarten children's peer argumentative discourse Sara Zadunaisky Ehrlich and Shoshana Blum-Kulka; 3. Narrative performance, peer group culture and narrative development in a preschool classroom Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, Aline de S and Hande Ilgaz; 4. 'Let's pretend you're the wolf!' The literate character of pretend play discourse in the wake of a story Esther Vardi-Rath, Eva Teubal, Hadassah Aillenberg and Teresa Lewin; 5. Explanatory discourse and historical reasoning in children's talk: an experience of small group activity Camilla Monaco and Clotilde Pontecorvo; 6. Evaluation in pre-teenagers' informal language practices around texts from popular culture Janet Maybin; Part II. Children's Peer Talk and Second Language Learning: 7. Peer interaction, framing and literacy in preschool bilingual pretend play Amy Kyratzis; 8. Metasociolinguistic stance taking and the appropriation of bilingual identities in everyday peer language practices Ann-Carita Evaldsson and Sahlstrm Fritjof; 9. 'Say princess' - the challenges and affordances of young Hebrew L2 novices' interaction with their peers Shoshana Blum-Kulka and Naomi Gorbatt; 10. Language play, peer group improvisations and L2 learning Asta Cekaite and Karin Aronsson; 11. The potentials and challenges of learning words from peers in preschool. A longitudinal study of second-language learners in Norway Veslemy Rydland, Vibeke Grver and Joshua Lawrence; 12. What, when and how do children learn from talking with peers? Katherine Nelson.