Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Discourse Analysis
Spring 2006
Week 5 - Celce-Murcia, M. and Olshtain, E. (2000). Chapters 9 and 10 & PD, Chapter 4 - Answers
1. Levelt (1978) cites three factors of context in spoken discourse, what are they and how may they affect speech production? (CMO9)
Levelt cites three main important factors in the context of speaking. They are demand, arousal, and feedback
Demand
Demand refers to the amount of processing required for the task. In looking at this it should be obviously clear that in order for a speaker to do well on the task the test cannot exceed a certain level of demand. Tasks that are too demanding will either be abandoned or will show level of overall proficiency in completing the task. We could probably put together some sort of scale, along the lines possibly of the MATE criteria, to get some sort of formal assessment of what demand might entail. Certainly the function should be both known to the speaker and also should be something that the speaker is willing to do. If the speaker is not sure about the function than everything else is going to go very badly. We can think about the context. If the context is unfamiliar or somehow that does not match the function then is going to be a huge problem in producing an efficient utterance which is clearly understood. You can also think about accuracy and the specific forms which are going to be required to complete that utterance in function and context in which the speaker finds himself. Very often second language learners know what they need to do but they`re not sure exactly how they are supposed to do it. They simply lacked the forms and because they lack the forms they are not going to produce accurate language at the form level.
Arousal
Arousal obviously refers to the emotional investment a speaker has in the communicative exchange. Higher levels of positive arousal will result in better communication in general. As teachers we need to try to create situations which instill a positive arousal in our students. That is part of it but we also need to make sure that our students know how to instill positive arousal in the people they are talking to. A positive state of arousal will make a conversation overall much more effective because both parties will try to put more effort into making the conversation work. This is extremely important for foreign language speakers, who often need that extra level of arousal from the opposite party to get the point across.
Feedback
Feedback refers to the obvious observation that communicative exchanges are two-way. In order to continue for some sort of transaction or communicative exchange one needs to be able to pay attention to what the other party or parties involved are saying. Failure to do so will obviously result in a communication breakdown. Likewise it is equally important for a speaker to be able to elicit necessary feedback as well as provide important and necessary feedback for others. This is hard because it involves not only thinking about the situation in producing language but also listening AND at the same time.
Levelt (1978)`s model of context provides a somewhat different way for us to look at context which focuses more specifically on elements of conversation, rather than just looking at situational or linguistic context. By looking at context in a more conversation the appropriate way we can hopefully develop not only better awareness of these types of context for our students but also better tasks for them to practice speaking in the class.
2. What are some prerequisites for speaking in a foreign language and how can we as teachers help our students to develop these skills? (CMO9)
Celce-Murcia & Olshtain (2000: 175) lists several different prerequisites for speaking a foreign language. These are all kind of micro skills. To make the list more effective I think it is better if we can group these skills under larger types of prerequisites. This will make them easier to identify, understand, and also teach.
I. A minimal level of knowledge of the forms of the target language
1. Knowing the vocabulary relevant to the situation
2. Knowing the syntax for producing basic clauses in the language
II. An awareness of the structural differences between written and spoken language
1. The ability to use discourse connectors such as well; oh; I see; okay
2. The ability to use proper rhythm and stress in the language and make proper pauses
3. The ability to use the basic intonation - or tone - patterns of the language
4. The ability to comprehend and use reduced forms
III. An awareness of register and how it is applied in the target speaking environment
1. The ability to comprehend and use reduced forms
2. The ability to use suitable opening phrases and closing phrases such as `excuse me` or `thank you for your help`
IV. An awareness of the norms and expectations of speakers when considering Grice`s four maxims
V. An awareness of turn-taking norms and procedures
1. Knowing how to use the interlocutors reactions and input
2. Awareness of the various conversational rules that facilitate the flow of talk
VI. An awareness of accommodation strategies
1. Knowing how to use the interlocutors reactions and input
2. The ability to use suitable opening phrases and closing phrases such as `excuse me` or `thank you for your help`
3. What are the stages in developing a discourse-based curriculum? (CMO10)
The stages in developing a curriculum are actually quite simple. We find that there really only two stages and they are listed below.
Fact-finding stage
Goal definitions
It must be acknowledged that these two stages are really just the beginning of the process. Once we have completed these two tasks we need to start thinking about what type of the syllabus we might want to use and what materials we will use. As explained so lucidly by Celce-Murcia & Olshtain (2000), a curriculum is something which most of us are probably never actually going to have to design and we might not even be able to implement it. Coming between office, the teachers, and the curriculum are of course the materials and this begs an extremely important question for us in the development of our own classroom teaching: Do we want to use materials that are readily available in the marketplace or make our own or both?
The answer will to a certain extent depend on the first two steps in the process of making a curriculum stated above. Even though we are not making a curriculum we can use the results of these two stages to help us further design our own syllabus.
