Language and Dialogue - Online First

Dialogic teaching, a pedagogy that promotes student talk to extend and challenge critical thinking and facilitate the co-construction of knowledge (Alexander 2020; Lefstein and Snell 2014), is becoming increasingly important in foreign language learning contexts. This paper introduces a study that explores the implementation of a dialogic teaching framework to support learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in a university course in Western Japan. Findings suggest that the dialogic style of learning was beneficial to participants’ linguistic development and motivation, and also helped foster deeper understanding of course content and a collaborative atmosphere during both in-person and online discussions, which positively impacted their learning and enjoyment of the course.

Within the last 15 years, more than 2.5 million “migrants” attended special language courses [so-called integration courses] in Germany. In the last three years “vocational language courses” increased, especially courses in the field of health care. The aim of the article is to show that language analysis in accordance with Edda Weigand’s MGM can help to get a better insight into language usage, needed especially in the field of health care. By means of analysing one specific medical dialogue, the need for seeing language use as intercultural use will be discussed.