Applied Linguistics Unit III

Reiteration means either

restating an item in a later part of the discourse by

direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by

exploiting lexical

relationships.

D I S C O U R S E A N D V O C A B U L A R Y

We cannot deny the fact that vocabulary is one of the most important

components of any language to be learnt. The place we give vocabulary in a class

can still be discourse-oriented. Most of us will agree that vocabulary should be

taught in context, the challenge we may encounter with this way of approaching

teaching is that the word ‘context’ is a rather catch-all term and what we need to

do at this point is to look at some of the specific relationships between vocabulary

choice, context (in the sense of the situation in which the discourse is produced)

and co-text (the actual text surrounding any given lexical item).

Lexical cohesion

As we have seen in Discourse Analysis, related vocabulary items occur

across clause and sentence boundaries in written texts and across act, move, and

turn boundaries in speech and are a major characteristic of coherent discourse.

Do you remember which were those relationships in texts we studied last

Semester? We call them Formal links or cohesive devices and they are: verb form,

parallelism, referring expressions, repetition and lexical chains, substitution and

ellipsis. Some of these are grammatical cohesive devices, like Reference,

Substitution and Ellipsis; some others are Lexical Cohesive devices, like Repetition,

and lexical chains (such us Synonymy, Antonymy, Meronymy etc.)

Why should we study all this? Well, we are not suggesting exploiting them

just because they are there, but only because we can give our learners meaningful,

controlled practice and the hope of improving them with more varied contexts for

using and practicing vocabulary.

Halliday and Hasan (1976) gave lexical devices the name of Reiteration.

Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse by direct

repetition or else reasserting its meaning by

exploiting lexical relationships. Lexical relations

are the stable semantic relationships that exist

between words and which are the basis of

descriptions given in dictionaries and thesauri:

for example, rose and flower are related by

hyponymy; rose is a hyponymy of flower.

Reiteration is not a chance event; writers and

speakers make conscious choices whether to

repeat , or find a synonym, or use another device.

Unfortunately, Discourse analysts have not yet given us any convincing

rules or guidelines as to when or why a writer or speaker might choose a synonym

for reiteration rather than repetition or any other device. However, in practice,

language teachers must content themselves with observing each case as it arises

and, for the moment, work on raising an awareness of such phenomena where

awareness is lacking, and, most important of all, providing the lexical equipment in

L2 and practice of the skills to enable learners to create texts that resemble

naturally occurring ones themselves. It means that it is important to make learners

aware that synonyms are not just ways of understanding new words when they

crop up in class, nor are they some abstract notion for the organization of lexicons

and thesauri, but they actually are there to be used, just as any other linguistic

device, in the creation of natural discourse.

Another implication for language pedagogy mentioned by McCarthy (1991),

is that learning to observe lexical links in a text could be useful in the following

way: it encourages learners to group lexical items together according to particular

contexts by looking at the lexical relations in any given text. One of the recurring

problems for learners is that words presented by the teacher or coursebook as

synonym will probably be only synonymous in certain contexts and the learner has

to learn to observe just when and where individual pairs of words may be used

interchangeably. For example:

Start and commence in the first sentence are interchangeable, but not in the

second.

The meeting commenced at six thirty. But from the moment it started,

it was clear that all was not well.

I commenced* to climb the tree, I started to feel insecure.

Little is known about the transferability of these lexical features of text from

one language to another. Some languages may have a preference for repetition

rather than linking by synonymy. What do you think about Spanish? And English?

Sometimes learners may find the transfer of these skills to be easy and automatic.

In either case, the learner may need to use a range of vocabulary that is perhaps

wider than the coursebook or materials have allowed for. Additionally, an

awareness of the usefulness of learning synonyms and hyponyms for text-creating

purposes may not always be psychologically present among learner; there is often

a tendency for such areas of vocabulary learning to be seen as word study divorced

from actual use, or at best only concerned with receptive skills. Conventional

treatments of vocabulary in published materials often underline this word-out-of-

context approach.

L E X I S I N T A L K

So far we been focusing mostly on written texts and their Textuality, but what is

there to say about spoken language? According to McCarthy, there is no reason

why the lexical relations taken into account above should not

also apply to spoken data. Discourse analysts have observed how

speakers reiterate their own and take up one another’s

vocabulary selections in one form or another from turn to turn

and develop and expand topics in doing so. McCarthy names this

phenomenon as relexicalisation and we are certain to say that

through relexicalisation speaker follow or not the maxims of

conversations, already studied in Linguistics, Discourse Analysis,

last Semester.

Let us look at a piece of data from the film

“Something’s gotta give” and find instances of

relexicalisation:

E_ You know my name.

H_ Erica Jane Barry. I have looked you up on the Internet. Do you know that there are over 8000 websites that mention you?

E_ That's not possible.

H_ Yeah, it's true. I know everything about you now, and not because of last night.

E_ Yeah, no, no. I understood. Actually, I looked you up too.

H_ You did?

E_ I know you grew up in L.A., which I think nobody did. You started your own record label at 29,

very impressive and sold it at 40, even more impressive. Then you started a magazine, dabbled in the Internet, and then you invested in a small record company...which you turned into the second largest

hip-hop label in the world.

H_ It's exhausting just hearing about it.

E_ Yeah, I know. I know, but...The truth is, it goes by fast, doesn't it?

H_ Like the blink of an eye.