4. What are some of the key elements in implementing a discourse-based curriculum? (CMO10)
Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, (2000) mentioned three main elements which must be considered when developing a curriculum for a discourse-based class. None of these should be necessarily unfamiliar to us at this point, as we have already discussed them on previous occasions, with the possible exception of integration.
Contextualization
The basic idea behind contextualization is that we need to make sure that our students get a feel for the various contexts in which language is used in the target language environment. This enables us to let people practice many different elements of language use such as register shift, particular vocabulary/structural uses, and the use of Grice`s four maims.
Authenticity
Authenticity, as we have stated previously, is a very important part of a discourse analysis approach because we simply need to make sure that people are actually exposed to and are trying to use forms which match interlocutors expectations. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Integration
Integration draws attention to the fact that in a discourse-based approach we are certainly going to need to integrate several different concerns and this means that we are probably going to need to use different types of syllabus.
5. How does knowledge of pragmatics relate to discourse ability? (PD4)
In a very general sense our knowledge of pragmatics is our knowledge of language. This of course is language in a usage sense. I think I've mentioned before in this class and elsewhere that may need to make a distinction in language teaching between the teaching of language and teaching about language. Teaching about language really involves simply teaching details or facts relating to the structure of a particular language, and really this is what we do in the classroom of the most part. We do this because it's relatively easy to both teach and test. Teaching about language, however, will have little or no affect on actual language use if certain connections are not met. These connections are basically about pragmatics. The knowledge of pragmatics then is the link that we need to establish between knowledge about language and knowledge of language. Only a knowledge of language will allow our students to begin to speak, and use the language, and create and interpret discourse. So, obviously we need forms, the kind of forms we teach when they teach about language, but we need to take this one step further and shift from the `about` phase to the `of` phase in teaching. But it is really not just that simple.
The studies we are reading have told us that knowledge of pragmatics lags behind the actual use of this knowledge. Again this should not come as a huge surprise to us. We already studied the difference between competence and performance. Competence, obviously, relates to knowledge, while performance relates to actual use. Our knowledge of pragmatics is often hard to use because usage varies tremendously based on context. The only way to understand how this usage can vary based on the context is to actually do it. We need to get the students to develop awareness of different contexts and their effects on language usage norms. Learners need to go through a series of trial and errors using certain forms (as a related to certain functions) in different contexts and seeing where they work and where they don't work. Simple one-to-one form-to- function mapping does not work in language and this is what makes things tricky. It is these socio-pragmatic skills which have to be developed. Research, sadly, has shown that such skills do not generally develop outside of the target language environment. Somehow knowing this gives us an impetus to try to help these skills develop by creating a sociocultural atmosphere in the classroom because the classroom is the only place where our learners are going to be able to practice this. This means that we are going to seriously need to reshape not only what happens in the classroom but how we assess our students in our programs if we are really serious about getting our students to shift from a teaching paradigm restricted to teaching about language to one which integrates teaching of language.
6. What is speech act theory and why is it important? (PD4)
Speech act theory is an idea developed by Austin in the 1950s. It really marked the beginning of pragmatics a separate field of study within linguistics by defining the basic underlying mechanisms of pragmatics; namely, speech acts. A speech act really is an action related to using certain forms. Thinking about this we can see that really speech acts are functions. So, speech act theory is really about how certain forms in language perform certain acts or functions. Austin's basic idea is that each form has an underlying intent or purpose which speakers use. As we can see from Kasper and Rose (2002) there are certain speech acts such as requesting, explaining, apologizing and many others. Each of these basically correlate to a function, or what we now call functions. These, of course, are not the macro level functions which we mentioned above but rather the micro level or linguistic level functions. They serve specific purposes within an overall piece of discourse. Thus a macro level function which controls a piece of discourse would need to be composed of several micro level functions. These microlevel functions are speech acts.
For us as teachers, who want our students to use the target language, the importance of speech acts cannot be overestimated. Again, as we been saying throughout this course, people do not just talk. Anything we say must occur with in a functional frame. This means, then, that our students need to understand what speech acts are. At this point then, once they figured out what speech acts are to be used, they need to find forms which match those speech acts. In essence, speech acts revolve around form to function mapping. A form- to-function mapping creates a speech act. It should be remembered though that the function must precede the form. Whenever we speak it comes from a specific need, that is the function. From this need we then have to find words which will allow us to fill this need. The question then is, how do we did us?
Speak acts would need to develop based on observation, appropriation, and then finally use. This use within a context leads to further and better use of the speech act. As teachers we need to teach speech acts but we need to know which speech acts we need to teach based on our students use or requirements in the target language. Certainly the research that we read about shows a certain developmental pattern in speech acts. This developmental pattern pertains both to the functions themselves as well as the forms which are mapped onto the functions.
