The Grammatical and Interactional Organization of Teacher's Directives: Implications for Socialization of Chinese American Children

This study focuses on recurrent patterns of teacher's directives (i.e., asking students to do something) in Chinese Heritage Language Schools in the U.S. It examines the typology of directives, outlines their sequential organizations, and delineates their lexico-grammatical patterns. It suggests that the interactional and grammatical organizations of teacher's directives provide rich resources for the socialization of cultural values to the students. Data are drawn from a total of 10 hours of audio/ video-recorded classroom interactions involving two teachers (one native of Taiwan, the other a native of China) and about 20 students (aged 4.5-9 years) as well as from observations and interviews. Methodologically, this study draws upon language socialization, conversation analysis, and functional linguistics.