Katherine Wilson 010 DELTA LBA 4 – Systems 9/11/2005

Introduction
The introduction of discourse analysis into the classroom has, despite its relative
novelty, added a new frame to the understanding of language and its usage, and in
this sense has given the teacher new tools with which to cater for students' needs.
If we consider that comprehension and understanding are the primary concerns
behind most forms of communication, be they written or oral, formal or informal,
then our focus as teachers should be centred on ensuring that our students manage
to acquire the skills necessary for such comprehension.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a speech

community. It involves looking at both language form and language functions and
includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It identifies
linguistic features that characterise different genres as well as social and cultural
factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and
types of talk. A discourse analysis of written texts might include a study of topic
development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language
might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing
sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure.

Aspects of discourse analysis

Discourse as "live language" can be analysed from at least seven perspectives:

context, clause, cohesion, coherence, cognition, communication, competence (ibid.).
Context is a property of discourse, since no language can ever be produced without a
situational setting, i.e., a communicative context. In both oral and written discourse,
what is often needed in order to follow and develop the message is for interlocutors
to constantly relate to a "shared context." This element of discourse, however, is
often neglected, with an emphasis on grammatical accuracy and lexical correctness.
A clause is another aspect of discourse analysis, since a "sentence" as a meaningful
unit of written texts does not exist in the process of discourse production. In oral
discourse, clear sentence boundaries are rare, so clauses pay a far greater role in
understanding discourse structure.
Discourse cohesion helps us understand the way discourse structure emerges.
Cohesion can be achieved by using formal devices, such as conjunctions or the
density of topical vocabulary and is what makes the whole communicative piece hang
together.
Cognition in discourse manifests itself in the very ideas that are produced while and
for communicating a message. Through discourse is revealed the pattern in which the

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world is modelled in the speaker's / writer's mind. Discourse discloses knowledge,

beliefs, doubts, attitudes and propositions.
The communication aspect of discourse shows the nature of language-in-action,
which is less organised, produced under time pressure and with a certain shared
context that allows for the use of elliptical structures, incomplete sentences, self-
repairs, as well as for other features of spoken discourse.
The competence aspect of discourse not only concerns the degree to which
components of communicative competence emerge in the course of communication,
but can also be a manifestation of competence in language users if it functions as an
observable successful language behaviour leading to a target outcome of
communicative interaction.

Elliptical structures in spoken discourse

Ellipses is essentially the omission from a clause or sentence of an element which can
nevertheless be inferred, usually because it is recovered from elsewhere in the text.

In the following example of an informal chat between friends 1, what characterises

the extract is the use of elliptical structures, e.g. "Don't have to…" The omitted
elements, however, can easily be reconstructed from context. The same holds for
repetitions, long pauses, seemingly irrelevant words etc. All these characteristics of
genuine discourse are often ignored by course book writers or, at best, they are
tackled in an unsystematic way.

A: Now I think you'd better start the rice

B: Yeah…what you got there…(pause)
B: Will it all fit in the one
A: No you'll have to do two separate ones
C: Right…what next…(pause)
C: Foreign body in there
B: It's the raisins
C: Oh is it oh it's rice with raisins in it
B: No no no it's not supposed to be [laughs] erm
C: There must be a raisin for it being in there
D: D' you want a biscuit
C: Erm
D: Biscuit
C: Er yeah
D: All right

1
"Preparing for a party" (found in McCarthy and Carter, 1995: 208).

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Conventions of correctness in discourse

In spoken discourse, as in written discourse, there are some conventions of what is

correct. For instance, in expressing futurity, "to be going to" is associated with
intention, while "will do" is supposed to express decision-making. This distinction,
though, has no merit, unless it is embedded, thus enacted, in a natural discourse such
as in a restaurant:

A: [to her friend] I'm gonna have the deep-fried mushrooms, you like mushrooms
don't you?
[A couple of minutes later]
A: [to the waiter] I'll have the deep-fried mushrooms with erm an old time burger;
can I have cheese on it?
(McCarthy and Carter, 1995: 213)

Obviously, "to be going to" is addressed to a friend sharing one's intention to choose
certain food, while "will" is addressed to a waiter, since it is more appropriate for
giving food orders.

Full replies in discourse

Another tendency exhibited by EFL course books is the overuse of full replies
beginning with "yes" or "no," or "yes, I do" or "no, I don't." An example of this is the
following exercise from Headway Elementary p70

Betty: Can I help you?

Assistant: Yes please, I’d like…...
Peter: Anything else?
Assistant: Yes. Can I have……..

This form is very widely used by students, and is also very common in textbooks.
However, it is highly unlikely that one will ever come across such forms in native
speakers' everyday language.

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Listening to each other in discourse

In textbook conversations, it is assumed that people actually listen to each other

when they talk, and that questions are immediately answered and requests attended
to. The following natural dialogue disproves this assumption:

Kelly: Are you going to the supermarket at lunchtime?