The arrows show us the connections the speakers (Erica and Harry) are

making to show acceptance or refusal of the topics brought up by them. For

example, Erica finds it funny that Harry knows what her name is, so she makes that

comment in order to know , we suppose, more about Harry’s thoughts about her

If you are able to, see this film. I am sure you will enjoy it and besides you’ll give the dialogue a clearer contextual framework which will help you to understand the situation.

Textuality is a concept

in linguistics and

literary theory that refers to the attributes that distinguish the text

(a technical term

indicating any

communicative content under analysis) as an object of study in those

fields. It is associated in

both fields with structuralism and post-structuralism.

Relexicalisation of

some elements of the

previous turn provides just such a contribution to

relevance and

provides other

important ‘I am with

you’ signals to the initiator.

and Harry responds with her complete name confirming that he actually does

know her name. Then he brings up the topic of websites mentioning Erica’s name

to which Erica reacts with a laughter and surprise saying that it is impossible that

her name is mentioned in so many sites. Harry goes back to it claiming that it is

true, making an innocent joke about how much he knows her already, linking the

great number of websites plus the fact he saw her naked the night before. We can

clearly see the way Erica avoids the talking about ‘last night’ and instead, she goes

back to browsing-the-web topic. The choice of Harry of the short question ‘you

did?’ is maybe not for confirmation but out of curiosity and surprise, and with it he

is also encouraging Erica to say what she has found out about him. Erica gives him

a report of his past achievements to what he answers, as a concluding

comment, with the word ‘exhausting’, to which Erica adds in the same

mood (conclusion) that it all goes fast, to which in turn, Harry shows

agreement by adding a synonymous phrase of ‘fast’: ‘like a blink of

an eye’.

As we can see, the intimate bond between topic

development and the modification and reworking of lexical items

already used makes the conversation develop coherently, seeming

to move from sub-topic as a seamless whole. Speakers can bring

up topics into conversations, but whether they are taken up or not

depends on the other speaker(s). If one speaker insists on pursuing

his/her topics, ignoring the wishes of others, this is precisely when

we recognize deviance into monologue or complain later to our friends

that ‘X was hogging the conversation’. Utterances by one speaker are the

invitation to a response by another. Do you see the connection with the maxims by

Grice more clearly now?

Relexicalisation of some elements of the previous turn provides such a

contribution to relevance and provides other important ‘I am with you’ signals to

the initiator.

Let us go over again this phenomenon of Relexicalisation. Keep in mind that is

something done between speakers (oral language). We can also say that it refers to

the use of lexical cohesive devices between speakers.

Reflect: we have mentioned before that Relexicalisation is related to Grice’s

Maxims of the Cooperative Principle. In which way do you think it is?

REGISTER

Consider the following words:

Problem- Drawback - Snag

Which one is more likely to occur in a

formal scientific report? Which one may

come up in a friendly conversation?

Clearly we might not expect to find snag

occurring in a formal scientific report simply because of

the relationship between vocabulary and Register.

Lexical choice within the identified clusters will depend

on the context (textbook, magazine, news report, etc.),

the author’s assumptions about the audience (cultured/

educated/ readers of the popular tabloids press, etc.)

whether the style is to be read as ‘written’ or ‘spoken’,

and so on. This is close connected with the elements of

communications introduced in Linguistics, Discourse

Analysis. Can you see how?

Let’s see how these words are commonly used:

The only minor snag with the writing, is that Harris can be

repetitive.

The main drawback of a final salary scheme, as far as employers

are concerned, is that it is an unknown cost.

Maybe they're the real problem, not our way of life.

DISCOURSE AND GRAMMAR

Nothing we shall say will undermine the importance of grammar in language

teaching, just the opposite; we should take as a basic premise that without a

command of a rich and variable resource of the grammar offered by a language

such as English, the construction of natural and sophisticated discourse is

impossible.

I would like to share with you what Diane Larsen- Freeman suggests as regards the

teaching of grammar. She challenges conventional views of grammar and instead

In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose

or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a

velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'") and refrain from using the word "ain't" when

speaking in a formal setting, but the same person could violate all of these prescriptions in an informal setting.

As with other types of language variation, we tend to find register continua rather than discrete varieties

— there is an endless number of registers we could identify, with no clear boundaries. Discourse categorization is a complex problem, and even in the

general definition of "register" given above (language variation defined by use not user), there are cases where other kinds of language variation, such as

regional or age dialect, overlap.

“Grammar is about much more than forms.”

of simply analyzing grammatical form, she includes grammatical meaning and use

as well.

Most educators agree that speaking and writing accurately is part of

communicative competence, just as is being able to get one’s meaning across in an

appropriate manner. Moreover, research has shown that teachers who focus

students attention on linguistics form during communicative interactions are more

effective than those who never focus on form or who only do so in

decontextualized grammar lessons. According to Freeman, focusing on grammar

form during communicative interactions rather than form in isolation is one way

to prevent the pendulum from swinging beyond its point of equilibrium.

But… how can we make a balance between grammar and

communication? Freeman claims that the first step to take is to come to a

broader understanding of grammar than has usually been the case. She

says: “ equating grammar with form and the teaching of grammar with the

teaching of explicit linguistic rules concerning form are unduly limiting,

representing what we have called myths, which only serve to perpetuate the

pendulum swing between language form and language use. Grammar is about form

and one way to teach form is to give students rules; however, grammar is about

much more than forms and its teaching is ill served if students are simply given

rules.” So, we need to change our attitude and add a more robust view of grammar.

A THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAMMAR FRAMEWORK

As we were saying earlier, our goal should be to achieve a better fit between

grammar and communication, then, it is not helpful to think of grammar as a

discrete set of meaningless, decontextualized, static structures. Nor is it helpful to

think of grammar just as prescriptive rules about linguistics form, such as

injunctions against splitting infinitives or ending sentences with prepositions.

Grammatical structures not only have (morphosyntactic) form, they are also used

to express meaning (semantics) in context-appropriate use (pragmatics). And this

will constitute our frame of reference. It will be this framework the one which will

guide us in constructing an approach to teaching grammar.

The framework suggested by Freeman takes the form of a pie chart. Its shape helps

us to make salient that in dealing with the complexity of grammar, three

dimensions must concern us: structure or form, semantics or meaning, and the

pragmatics conditions governing use. These dimensions, as the graphic below

suggests, are not hierarchically arranged as many traditional characterizations of

linguistic strata depict. Finally, the arrows connecting one wedge of the pie with

another illustrate the interconnectedness of the three dimensions; thus a change in

any one will have an effect on another wedge.

FORM

MEANING

USE

In the wedge of the pie having to do with structure, we have those

overt lexical and morphological forms that tells us how a

particular grammar structure is constructed and how it is

sequenced with other structures in a sentence or text. With

certain structures, it is also important to note the

phonemic/graphemic patterns.

In the semantic wedge, we deal with what a grammar structure

means. Note that a meaning can be lexical (a dictionary definition

for instance) or it can be grammatical (e.g. the conditional states

both a condition and outcome or result)

You must remember from Discourse how broad the definition of

pragmatics is. For our purposes here we will limit pragmatics to

mean “the study of those relations between language and context

that are grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a

language”. We will leave the term context broad enough though,

so that context can be social (i.e. a context created by

interlocutors, their relationship to one another, the setting), or it

can be a linguistic discourse context (i.e. the language that

precedes or follows a particular structure in the discourse or how

a particular genre or register of discourse affects the use of a

MEANING/ SEMANTICS

USE/PRAGMATICS

FORM/STRUCTURE

Morphosyntactic and lexical patterns. Phonemic/ Graphemic patterns.

Social context. Linguistic discourse context. Presuppositions about context.

Lexical meaning.

Gramatical meaning.

structure), or context can even mean the presuppositions one has

about the context.

The influence of pragmatics may be ascertained by asking two questions:

1. When or why does a speaker/writer choose a particular grammar structure

over another that could express the same meaning or accomplish the same

purpose? For example, what factors in the social context might explain a

paradigmatic choice such as why a speaker chooses a yes-no question

rather than an imperative to serve as a request for information?

Do you have the time?

Please tell me the time.

2. When or why does a speaker/ writer vary the form of a particular linguistic

structure? For instance, what linguistic discourse factors would result in a

syntagmatic choice such as the indirect object being placed before the direct

object to create:

Jenny gave Frank a brand-new comb.

Jenny gave a brand-new comb to Frank.

Despite the permeable boundaries between the dimensions, we have found it

useful to view grammar from these three perspectives. We trust that the utility of

this approach suggested by Freeman will become clearer as we proceed and also as

we encourage ourselves to use it. Let see how it works:

We should begin by asking the questions posed in the three wages of Freeman’s

pie.

Let us consider an example. A common structure to be taught at a high-beginning

level of English proficiency is the ‘s possessive form. If we analyze this possessive

What does it mean?

When/Why is it used?

How is it form?

form as answers to our questions, we would fill in the wedges as below (analysis

based on Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman 1999).

Form of Possessive Meaning of Possessive Use of Possessive

This way of forming possessives in

English requires inflecting regular

singular nouns and irregular

plural nouns not ending in s with

‘s or by adding an apostrophe

after the s’ ending of regular

plural nouns and singular nouns

ending in the sound /s/. this form

of the possessive has three

allomorphs: /z/, /s/, and /∂Z/,

which are phonetically

conditioned: /z/ is used when it

occurs after voiced consonants

and vowels, /s/ following

voiceless consonants, and /∂Z/

occurs after sibilants.

Besides possession, the possessive

or genitive form can indicate

description (a debtor’s prison),

amount (a month’s holiday),

relationship (Jack’s wife),

part/whole (my brother’s hand),

and origin/agent (Shakespeare’s

tragedies). Also, although all

languages have a way of signaling

possession, they do not all regard

the same items as possessable. For

example, Spanish speakers refer

to a body part using the definite

article instead of a possessive

form. ESL/EFL students will have

to learn the semantic scope of the

possessive form in English.

Filling in this wedge requires that

we ask when the ‘s is used to

express possession as opposed to

other structures that can be used

to convey this same meaning. For

example, possession in English

can be expressed in other ways_

with a possessive determiner (e.g.,

his, her, and their) or the

periphrastic ‘of the’ form.

Thus, by using Freeman scheme, we can classify the facts that affect the form,

meaning, and use of the possessive structure. This is only a first step. Teachers

would not necessarily present all these facts to students, recognizing that students

can and do learn some of them on their own. And certainly no teacher would

choose to present all these facts in a single lesson or on one occasion. Nevertheless,

distributing the features of the target grammatical structure among the three

wedges of the pie can give teachers an understanding of the scope and

multidimensionality of the structure. In turn, this understanding will guide

MEANING

possession, description, amount, realtionship,

part/whole, origin/agent.

