Ranging from preschool to university-level settings, teachers’ approaches to the ‘first day of class’, acknowledged as a crucial event (Patrick, Turner, Meyer & Midgley 2003), have received limited attention in research on second language (SL) teaching and learning. Most published materials, usually based on an author’s personal preferences or current methodological recommendations, emphasize the importance of presenting one’s self well and successfully establishing certain expectations for student behavior from the beginning of an academic term. However, little is known regarding what SL teachers actually say and do on the first day of class or how students perceive this crucial first meeting. Grounded in empirical data including classroom visits, teacher interviews, and student observations, the present qualitative study explores five university-level SL teachers’ approaches to the first day of class. Specifically, this study analyzes these teachers’ explicit and implicit communication of expectations regarding classroom rules and regulations (Johnston, Juhász, Marken & Ruiz, 1998) on the first day. Recent research on the morality of teaching (Jackson, Boostrom & Hansen, 1993; Johnston 2003) provides the framework for the data analysis. In the present study, teachers’ words and actions revealed characteristics of their moral agency, exposed actual teaching practices, and have important implications for SL pedagogy that are also relevant to teaching beliefs and practices in other disciplines.

This study analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, in the third presidential debate of 2008. Particular attention is given to candidates’ use of acclaims, attacks and defenses, as defined by functional theory. The analysis also recognizes the presence and important role of candidates’ “nonfunctional” statements and overlapping function units, two linguistic occurrences unexplored in previous studies. This research confirms the value of functional theory for investigating interaction in the context of political debate and also points to the need to include other aspects of linguistic theory in future investigations.