There are three basic trends we can observe from the literature on developmental cycles in the development of pragmatic competence/use. These trends not only tell us how speech acts might develop, but they give us a clear indicator how we might want to go about teaching speech acts to our students. The three continuum are:
-submissive speech acts ----- more powerful speech acts
-routine formulas --- repetition of formulas --- expansion of formulas
-directness ----- indirectness
These three different continuum need to be tempered with a couple of different observations about how pragmatic knowledge develops.
-more knowledge than performance
-context is important in developing sociopragmatic skills
Taking all these things into account we are left with a fairly clear idea about how we maybe want to go about teaching speech acts to our students. There are a couple things in the above continuum that we need to mention briefly though. The most important of these is the way in which speech acts develop. As was mentioned in research cited in Kasper and Rose (2002) the actual forms seem to develop in similar way. This can be linked actually to what has been claimed in Johnstone (2002) as well in relation to appropriation and intertextuality. Children or new learners to a language, in the event that they're actually exposed to real language usage patterns, will appropriate the forms of those languages. These are unanalyzed forms. This means that the speaker doesn't necessarily know the role of each of the elements in the form. They simply memorize them as a solid chunk which is linked to a specific function. They have no idea of grammatical functions like subject, object, verb, or any other grammatical categories or grammatical functions because they don`t construct these forms from smaller parts. They simply memorize the chunk and how to use it at least in the situation which was first used. At some point then they are able to use this chunk themselves. They go out and they try it and through some sort of series of trial and errors they will determine what contexts they can use it in as well as those contexts they can't use it in that present form. The actual form of the chunk is going to be very important because the form will determine in what type of situation that particular chunk can be used. Remember that in addition to moving from formulaic chunks to more expanded, idiosyncratic chunks of learners also develop along a continuum of direct to indirect. This means that as their chunks become more their own they're also making them more indirect which in English means much more complex syntactically and lexically. As teachers we need to be aware of these different developments so that we do not tried to over sequence a learning program for our students. This also means that we have to try to get our students to appropriate and internalize material from input. We will need to set up an assumed relationship between the input and output which is actually a little bit different than Krashen had envisioned 20 years ago. Rather than focusing on simplified, comprehensible input, we need to focus on contextualized, but not completely comprehensible input. The contextualization is key to the input being comprehensible, or more comprehensible despite the different forms that are present. The basic idea is that if we want our students to actually produce language we need to give them input that is at a higher level. This is quite a different viewpoint of language teaching than you might have been exposed to before but it is certainly worth thinking about and the data on pragmatic development really supports this view.
7. How is pragmatic transfer related to L2 pragmatic development? (PD4)
The first thing to remember is that transfer is related to all subsequent language development. Honestly, transfer plays a very important role in subsequent language acquisition principally because the learner already has a wide range of knowledge about language in general as well as their own language stored in their brain. This of course, is a good thing but it can also cause problems especially when we think about pragmatic development. As was discussed above pragmatic development can be equated in a very real sense with linguistic development so long as we are focusing on the use of language and this development occurs as a result of form-to- function mapping. In such a situation transfer is absolutely unavoidable. Transfer here is unavoidable because once we have identified functions, which we do as children for the most part, it is these functions which we use to direct all our actions in our lives. In fact we could probably say that it is through these functions that we actually view the world. Functions are how we interact not only with each other but with the world in general. Thus, when a subsequent language learner, even in the target language environment, is confronted with a need, even if that is a new need and one which they have not encountered in their first language, they are still going to have to map their new form onto an old, pre-existing function. It takes a very long time for a subsequent language learner to be able to create their own new functions in the new language. Therefore, transfer here is really unavoidable because were not just dealing with language forms which are separate from reality. We are dealing with linguistic functions many of which are not separable from the reality of the world because they come from the reality of the world.
As regards transfer, there are two types which I'm sure you know about already; positive and negative. What we need to remember is that positive transfer, and particularly for functions which are very similar in their basic sense across languages, is fairly common, and in fact is probably more common than negative transfer. In Kasper and Rose (2002) they said studies which claim that in the early stages of development positive transfer seems to be more common and that in latter stages of development of proficiency levels higher negative transfer becomes more prevalent. I wouldn't read too much into this. It might sound strange, but this is actually what we would expect when we think about language development relating around use. The more people are able to use the language the more mistakes they're going to make. We're going actually see instances of negative transfer which we didn't see previously simply because at the lower levels speakers cannot support the knowledge they have with action. One way you can try to enhance positive transfer is through your feedback strategies. We often focus way too much a negative feedback and differences and not enough on positive feedback and similarities. By focusing your own and your students attention on what they are doing right through well chosen and motivating positive feedback we are actually giving our students important information about how to actually do things. Negative feedback doesn't really work very well because we are not telling people how to do things, were just telling him what they did wrong which really doesn't help them to do it right. So it's important that we use positive feedback as a way of enhancing positive transfer.