In English-speaking countries with large numbers of immigrants, like the United States and Australia, children from non-English-speaking families are very likely to encounter difficulties in learning English and content knowledge simultaneously. In particular, one of the greatest challenges for English as a second language (ESL) children lies in their tendency to use everyday language (i.e., language acquired in informal situations, such as playing) in academic settings. Gibbons' work presents a research project that examines real-life content-based classroom interactions in which ESL children's English and content knowledge learning are facilitated. It makes an invaluable contribution to the effort to help ESL learners make a successful transition from everyday informal language to specialized academic registers.

This three-part volume consists of eight chapters. The first chapter presents an overview of the volume and introduces the concept of bridging discourses. These include discourses not only between students and teachers (i.e., the topic of the study) but also among different disciplines (i.e., the multidisciplinary approach adopted by the study) and between researchers and teachers (i.e., the intended pedagogical application of the study).

Part 1, encompassing two chapters (chapters 2 and 3), lays out four main theoretical backgrounds. Of particular relevance are sociocultural theory and systemic functional linguistics. The former theory holds that with language serving as a cultural mediator, children's learning constitutes a social phenomenon moving from private or egocentric speech to a social speech with the facilitation of an expert (e.g., an instructor). The latter theory states that the transition made by children from the use of everyday conversationlike language to the use of school-related academic writtenlike language constitutes a change of mode and that the intermediary state is a continuum of mode. These two complementary theoretical frameworks allow for a better understanding of the complex phenomena observable in the ESL content-based classroom.

Part 2 describes the data collection process (chapter 4) and initial analysis of the research project (chapter 5). Two fifth-grade ESL science classes in an inner-city school in Australia were studied, and selected groups of students' interactions were recorded when the classes were learning the topic of magnetism. Episodes, defined as “a unit of discourse with a unifying topic and purpose” (p. 95) were employed as the unit of analysis. To analyze each episode, the author uses two main categories that incorporate three concepts from systemic functional linguistics: (a) “how” corresponds to tenor and mode and (b) “what” is equivalent to field. Although it is impossible to reconstruct the classes as exhaustively as they occurred, these episode summaries are very useful to help readers get a feel for real classroom interactions. However, one potential weakness of the methodology section is that no mention is made about whether there are any problems in identifying and summarizing episodes.

The core of the volume, presented in part 3, examines the discourse patterns where children's learning of both academic English and content knowledge has occurred. Chapter 6 illustrates thoroughly how teachers construct discourse together with students to help them make the transition from everyday informal language to specialized academic registers. However, a potential drawback of this chapter is the reader becoming dissatisfied with the repeated use of the same example throughout the chapter, in part due to the thorough description of the interactions between students and teachers. Chapter 7 will be of particular interest to teachers because it discusses how teachers can maximize their role as mediators to help learners make the discourse transition from the sociocultural perspective. Yet this chapter could have been made even more pedagogically useful by adding episodes in which teachers' mediating role failed to work, in contrast with these successful episodes. The last chapter of the work is devoted to discussing the specific situational and historical contexts in which second language learning can be facilitated from a learner's perspective.

This research project is distinguished by the authenticity of data gathered from ESL classrooms, which makes it possible to examine situational, historical, and cultural contexts within the classroom. Furthermore, the detailed systematic investigation of real-life classroom discourse offers great potential for teacher training purposes and also provides a valuable classroom-based research resource for anyone concerned with ESL learners' linguistic and academic growth.