Katherine: Where did I put my memory stick?
Chris: Pass us that pen Katherine.
Lara: You’re always losing it.
Katherine: I’ll probably go after school.
Chris: It’s under your pencil case.

In real life, people talk to each other simultaneously, interrupt each other, continue
others' phrases and give multiple answers to one and the same question (Crystal,
1995: 110).

Precision in natural discourse

Another assumption that permeates communication is that using words precisely is is

necessary for effective talk. In reality, though, there is a great deal of
exaggeration, generalisation, vagueness and ambiguity involved. These devices are
called "hedges." I think it probably is the money…and the chap used to spend about a
thousand a year…and he's been to the last two or three tournaments…and this is
about 50 per cent of his normal… (Crystal, 1995: 117).

Problems and solutions

Language learners face the monumental task of acquiring not only new vocabulary,
syntactic patterns, and phonology, but also discourse competence, sociolinguistic
competence, strategic competence, and interactional competence. Without
knowledge of and experience with the discourse and sociocultural patterns of the
target language, learners are likely to rely on the strategies and expectations
acquired as part of their first language development, which may be inappropriate for
the second language setting and may lead to communication difficulties and
misunderstandings.

One problem I have noticed in my Upper-Intermediate class of Spanish students is

their limited experience with a variety of interactive practices in English.
Therefore, I feel that one of my main objectives when teaching this class should be
to expose them to different discourse patterns in different texts and interactions.

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One way to do this is to allow the students themselves to study language, that is, to
make them discourse analysts2. By exploring natural language use in authentic
environments, the students should gain a greater understanding of the discourse
patterns associated with a given genre as well as the sociolinguistic factors that
contribute to linguistic variation across settings and contexts. For example, they
could study turn-taking patterns in a conversation between friends, opening and
closings of answering machine messages, etc.

One discourse feature that is easy to study is listener response behaviour, also
known as backchannels. Backchannels are the brief verbal responses that a listener
uses while another individual is talking, such as mm-hmm, ok, yeah, and oh wow.

When I taught a class of Intermediate multi-lingual students in England it was

apparent that their two main problems were lack of relevant vocabulary and lack of
relevant “formulaic expressions”. It was also apparent that although students were
aware of the reduction strategies they used3, they did not seem aware of the lack of
circumlocution on their part and so often opted for L1/silence as often as they tried
to circumlocute.

In this case to help rectify the problem a listening/awareness activity was used in
which students were asked/led to identify instances of communication
strategies/skills used, as well as their linguistic realisation.
In this lesson, an adaptation of the “deep end” strategy4 was employed. Through
the reports of students observing the language used by others carrying out an
activity (describe and draw), and a feedback discussion between the “observers”
(the activity-participants and the teacher), the students were led to identify certain
shortcomings of their production.

In another lesson I have used, the recording of an activity carried out in the first
part of the lesson was used as data for the feedback task that followed. The
benefits of employing the strategy/skill were discussed and further relevant
expressions were elicited/presented. Students were given the opportunity to
practice the strategy/skill in isolation before re-integrating it in the context of a
“holistic” activity5.

The listening materials used consisted of either extracts from tapes accompanying
course-books and books on listening skills development, or students’ recordings from
previous lessons.

2
McCarthy & Carter, 1994
3
Bygate 1987: 47-48; Ellis 1985: 184-185
4
Johnson 1995
5
Cook 1991: 82-83

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In the first activity I mentioned the extract used was an authentic BBC recording,
since the level of difficulty proved to be above the listening competence of the
students (resulting in initial frustration and the need to re-play the tape several
times) taped material closer to the students’ level was selected. Students’ own
recordings were used in order to either make students aware of the lack of use of
certain communicative strategies/skills on their part, or make students conscious of
the communicative strategies they did employ.

Other activities I have used with a variety of nationalities and levels have included:

Listening/Awareness Activities where students were required to:

 fill gaps in a given transcript of the listening text.

 indicate whether certain expressions/strategies were used by the speakers.
 identify the use of a strategy and note down its linguistic realisation.
 decide on the communicative meaning of certain phrases/expressions and
note them down.

Regarding the “study of authentic conversations which are to be used as

conversational models”, Brown & Yule (1983b: 33) state that “the attention of
students should be focused only on those elements that they are supposed to be
paying attention to. They should be led to observe particularly important features...
and, as soon as possible, put these observations to use.” It seems reasonable that
this principle could be transferred to the observation/awareness of the
communication strategies/ skills employed by the interlocutors on tape.

Communication Activities

In these activities students were involved in:

 Describing and drawing (see Appendix A).

 Finding the difference between two partially identical pictures (Appendix B).
 Discussing ideas/views/opinions -notably students were engaged in activities
in which they had to:
- Choose from a list of (unalterable) given statements the ones they most
agree/disagree with (See Appendix C)
- Rank a number of statements according to their beliefs/opinions.