USE

's versus possessive determiner

's versus 'of the'

FORM

's or s'

/z/ /s/ /∂Z/

teachers in deciding which facts concerning the possessive will be taught and when

and how to do so.

Of course we can also use this three dimensional grammar framework to work

with vocabulary. There’s another well known exponent of teaching language from

a socio-constructivist perspective. We have mentioned her before, in our previous

unit. She is Tessa Woodward and now I would like to introduce you to her

examples and practical principles to bear in mind when working with everything

that can go into a lesson. Here we go!

Mandatory assignment 1 (deadline October 3rd )

Answer the following questions:

1- What’s the difference between reiteration and relexicalization?

2- In which way is Relexicalization related to Grice’s maxims of the Cooperative

Principle?

3- What is the usefulness of being aware of lexical cohesion for L2 learners?

4- Draw the three dimensional pie suggested by Freeman to present new language to

students providing an example of your own to illustrate it.

CLASSES AND PEOPLE

Reflect on the following statements:

Sometimes we forget that teachers can learn and students can teach.

Teachers need to learn how students are thinking about something already

before they can settle on the best starting point and way to proceed.

Students can help us teach better, if only we pay more attention to them.

Real learning doesn’t happen only at primary school. It goes on at all ages. Every

time students or teachers change groups, institutions or countries, there is always

a lot to learn about dress codes, punctuality, turn-taking and routines and rules of

the new setting. There is also a lot to learn about individuals, their memories,

projects and personalities. Some points will be made explicit by the institution or

by teachers, perhaps in pre-arrival information or in a group meeting before

starting lessons. Some other may be negotiated continually throughout the course.

Other may be less conscious of. They may remain largely unspoken. Woodward

suggests the following points to consider as some areas that are legitimate subject

matter for a lesson or part of one.

Time

Examples in this category are how long a lesson, a break, a day, a week is in the

place you work, how long students are used to spending on classroom tasks and

homework, how late and how early it is normal for teachers and students to arrive,

what happens to students and staff if they’re too late or too early, and how fast the

pace of the teaching is.

Territory

Questions of interest here are where staff and students are allowed to go, whether you

have a place to store your clothes or books; and what areas of rooms people are

allowed to decorate.

Clothing

There may be differences between schools and countries in how much it is normal to

cover or reveal, how different from other people you or your students may look, and

how status is marked by clothing.

Conduct

Issues here can be how noisy students are allowed to be, whether physical contact is

accepted, who you can talk to and look at, and whether students can help, cooperate,

compete, laugh, turn round, ask questions.

Resources

Things to learn about resources are: what belongs to whom, what you can touch or

use with or without permission, whether anything is dangerous and what happens if

someone breaks something. You need to know who has the keys and which of the

following are available or acceptable to work: word processors, newspapers, digital

dictionaries, puppets, masks, mobile phones, internet access.

Behaviour

Issues here are whether students are expected to regulate their own behaviour,

whether they work well alone, in pairs, how much they are allowed to be physically or

mentally present or absent, what the level of each student’s participation is and how

students can improve their own memory and confidence. Other issues worth

considering are how you and your students can put yourselves into a resourceful

frame of mind and actually enjoy classes. There is the issue too of how students

prefer to learn.

Rules Classes operate differently in terms of confidentiality, making decisions, commenting

on attitudes and behaviour, and supporting others.

People in the

class

The people in the classroom, the teachers and students, also form part of the content

of lessons in their own right. Students draw on their own interests, jobs and projects,

they express things they really want to say, and find out real things about each other.

Teacher use stories and examples from their own life experience. The groups

process(i.e. what is happening in terms of interactions, attitudes and behaviour

between people in the group) can itself become one of the central topics. Some

teachers and students who are used to working with language as an external subject

distanced from themselves will not like the ‘unmaking’ that is involved in using the

people in the room as human, personal subject matter. Others might feel that at last

things are becoming interesting and relevant to them and that this is the only way to

work with language, itself a social venture.

But what about language and it components?

When learning a new language people usually want to start translating and

collecting names for things. Learning words, the names for things in a new language is

very important and very natural. Words are instantly useful for making friends, getting

enough to eat, avoiding accidents and thus are a natural place to start, don’t you think?

Isolated words

Do you remember any personal strategy you used to have or you still

have to learn new useful words? Were you able to remember them

from the first time you saw them? Ok, that would be wishful thinking

for anybody!

Students often berate themselves for not being able to learn words the first time

they meet them. But there is a lot to learn about a new word. It may well take many

meetings before you know most of the following things about a new word.

Students need to learn the following:

What a word means.

There are several different sorts of word meaning to know about, such as a

word’s closest translations in your own language, and its metaphorical

meaning (e.g. Horsing around)

Part of meaning also comprises what the opposites are, what the synonyms

are, and the hyponyms. Meanings is also about how the word is the same

and different from other words in the same semantic field. Meaning also

involves considering other words that look or sound the same, and what

the connotations of the word are. Knowing about meaning includes

understanding what the range of the word is.

Can you find examples for every aspect of meaning of

‘problem’? Let’s make the most of its meaning:

p r o b l e m A problem Difficulty, trouble,

hassle, complication,

How to say a word

How to say the individual sounds, how to say the word in rhythm, with the

right mouth setting, and with the correct intonation in a number of moods

and voices, e.g. lovely or angrily.

