The focus of this chapter is on how students in a polytechnic institution in New Zealand learn the technical language of their vocational ‘trade’ through being exposed to their instructors’ talk and through engaging in classroom interactions. This chapter draws on a 455,000-word corpus of spoken discourse which was collected at a polytechnical institute as part of a larger study of vocational language in an educational setting. Through analysis of instructor-student talk, we show how features of this talk support students in learning the technical language of their trade through exposure to instructor talk. The chapter also illustrates a range of methods that instructors use to focus on the vocabulary of workplace language and ways that students engage with learning workplace language during their studies. Examples from the corpus in the ‘trades’ of plumbing, carpentry, automotive technology and fabrication are used as illustration. © 2024 Taylor & Francis.
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