The activities listed were selected/adopted in order to provide the students with a
context in which they could re-integrate the strategies/skills dealt with in each
lesson, and to lead students to “become used to dealing with the kinds of
unpredictable problems which reciprocal speech brings into (these) interaction

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situations” (notably informal discussion and informal planning/decision making)

(Bygate 1987: 34-35). Bygate terms these activities as “two-way” and argues that
they “generate more talk and more use of negotiation procedures ” (op. cit.: 65).

These activities serve several purposes, they act as functional communicational

activities which give students the opportunity to share and process information and
can be used for a variety of learner styles as they appeal to most of the
intelligences listed by Gardener in his ‘Multiple Intelligence Theory’ (1985) 6.

Ur (1981: 11-17) states that in order for a discussion to be successful a purpose is

needed. This purpose is manifested through a task which should involve “thinking”,
“interaction”, “result” and “interest”. Also, Brown & Yule (1983b: 118) refer to task-
based activities as creating “situations in which the speaker has to produce
extended chunks of speech.” In my class of Bahraini First Certificate students
they were asked to either form an opinion as individuals before the group discussion
or to take part in a pre-discussion before they were re-grouped for the final stage.
The result of the activity was the group decision recorded in the form of
statements, choices among alternatives, or arguments formulated in order to
persuade the members of the other group(s). Since the result was reaching a
consensus (which was recorded and/or used for the next stage of the discussion), or
convincing the rest of the group of one’s choices/opinions, interaction was a
prerequisite. As far as interest is concerned, the topics were based on the students’
stated personal interests (during an informal discussion at an earlier point of the
course) and on my observation that students were keen to participate in informal
debates where they could express opinions.

As well as the ideas above I have also used video7 in my lessons. These have been of
particular use because many of my students have lacked the opportunity to interact
with native speakers. I find that they increase motivation by basing lessons on
attractively informative content material and provide the exposure to a range of
authentic speech, with different registers, accents, intonation, rhythms, and
stresses as well as seeing the language used in the context of a real situation. While
watching, I get my students to observe what levels of formality are appropriate or
inappropriate on given occasions. Similarly, they can notice the nonverbal behaviour
and types of exclamations and fill-in expressions that are used. They can also pay
attention to how people initiate and sustain a conversational exchange and how they
terminate an interactive episode. I have found that subsequent practice of dialogues
and role-plays, lead to deeper learning.

6
See App. D
7
I find that soaps such as Eastenders are very useful.

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Conclusion
Discourse analysis provides us with a greater knowledge of the mechanisms that can
be used to improve and heighten discourse. In a sense, the purpose behind using
discourse analysis in a classroom situation is to make sure that the students are
acquainted with the different possibilities that English allows to make their
discourse, written or verbal, more 'natural'. Similarly, in terms of comprehension,
discourse analysis should aid the students' understanding of the existence, and
meaning, of the greater picture in a piece of discourse.

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Bibliography
Ballard, K. 2001 The Frameworks of English, Palgrave
Bolitho, R. and Tomlinson, B. 1980. Discover English, George Allen and Unwin.
Brown, B. and Yule, G. 1983. Discourse Analysis, Cambridge University Press.
Bygate, M. 1987. Speaking. Oxford University Press
Cook, G. 2001. Discourse OUP
Cook, V. 1993 Linguistics & Second Language Acquisition Macmillan
Crystal, D. 1992. Introducing Linguistics, Penguin.
Edmondson, W. 1981. Spoken Discourse; A Model for Analysis, Longman.
found in McCarthy and Carter, 1995: 208
Ellis 1985: 184-185
Gardner H, 1993 Multiple Intelligences: The Theory and practice. Basic Books
Johnson, K. 1995. Understanding communication in second language classrooms. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, M. 1991. Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers, Cambridge University
Press.
McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. 1994. Language as Discourse; Perspectives for Language
Teaching, Longman.
Nunan, D. 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis, Penguin Group.
Swan, M 1997. Practical English Usage, Oxford University Press.
Thornbury, S. 1997. About English; Tasks for Teachers, Cambridge University Press.
Ur 1981 Discussions that Work. Cambridge University Press.

KATHERINE WILSON

ASSIGNMENT 4 SKILLS

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Applying Discourse Analysis in the Classroom

CONTENTS PAGE

Introduction 1

Discourse Analysis 1

Aspects of discourse analysis 1

Elliptical structures in spoken discourse 2

Conventions of correctness in discourse 3

Full replies in discourse 3

Listening to each other in discourse 4

Precision in natural discourse 4

Problems and solutions 4

Specific Activities used 6

Conclusion 8

Bibliography 8

Appendix A – Describing & drawing activity

Appendix B – Find the difference

Appendix C – Agree/Disagree statements

Appendix D – Gardner’s 7 Multiple Intelligences

Candidate no.: 010

Centre: ES068, IH Seville
LSA4 – Part 1

9.11.2005