Discourse Competence

Arab World English Journal 
Volume 2, Number 1 pp. 18-46
Pragmatic Failure in Refusal Strategies: British versus Omani Interlocutors
Jaishree Umale, PhD.
Dhofar University
Abstract
The article provides the detailed study of the similarities and differences between the British and the Omani ways of refusing requests. A refusal is a face-threatening act that tends to disrupt harmony in relationships. It causes damage to both the face of the speaker and the listener. A lot of strategies are used to mitigate the effect of a refusal and save the relationship. The choice of strategy used can be dictated by the socio-cultural factors generating an inappropriate reply. These may be labeled 'rude' by the native speakers. Transforming the rules and the cultural norms of the first language to the target language also results in pragmalinguistic failure. For this research a discourse completion test was modeled on Beebe et al. (1990). The situations were categorized into three requests, three invitations, three suggestions and three offers. One of each group required a refusal to an equal status person, a higher status person and a lower status person. The test was translated into Arabic and administered to ten Omanis and the English version was given to ten British people. Data was analyzed according to the strategies used by the British and the Omanis, the role of status in refusals and the pragmalinguistic errors surfacing in the study. The study found that the Omanis used more direct strategies than the British in refusing requests and offers. Both the British and the Omanis also used indirect strategies to refuse requests, especially when dealing with higher status people. The British used more direct Jaishree Umale Pragmatic Failure in Refusal Strategies strategies when dealing with lower status people while the Omanis used care for interlocutor’s feelings. The British used more direct strategies when dealing with lower status people while the Omanis used care for interlocutor’s feelings.
Key words
Pragmalinguistic failure, Refusing requests, politeness, pragmatic failure, discourse competence, pragmatic errors, face threatening acts.

This study investigates characteristics of test-taker performance on IELTS Speaking Part 2 at Levels 5, 6 and 7 focusing on test-takers' strategies for producing comprehensible, high-quality speech with various devices. The features of performance identified in the study were co-referenced with the IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors. The study investigated the features of discourse competence observed in IELTS Speaking Part 2 performance and how the distinctive features of performance correlate to the IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors. Scholars attempted to elaborate the notion of discourse competence as a part of their pursuit for further understanding of communicative competence (eg, Bachman & Palmer 1996; Chalhoub-Deville 2003; Purpura 2008). While there seems to be consensus on the importance of greater understanding of discourse competence as a means of further understanding communicative language ability and L2 proficiency in general, a detailed study of discourse competence appears to have been somewhat neglected (Kormos 2011; Purpura 2008), particularly into speaking performance. Discourse competence is one of the four categories identified in the IELTS Speaking Band Descriptor. In order to fill this gap, the current study undertook detailed examination of test-taker oral discourse at three proficiency levels. The transcribed 58 speech samples (18-20 examples at each level) of IELTS Speaking Part 2 were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The features of discourse competence analysed in the current study included both cohesive devices (use of reference, ellipsis and substitution, lexical cohesion, conjunctions) and coherence devices (ie, text generic structure and theme-rheme development). The in-depth analysis revealed that some features of discourse (eg, use of a wider range of conjunctions, more accurate use of referential expressions) were more distinctively observed in the higher-level test-taker performance than the lower level test-takers, but other features (eg, ellipsis and substitution, use of reference) were not clearly distinguished across the levels. These findings contribute to further understanding of the nature of oral proficiency; they also supplement IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors with features of test-taker discourse empirically identified in the test-taker performances. Furthermore, the results will inform language teachers of characteristics of oral proficiency to be targeted in L2 instruction. Full text available at: https://www.ielts.org/teaching-and-research/research-reports/online-series-2015-5

We agree that a discourse can be interpreted only if it is articulated by semantic relations of coherence between the various segments that constitute it. These links are those enabling communication between individuals. SDRT (Asher, 1993, Lascarides & Asher, 1993, Asher & Lascarides 2003), a semantic discursive theory, offers tools for the identification of these logical mechanisms, basis of the interpretation. In this contribution, thanks to students’s narrative texts (from elementary to middle school level), we elaborate the first version of a user’s guide of discursive analysis tools suggested by SDRT (i.e. segmentation and discourse relation annotation) in order to be able to apply them to the study of coherence and cohesion in texts producted by speakers whose discursive competence is undergoing a construction process. Indeed, we will see that this type of data shows specifics that need to be taken into account and the aim of a discursive analysis is to report them (e.g. regular ambiguities at different levels, problems in syntactical construction of utterances causing coherence and cohesion issues).
Thus this thesis constitutes the beginning of research whose goal is to eventually offer tools that will enable teachers to, on one hand, evaluate their students’s discursive competence achievement, and, on the other hand, guide them through this competence development.

Trends in discourse analysis have brought to language teaching an interest in communication through effective discourse, moving beyond the traditional focus on the sentence. We analyse this trend in communicative competence in writing, and establish some criteria for the development of written discourse competence in pedagogical tasks. We then review several ELT coursebooks, analyzing their provision of writing activities which fit the criteria. Text types, degrees of formality and informality, and linking words are present; however, there remains room for improvement in terms of raising L2 writers' awareness of audience, interaction and context, and of micro-level concerns of text structuring.

