In this article I show how the language learning classroom can be reconfigured as a critical community. I argue that the optimisation of communication rights, continually negotiated by teacher and learners, helps to build critical classroom communities characterised by “quality talk.” Such talk acknowledges uncertainty in the construction of knowledge while making transparent the basis of its claims. In doing so, it offers space for typically less powerful participants to challenge and redirect classroom discourse. I focus on 2 classes of adults in the United Kingdom, consisting of second-language learners from a wide range of language and cultural backgrounds: the first is a class of intermediate to advanced language learners attending a university course on critical reading; the second is a general English intermediate-level class in a further education college, consisting of learners from a wide range of educational backgrounds, nationalities, and ages. What the students in each setting share is that they are adults with an interest in gaining membership into new and diverse English-language-speaking communities in a global age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]