Which words you find really difficult to pronounce.... a typical one is

‘communication’ isn’t it?

How to write it

How to shape the individual letters and join them up and whether to use

capital or small letters or a hyphen.

Morphology

What are the word’s constituent building blocks and its grammar or patterns? For

example, how to pluralise it (one horse, two horses, a herd of horses...) what its word class

is (noun, adjectives or verb, for instance) and how to change this, how to make plausible

new words from it, and where it and its parts come from.

Its use in context

What order it can be used in with other words. What its function is in a chain of words,

how fixed or free it is in combining with other words.

You see, there are many things we should make our students aware of every time they

come across an interesting new word, actually any word can be interesting when you start

to exploring its different possibilities. As you may have noticed already, what Woodward

suggests here is closely connected to the grammar pie by Freeman, can you see in which

way? Let’s analyse the word ‘problem’:

ups and downs,

snag, catch, fuss...

A problem that causes a delay or

prevents you from doing something

Hitch, setback,

hiccup, hurdle,

stumbling block,

hindrance

A complicated problem that makes it

hard for you to decide what to do

Dilemma, catch-22,

no-win situation,

vicious circle

Small problems that a new company,

product, system, etc has in the

beginning

Teething troubles

Now, but what about lexical phrases or grammatical patterns, including sentence types

and stretches of discourse. It is important to remember that, at some stage, we may need

to go into the kind of detail above with regard to whatever content we plan to include in

our lessons.

Groups of words

Since a language is made up of thousands of individual words, it might theoretically be

possible to learn a language by learning thousands of individual words, just as it may be

possible to become a teacher by learning thousands of individual teaching steps. ‘Chunking

up’, or enjoying sequences and patterns, starts happening naturally and very quickly,

however. Students will pick up multi-word chunks like ‘it’s the real thing’ , ‘Well,

basically,..’ or ‘Turn it on’ from ads, songs, teacher talk and other places. These word

groups can be noted, recognized and produced by learners as whole meaningful units

which are simply reeled off as if they were just a single word. These groups can include

quite long phrases such as, ‘One thing that really drives me crazy is....’ or shorter ones like:

‘the thing is...’

As long as they are helped with a meaningful setting and all the information and practise

they need, students can pick up these lexical phrases as easily in class as if they were

single words. They are thus a very useful thing to include in the language lessons.

Which chunks can we encourage our students to use with the phrase ‘ have a problem’ or

with its synonyms? How about these ones:

problem

HOW DO WE SAY IT?

(präb′ləm)

HOW DO WE WRITE IT?

problem

MORPHOLOGY

problematic

problematical

problematically

CONTEXT:

not formal or informal: neutral

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

a question proposed for solution or

consideration

Have a problem

Have difficulty/trouble with/doing sth

Be in (deep/ serious/ big) trouble

Be confronted with

Be faced with

Be up against

Have a lot on your plate

Not be out of the woods

Grammatical patterns

So far with Woodward, we have been taking words and groups of words as the starting

place for things to include in the language lesson. It’s time now to think about longer

stretches of language and thus, about grammar. For although it can be useful to learn ’have

difficulty’, as a word group, it takes you a lot further in life if you can pop this word group

into fuller sentences or utterances such as ‘I was having difficulty breathing!’ or You’ll be

in deep trouble if you do that!’.

The form and meaning of individual words, groups of words, sentences and utterances are

affected by their environment in longer chains of words or stretches of discourse. It’s

similar to the way flowers in a garden are affected in a soil type, temperature and rainfall.

We could say that grammar is to utterances and sentences as nature is to flowers. It is the

patterning influence or rule-maker. It says which flower can bloom at a certain time of the

year. Students will often start noticing similarity in:

Form, by which it is meant look and sound or identical first lines of new

paragraphs and word order and also in meaning.

As a learner looks through a transcription of a conversation or other kinds of text,

or listen to target language talk, patterns or similarities of these kinds will readily be

noticed. This is useful because the patterns can act rather like templates from which we

can turn out lots of similar versions for our own use. So, for example, when we learn the

basic meaning and form of the word group, we can use it to express other similar phrases.

We need to select for teaching and learning the most generative, usable patterns,

structures or ‘rules’ we can find. Finding them used to be a matter of one’s own intuition

and recollection plus the invention of examples, or of looking in the textbooks and

coursebooks to see what the authors, also working from intuition, memory or habit

suggested. These days, people interested in describing and categorizing language and

seeing how language works, can run huge numbers of texts (samples of natural writing

and speaking known as ‘corpus’) through a computer program (known as a concordance’)

to see which patterns are most widespread in samples of actual native speaker data. From

these we can gather pattern which are really of proven use. Of course intuition is still

useful as we need to consider how current and widespread a pattern is in the speech

community that our particular learners are destined for. There follow a few brief ideas on

the kinds of patterns that can be included in language lessons:

Normal word order (Subject, Verb, Object) as well as marked English word order.

This is so that students whose language has a different normal word order can

express their thoughts clearly in English.

Working on SVO pattern entails dealing with noun phrases every bit as much as

verb phrases, so it’s important not to spend a disproportionate amount of time on

the latter.

