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The purpose of this study was to investigate what differentiated higher quality from lower quality negotiation‐of‐meaning interactions as well as the consequences of these interactions in a storytelling task. Participants included 21 students enrolled in ESL classes who told a personal narrative to a small audience consisting of the teacher and two classmates. A question‐and‐answer session immediately followed the first telling, after which the storyteller moved to a new audience and retold the story. Data analysis focused on relating what had happened during the negotiation sessions to the presence or absence of improvement in the second telling. Results indicated that several factors seemed to contribute to improved storytelling, including four types of interactional moves displayed by the teachers. Beyond the teachers' contributions, however, improved storytelling seemed influenced as much by the initial story's characteristics, by the storyteller's responsiveness to the audience in answering questions during the negotiation session, and by the storyteller's willingness or unwillingness to alter the story. A major contribution of this study is to expand the construct of scaffolding: Researchers and practitioners typically focus on the actions of the more knowledgeable other in scaffolding whereas this study suggests that the learner plays a critical role in any instance of scaffolding.

This article presents an analysis of the functional roles of "baby signing" in three hearing families in the United States, as well as a discussion of the social and ideological implications of the practice. Baby signing fits neatly into the parenting ideologies prevalent in the professional class in the United States that value early communication with infants and promote the adaptation of the physical, social, and linguistic environment to their perceived needs. In the details of everyday interaction, these baby-signing families used signs to socialize their children into particular interaction rituals. Although the practice of baby signing is based on a positive view of sign language, the relatively quick disappearance of signing from the family discourse as the children grow older will most likely limit any long-term impact on the hearing community's views of sign language.

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