ESP Competence – an Integral Component of Tourism Students' Professional Competence The topicality of the present research is determined by the growing demands to employees' professionalism, which set new requirements to education, stressing dialogue, cooperation , mutual understanding and creative activity. Tourism business, which has become one of the most flourishing businesses in Latvia, requires creative, decisive, educated, competitive specialists with a good command of English and excellent cooperation skills. The goal of the research was to study the efficiency of the English language learning model in the development of tourism specialists' English for Special Purposes (ESP) competence. This report analyzes the results of the survey conducted in 2006 and 2007 and explains mutual relationships between the tourism students' language competence and professional competence. It reveals the correlations between different components of ESP competence and the author offers the means how to develop students' language competence at the same time promoting their professional competence.

This article reports on the results of an action research study that aimed to determine the effect of a thinking routine in the development of coherence in speaking interactions. The study was carried out with two groups of second year business students in an English as a foreign language programt a university in southern Chile. A mixed methods approach was used to collect data before and after the intervention through questionnaires and pre- and post-tests. The findings suggest that the impact of the application of the routine was significant in promoting the speaking competence, especially in developing coherence within interactive communication.

Искусни писци академских текстова увек у својој свести имају циљаног реципијента, те због тога настоје да остваре тематску кохезију и логично организују свој текст, знајући да интерпретација текста и интерактиван однос између писца и читаоца, у великој мери, зависе од кохезије и кохерентности текста. У овом раду настојаћемо да опишемо дија-лошку сарадњу између писца и читаоца у писању на матерњем, српском језику и у пи-сању на страном, енглеском језику. За потребе истраживања коришћен је адаптирани ин-струмент текстуалне кохезије финског лингвисте Т. С. Тансканен (Tanskanen 2006) који смо примениле на писани дискурс студената са департмана за српски и енглески језик. Компаративном анализом установиле смо да постоје различити схематски оквири пу-тем којих студенти србистике и студенти англистике, у својим есејима, упарују реченице, однoсно, њима исказан пропозициони садржај. Резултати упућују на констатацију да ови студенти при писању на матерњем и на страном језику својим есејима приписују разли-читу дискурзивну вредност. Кључне речи: комуникативни приступ, комуникативна компетенција, дискурсна компетенција, кохерентност, кохезија

El propósito de este estudio es doble. Por un lado, delimitaremos el concepto de secuencia didáctica para distinguirla de otras nociones concurrentes (como secuenciación, técnica didáctica y estrategia metodológica) y presentaremos cinco prototipos de secuencia didáctica que pueden emplearse para potenciar el desarrollo de la competencia discursiva. Detallaremos para cada una de las secuencias didácticas reseñadas sus principales características, las ejemplificaremos y las clasificaremos conforme a una taxonomía propia. Por otro lado, someteremos a análisis un corpus de 14 manuales de ELE publicados en España, correspondientes a los niveles B1 y B2 del MCER, para descubrir cuáles son las secuencias didácticas a las que recurren con más frecuencia en la enseñanza/aprendizaje de contenidos discursivos y, en consecuencia, qué presupuestos pedagógicos inspiran dichos materiales. Ello nos permitirá, en última instancia, reflexionar sobre cómo un empleo variado y equilibrado de diferentes tipos de secuencias en los materiales, adecuadas a los contenidos y sensibles a factores cognitivos y afectivos, puede contribuir directamente al aprendizaje de los alumnos y al desarrollo profesional de los docentes.

This article reports on the results of an action research study that aimed to determine the effect of a thinking routine in the development of coherence in speaking interactions. The study was carried out with two groups of second year business students in an English as a foreign language programt a university in southern Chile. A mixed methods approach was used to collect data before and after the intervention through questionnaires and pre- and post-tests. The findings suggest that the impact of the application of the routine was significant in promoting the speaking competence, especially in developing coherence within interactive communication.

PRE PRINT
This study reported here investigated the effect of pre-task planning on L2 monologic speaking task performance on features of discourse competence. 40 undergraduate international students from different L1 backgrounds at a public university in Australia completed a narrative and an argumentative oral task under three planning conditions (nil, two and four-minute). Audio-recorded transcribed task performance was analysed in terms of the textual property of cohesion, identified as a core contributor to discourse texture, and was compared across three planning-time conditions using repeated measure one-way ANOVA. Study results show that planning opportunity led to an improvement of features of discourse competence as two aspects of textual cohesion (i.e., more extensive use of conjunctions, more accurate use of anaphoric reference) were more distinctively observed in planned performance. These findings suggest that the provision of pre-task planning time may promote a better control of cohesion resources, resulting in more intelligible task performance with richer content.

The subject of legal interpretation is the text of a legal act as the source of law. Adequately ascertaining the substantive contents of the law therefore requires knowledge of the intrinsic characteristics of the act of law as a form of normatively defined mode of utterance. Due to the high level of conventionalization of the texts of acts of law, their interpretation requires specialized knowledge of legal interpretation of the texts of law, which may be classified as legal communicative competence. Because this competence characterises individuals who are professionally prepared to interpret acts of law, and at the same time who function in a given community of discourse, it is in essence a type of discursive competence within the law.