Work on four basic sentence types, e.g. declarative, interrogative, imperative, and

exclamative. Work on the form of these sentence types needs to be coupled with

work on meaning and use, since we can use a declarative not just to declare some

information but also to complain, request or ask for information depending on

their circumstance and according to the speaker or writer’s intention and the

listener or readers’ perception. As always concentrating on form cannot be

divorced for long from meaning and use.

There are a number of reasons why it is useful to study language in sentences.

Sentences are short, easy to write up on the board, well-described in grammar

books and provide a secure framework for teachers and learners. Sentence level

work also has disadvantages though. Sentences treat language as if it was a

selection of discrete units almost divorce from language user meaning. Working

with separate sentences doesn’t help learners to string discourse together. It’s

important therefore to supplement work on patterning or grammar at the level of

the individual sentence with work on stretches of language, also known as

discourse of text. Apart from all the patterning that is already happening inside

words and lexical phrases, and in sentences or single utterances, stretches of

discourse or text have their own pattern too. When talking or writing, for example

there are acceptable and non-acceptable ways in every language of doing the

following:

Indicating the topic of discourse, e.g. in speaking, ‘Erm, about this money

you mentioned....’, or in writing, ‘This article sets out to ....’

Indicating a block of ideas that hang together.

Indicating change,

Suspension

Hanging things together physically using changes of vocabulary or

pronoun,

Hanging ideas together intellectually by putting them in an interesting,

logical or chronological order,

Taking turns, pausing and winding up...

Please, if there are any of these concepts that you don’t understand and you would like to

know what they mean, don’t hesitate to ask me!

Discourse or text is thus a perfectly respectable thing to choose to work with your

students and can be started at beginner level with the introduction of the word, ‘and’!

Functions

Another category of language we can work on in class is functional language, i.e.

language grouped by what it’s used for. The ‘functions’ selected for study in EFL

coursebooks are often clusters of language different in form but similar in purpose.

Coursebook functions often end in –ing, e.g. thanking or inviting. We can invite someone

with any of the following pieces of language, which are known as exponents of the

function’:

Would you like a ...........?

Fancy a .........?

X requests the pleasure of.....,

How about.....?, and more.

There may be literally a hundred of ways of inviting someone depending on factors

such as the situation and role relationship. We need to know their form, meaning and use,

at sentence and utterance level and when embedded in discourse. Below are a few

guidelines if you are thinking of including functional language in your classes:

Don’t just teach positive functions such as accepting, thanking and

complimenting, but also teach functions such as turning down an invitation

and expressing displeasure.

Keep teaching plenty of vocabulary to go with the functional exponents and

help students to sort all the functional phrases into learnable groups

whether by using formal similarity, style register or range.

Don’t just teach short functions like blessing someone when they sneeze or

the initial exchanges involved in a conversation, but remember to include

larger, longer functional areas. Work on natural combinations of functions,

such as greeting someone and then going on to enquire about health and

recent adventures.

Choose functional areas that help students to combat their expressive

limitations by for example, helping them to hesitate or draw someone else

out in conversation.

Do more than just intuit examples of language which will fit each functional

area. If we take a topic such as disagreeing, for example, and a setting such

as meeting of colleagues at work, we may dream up phrases such as, ‘I’m

awfully sorry but I can’t agree with you there’ or ‘I think you are right to a

certain extent’. If we taped some real meetings and noted down the actual

phrases used, we might find that ‘Yeah, but....’ is the most common

exponent of disagreement in a particular meeting. Again, corpora and

concordances can inform our work here.

Functions, as met and discuss in some EFL coursebooks, can seem a rather narrow

way of working on language if the exponents are displayed as brief, decontextualized

phrases. But if we are careful to include the kind of work above, setting them in time, place

and role relationship, this can be an interesting and useful category of language to include

in language lessons.

The original meaning of the term function is ‘purpose or use’. Thus we can ask the

‘function’ of any unit of language, e.g. What is the function of this paragraph in this essay?

Or What is the function of this letter seen from the newspaper editor’s point of view? We

can look not just at coursebook functions and not just at what is said or written in any

conversation or text, but at what is done with what is said or written.

Practical principles for teaching words, words groups, grammatical patterns and functions

Teachers and students will decide to teach and learn some words and patterns

perhaps because they appear in the coursebook, they occur frequently in an exam students

are to sit soon or are of special interest to student’s academic, business or leisure pursuits.

Other words and patterns will be picked up or acquired without special study. If we want

to plan for the first kind of learning, we need to work through the following stages in our

lessons: exposure, noticing, remembering, and use and refinement of language. We have

already mentioned this in our previous unit, I hope you remember! We’ll take these four

types of work one by one, explaining what they mean and suggesting guidelines or

activities for each.

A. Exposure to language

To ensure that the students have the same chance to meet new language, whether

it consists of individual words, word groups, patterns within sentences or texts and talks,

we need to plan plenty of exposure so that students can encounter it in any or all of the

following places:

In mini-contexts such us lists, at the back of the coursebook and their units,

on the board taken from texts that will be read later, in their notebook,

spoken by the teacher or by fellow students

In short constructed spoken or written texts including one short

meaningful sentence or exchange, or other short texts deliberately under

or just at the level of the students

In elaborated and supported texts (original authentic texts, containing

paraphrases, synonyms and other supplements such us glossaries and

pictures to aid understanding

In longer and in increasingly unsupported stretches of discourse

In a variety of channels such us radio, TV, teacher or other language user

talk including peer talk, faxes, e-mail, films, letters, and in a range of graded

and unsupported text types such us readers, unabridged stories, dialogue

journals and oral presentations

There are many potential language items and patterns to meet while learning a

language. Once met, however, rather than trying to arrange for prolonged and detailed

focus on each of thousands of words, phrases, patterns, functions and sentence and

discourse types, the main idea in many classes is for the teacher to help students to adopt

useful strategies for working with the language they are exposed to. This involves

encouraging students to notice, learn, use and refine language.

