Discour Analysis References

Discourse Analysis and Language Teaching

1.    Introduction: The Interface of Discourse Analysis

and Language Teaching

Discour Analysis and pragmatics are relevant to language teaching and language learning since they represent two related discourse world that characterize human communication.

teaching needs to focus on both (1) strategies of message construction to facilititate

learner production of the communicative intent and (2) strategies o and after a communicative event. This appeal to or reliance on knowledge of the world is not always conscious, but it always affects the communicative interaction by

either easing it along or interfering and even blocking it. The extent to which the

participants share such knowledge will, therefore, affect the degree to which the communicate interaction will bw effective.

In the literature about reading and writing the term prior knowledge plays a very

central role. It is the conceptual knowledge that enables interactants to communicate

with one another via the written or spoken text.

Effective communicative interaction among language users is achieved, therefore,

when there is a basic sharing of prior content and discourse knowledge between the

producers and the interpreters of the text. For spoken language the interlocutors need to be familiar with sociocultural conventions and interaction managemen

For written language, writers and readers need to share writing conventions, familiarity with genre types, and rhetorical traditions.

In formal language teaching we need to distinguish between adult learners and

adolescents or children in school.

A discourse perspective on language teaching places significant emphasis on the

notion of shared knowledge, since this factor is at the heart of successful interpersonal

communication, A discourse-based model for language pedagogy perceives shared

knowledge as consisting of layers of mutually understood subcategories: content

knowledge, context knowledge, linguistic knowledge, discourse knowledge, etc. (Johns

1997). Therefore, shared knowledge is of primary importance in modern language pedagogy.

2. Discourse in the Language Classroom: The Basis for

Cxeating the Context for Language Learning

community as a group of people who share many things -

considerable body of knowledge, a specific group culture, an acceptable code of

behavior, a common language, a common physical environment, and perhaps a common goal

or interest - we can easily see how the language classroom is a unique

discourse community.

1.      "A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals." The

public goal of a language classroom is quite obvious: to promote the students'

acquisition of the target language, as a group and as individuals, in as effective a manner as possible, Sometimes, certain classes will have other specific goals for

particular periods of time, but those specific objectives will usually fall within the

more global goal of acquiring the language.

2.       "A discourse community has mechanisms of intercommunication among its

members." Any classroom, the language classroom included, has well-recognized

mechanisms for intercommunication. The teacher communicates instructions,

knowledge, and guidance to the students in various ways and the students communicate

with the teacher via homework assignments, group activities, and other

educational projects.

3.      "A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide

information and feedback." The language classroom has unique participatory

mechanisms that provide feedback on students' participation in learning activities,

feedback on the degree of approximation of their language performance to

the target, information to prepare them for subsequent work, etc.

4.       "A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aims." According to Bhatia (1993: 16), "each

genre is an instance of a successful achievement of a specific communicative

purpose using conventionalized knowledge of linguistic and discourse resources."

5.       a discourse community has acquired some specific

lexis." Again this requirement fits the classroom context quite well: school language

has its specific lexis, language learning has its specific lexis, and a particular

classroom may have some of its own lexis.

6.      "A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable

degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise."

When the language classroom functions as a discourse community, it thereby creates

its own context within which the students and the teacher can develop linguistic

and cross-cultural discourse practices that further their efforts toward the common

goal of improving the students' target language competence and performance. the fact that a language classroom is part of a school system, and that

students need to shew "results" or outcomes based on their learning experiences,

A special type of discourse will develop for

each of these three different types of interaction: the real interaction between students

and teacher and among the students themselves when dealing with real matters

relating to their immediate environment.

 

3. Discourse Analysis and the Teaching of the

Language Axeas

 discourse analysis has significant applications in the language areas of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. The teaching of phonology interacts with the teaching of oral discourse. Phonology, in particular the prosodic or suprasegmental elements, provides the range of possible rhythm and intonation combinations combination.

In the area of interaction between phonology and discourse it is important to

emphasize information management.

A discourse-oriented approach to grammar places importance both on the texts within which grammatical points are presented and on the connecting roles fulfilled by the various grammatical forms, pragmatic rules of grammar that play an important role in a discourse approach to grammar.

In the teaching and learning of vocabulary the discourse perspective stands out very clearly. Vocabulary cannot be taught or learned out of context. It is only within larger pieces of discourse that the intended meaning of words becomes clear.

Vocabulary can be literal or figurative (with figurative language including idiomatic

use and metaphorical use (Lakoff and Johnson 1980)). For example, a sentence

such as "He got the ax" may mean literally that some male person fetched a tool for

chopping wood or figuratively that he was fired from his job, i.e. terminated

A specialized field such as biology or physics may well have three types of vocabulary:

Words that serve a discoufse function rather than expressing semantic content are

much more dependent on context for their meaning and use. For example, the English

function word else is a useful and relatively frequent lexical item,

4. Discourse Analysis and the Teaching of the

Language Skills

The first places the initiator of the discourse at the productiori'end of the continuum while the second

places the interpreter at the reception end. When producing discourse, we combine discourse knowledge with strategies of speaking or writing, while utilizing audiencerelevant contextual support.

The language skills can be grouped in

two different ways: we can talk about productive versus receptive skills or we can

talk about the skills which refer to spoken language versus those that refer to written language.

For productive skills, learners need to develop effective communication strategies

based on either oral or written production. For receptive skills, learners need to develop interpretation skills related to either listening to or reading a text. Yet for each skill the language user requires unique strategies. For interactive listening, for instance, language learners need to develop strategies and routines that elicit clarifications, repetitions, and elaborations from the speaker, in order to facilitate the comprehension process when she or he is having interpretation difficulties.

Contextual knowledge is the overall perception of the specific listening or reading situation (i.e. listeners observe who the participants are, what the setting is, what the topic and purpose are; readers consider the place where the text appeared, who wrote it, and for what purpose).

Language teachers can provide learners with a variety of listening activities which

will engage them in listening practice at the discourse level.

Geddes and Sturtridge (1979 ) suggest the use of "jigsaw" listening activities for a useful integration of all the above signals and features.

Voice-mail systems and telephone answering machines are important instances of authentic listening to which students should be exposed.

One of the important features of a well-formed text is the unity and connectedness

which make the individual sentences in the text hang together and relate to each

other.

The speaking skill, although sharing the production process with the writing skill,

In such oral

communication there is always room for mismatches and misunderstandings, which

could derive from any of the following:

Ø  The speaker does not have full command of the target language and produces an

unacceptable form.

Ø  The necessary background knowledge is not shared by the speaker and the hearer

and they bring different expectations to the spoken interaction.

Ø  The speaker and the hearer do not share sociocultural rules of appropriateness,

and therefore the speaker may have violated such a rule from the hearer's point

of view due to pragmatic transfer from the first language.

The basic assumption in any oral interaction is that the speaker wants to communicate ideas, feelings, attitudes, and information to the hearers, The objective of the speaker is to be understood and for the message to be properly interpreted by the hearer(s). It is the speaker's intention that needs to be communicated to her or his audience.