The book is based on the assumption that the classroom program is a major resource for language development, and that a responsive program takes into account the fact that children are not only learning a new language, but that they are learning in that language as well.

Pauline Gibbons taught postgraduate and undergraduate TESOL courses at the University of Technology, Sydney, for many years, and is now an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She is also an independent EL consultant and her work with teachers has taken her to Hong Kong, Sweden, Laos, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, South Africa, Marshall Islands, Iran, Germany, UK, and USA. She has published extensively in EL education, including Bridging Discourses in the ESL Classroom: students, teachers and researchers (Continuum, 2006), and two other Heinemann books: Learning to Learn in a Second Language (1993) and English Learners, Academic Literacy and Thinking: Learning in the Challenge Zone (2009).