B. Noticing

While working on words, groups of words, grammatical patterns and functions, plan to

teach students how to notice therefore, meaning and use. This will reinforce what is

already happening at an unconscious level and also encourages students to branch out and

do more learning on their own. It starts a useful habit.

When planning your work on noticing, you’ll need to include how things look, how they

sound, what they mean and how they work in context. Though they overlap in reality, let

us deal with them separately.

NOTICING FORM_ THE LOOK

Once the students have encountered a new item of language, they will need to notice what

it looks like, i.e. its spelling, capitals, hyphens, word order, punctuation or layout, what

stays the same and what changes as the language is used. They need to get strong images

of these forms.

These ideas will help:

Associating the target language with a similar form or feature in the

mother tongue.

Pulling the item out of its context and demonstrating, perhaps by using a

table, which parts of it are fixed and what sorts of words and patterns go

before and after the target language at phrase and sentence level or

discourse level.

Transforming the item back and forth, for example, from mother tongue to

target language, formal to informal language, active to passive,

interlanguage to reformulated natural English, or other appropriate states

so that similarities and differences in visual form are thrown up and shown

up.

NOTICING FORM- THE SOUND

In order to be able to say new language, students will need to notice the number of spoken

syllables, initial and final sounds, contractions, stress patterns, pauses, and intonation and

so on. This can be helped by:

Associating the new language with similar sounds in the mother tongue.

Writing down the sounds of the new items with sound symbols from the

mother tongue.

Using rhymes, chants and songs, colours, mime and symbols.

Forward-chaining.

Back-chaining. This gets rid of fears about managing to get through to the

end of a difficult utterance since .... you’ve already got there!

Again, transformations and reformulation as above.

NOTICING MEANING

Some students will want to hear or see language clearly at length and in context before

they work on meaning. Others will need to notice the precise meaning closely before they

want to focus on form. Yet other students will want to do both simultaneously. Whichever

type of work students want to do first or you plan in first, go to the level of meaning the

students require. Don’t go too much further as it will confuse and bore many students. The

new item or patterns in the target language can be:

Translating verbally into the mother tongue, from mother tongue to target

language or back and forward between the two

Defined verbally in the target language

Explained by means of pictures, diagrams, sounds, mime. Video,

metaphors, flowcharts

Partly guessed from context, layout or genre clues

Distinguished from words or patterns in the mother tongue that look and/

or sound the same but actually have a slightly or totally different meaning

Partly guessed from their constituent parts

Explained by reference to the semantic category they belong to, their

hyponyms and super-ordinates, qualities, opposites, synonyms, sequences

Analysed by the components of the meaning

Understood by discussing connotation and association

WAYS OF AIDING NOTICING: PHYSICAL STORAGE

A lot of the ‘noticing’ mentioned above can happen during work on physical storage since

this is when students concentrate on transferring information about a target language

item into their notebooks. Some examples are these:

Lists: for short items students can write one or two lists of items (with the

target item on the left, say, and the translation on the right). Other

information can be internalized if, for example, all the items in a certain

category (such us nouns or verbs) are stored together in a block, or on

different coloured paper. Symbols can be used to record whether patterns

are F (formal) or N (neutral), etc.

Cards, tables, Mind maps, Scales, posters, flowcharts, can also be used for

physical storage.

Do you think that it is useful to keep a record of all the vocabulary we

are learning?

What if students think they don’t need to do it?

Would you try to encourage them all the same? Or you would respect

their decision?

C. Remembering (or mental storage)

If the students use the physical storage systems mentioned above this will help

most of them to start getting the language into memory. Most remembering is helped by

both the frequency of meeting the target items and the quality and depth of processing of

the items. More ideas for both of these aids to memory are described below.

FREQUENCY OF MEETING.

Although features of some words, patterns and discourse types are doubtless learnt first

because they are of importance to the learner, other items may need as many as 16

meetings before they are well and truly in the learner’s repertoire. This means planning

lots of varied practice. Here are some ideas:

Grouping or organizing items.

Ordering, by letter, chronology, size or other criteria that can make sense

to the student.

Rote learning: copying, repeating silently, or aloud in different voices. It

can be more fun if it involves different activity types such as jazz chants,

songs, poems, short talks or writing texts within differently shaped

outlines.

Reference work.

Serial practice, reading faster and faster each time, or dictations involving

both languages,

Matching exercises

Spot the difference exercises.

D. Use and refinement

The fourth type of work you will need to plan is use and refinement. By trying to

recall language and use it, learners will be able to gauge whether they have really noticed

and learnt the form, meaning and use.

