The research in this book reflects a convergence of two long-standing interests of mine: language learning and the organization of social interaction. Classrooms represent a unique opportunity to see the intersection of these two interests. The technological capacities of the corpus of data I've had to work with (the Multimedia Adult English Learner Corpus, Reder, 2005) allow for focused investigations of learner–learner interaction in and around language learning tasks. This corpus of classroom video recorded interaction that includes six camera views of each classroom is allow researchers and practitioners new insights into what learning looks like in the classroom.

The research in this book has tried to take advantage of this unique perspective on the classroom by providing micro-level details in the descriptions of social actions that occur between and among learners, actions that classroom teachers (and many researchers) have not been able to see. I hope that these descriptions and analyses will help teachers and researchers (re)consider what we consider to be processes of language learning and the value of face-to-face interaction in that learning. Many of the ideas in this book were influenced by the research done with the Project on Academic Language Socialization at the University of Wisconsin (Zuengler et al., 1998) and the discussions I had with members of that project, particularly, Jane Zuengler, KimMarie Cole, Elizabeth Miller and Ceci Ford. The ideas in the paper also owe much to discussions with Simona Pekarek Doehler, Johannes Wagner, Gabi Kasper and Joan Kelly Hall.

I would like to thank participants in conversation analysis data sessions that took place at Portland State and where many of these ideas were first presented: Dominique Brillanceau, Eunyoung Cho, Luis Perea, as well as Elizabeth Cole and Sarah Albers who helped with translations. I would like to thank the teachers who participated in the data collection, management team members Reuel Kurzet and Sandra Banke, and the support in the data collection and processing from large team of graduate and undergraduate students.