How content lecturers help students with language: An observational study of language-related episodes in interaction in first year accounting classrooms

• Language-related episodes occurred at a rate of around one every 3 min.
• Most episodes were initiated by the lecturers but some by the students.
• Lecturers initiated both pre-emptive and reactive episodes.
• Episodes focused mainly on technical vocabulary and conventional articulation of ideas in the discipline.

This paper reports a study conducted as part of an ESP/language specialist consultation for an Accounting Department in a tertiary education context. Observations were made of the interaction in first year accounting classrooms in order to provide an understanding of the extent to which and how the accounting lecturers addressed language incidentally during their teaching. Eight hours of classroom interaction were recorded and transcribed. Language-related episodes (transitory shifts of the topic of the discourse from content to language) were identified in the transcripts and analysed. Findings showed that the lecturers frequently initiated such episodes, and that they did so mostly to highlight technical vocabulary and conventional articulation of ideas in the discipline, or ‘accounting speak’.