If they find they have not, they can try to get closer on all these points. Use of new

language can thus involve all the categories of activity mentioned above as well as:

Tests

Reconstructions of texts from notes followed by comparison with the

original

Essay writing, talks and presentations

Reading and listening comprehension

Rewriting or restating events, ideas or arguments in different moods,

times, styles, channels or for different purposes

Face-to-face interaction and negotiation on tasks that are designed to help

tease out form, meaning and use at ever increasing levels of subtlety

Personal research where students come back to class with examples of

language items found in real situations (such as on soup tin labels or in

newspaper articles or in the lyrics of pop songs)

Personal reflection where students look back through past work in order

to make a list of, for example, ‘my favourite mistakes’

The process that is indicated in this phase is recall, generalisation and transfer,

followed by further noticing and refinement of understanding. The feedback, so vital for

helping students to notice when further refinement is necessary, can come from the

students themselves, peers, teachers or other language users. Time must be allowed for

this and students should be encouraged to see its importance.

We have looked at four really important elements of learning new language: exposure,

noticing, remembering or mental storage, and now, use and refinement. These different

elements work together as shown

Exposure

Use

Noticing

Learning (and more learning / refinement)

Taken from: Designing Sequences of Work for the Language Classroom by

Woodward, Tessa.. Cambridge University Press. 2001.(page 91)

The four elements

In language learning then, first we need some exposure to the language, then we

need to do some noting. Much of the noticing will be at the unconscious level and teachers

try to make it conscious. Some fast learners or learners who are highly motivated will be

able almost straight away to use the language they have been exposed to. Other students

may be exposed to lots of new language and may even notice things about it, both

consciously and unconsciously, but because they are tired or unmotivated, or motivated

NOT to remember or learn, or because they are working with language they perceive as

being difficult, will not be able to remember or use it. They will need lots of motivating and

many moves through the noticing, remembering, using and refining cycles before they feel

they have got the hang of it. I have put the ‘use‘ stage slightly to one side because it is also

possible to use language again and again without noticing much about it or caring that you

are using it wrongly, thus without refining it.

Although the order of the stages of exposure and noticing seem logical. Learning and

refinement and use happen in many different orders and simultaneously in the experience

of the learner. It’s highly unlikely that all the stages of work mentioned above can be got

through for all the new language in one lesson! It is likely, however, that most of the stages

are necessary over time for new language to be learned, and thus they need to be planned

in.

Mandatory assignment 2 (deadline October 14th)

1- Choose a word and analyze it according to Tessa Woodward’s principles as in the

example of the word “problem”. The analysis has to be as complete as possible.

2- Take one of the coursebooks you are using to teach, or ask for one if you are not

teaching, and analyse it in terms of the 4 stages presented by Tessa Woodward. Is

the unit poor in exposure (no much reading or listening?) Does it have a section for

noticing? (Sometimes they are called Grammar/Vocabulary Spot) etc. How much

learning and refinement it contains? What about use? Make a complete analysis.

Teaching with technology

Before starting reading some useful

information about technology, written by

Kellie Dearman, (and from time to time some

comments of mine) I would like to know how

you feel about it. How often do you use

technological devices? Is it available at the

school/s you are working? How do students

react whenever you vary their classes? Do

you think it may improve learning? How

much?

Methods and Means

Six years ago, the internet was limited both in what it could do and in who

used it. Many people had heard the word but did not have a clue what it was.

Today, teachers have not only been exposed to the internet but also have access at

home or at school. In fact, some schools are being retrofitted to place the internet

in every classroom. Even more exciting than this is the newest technology:

Wireless. A school can purchase a 'Portable Classroom'. This consists of laptops

networked together, allowing students to work at their desks WITHOUT wires. If

the laptops are networked to a printer, students can print from their personal

computer to the classroom printer. Imagine the possibilities! Yes, I know what you

are thinking: we are in Argentina. However, this is true in some school in BA, and

let us be positive.... some day it will be part of most schools. That’s why we need to

get to know the different possibilities that technology brings us.

How to Integrate Technology

*Research

Research is the number one reason to use the internet in education.

One concern which will be discussed later is the quality of the information

found online. However, with some advance 'footwork' of your own, along with

stringent recording requirements for sources, you can help the student determine

whether their information is from a reliable source. This is also an important

lesson for them to learn for research in college and beyond.

The possibilities for assessment of research on the internet are endless,

many of them involving other forms of technology. Some ideas include essays,

debates, panel discussions, role play, video presentation of information, web page

creation and PowerPoint(tm) presentations.

*Creating a Website

A second project that can help integrate technology while truly getting the

students excited about school is website creation. You can publish a website with

your class about information the students have researched or personally created.

Examples of what this page might focus on include a collection of student-created

short stories, a collection of student-created poems, results and information from

science fair projects, historical 'letters' (students write as if they were historical

figures), even critiques of novels could be included. To see what a group of

students can really do, visit Why is Mona Lisa Smiling?

How would you go about doing this? Many places offer free websites. First,

you can check with your school to see if they have a website, and whether you

could create a page which would be linked to that site. If that is not available,

Geocities is just one example where you can sign up and get room to upload your

information onto your own page. Other ideas are, for example to built a blog for the

school or the English department you are part of, students post their written

works, questions, puzzles for other students. This is really rewarding, I personally

have experience this at Modelo School in San Juan, a place I miss a lot!

How hard is it to learn? HTML, the basic language of the internet, is not that

difficult to learn at all. Here is a great HTML Workshop to help you along. You will

need some sort of editor to make your life easy. If you have Macs at school, read

these reviews to learn more about two programs, one of which your school

probably already has--Adobe Page Mill and Claris Home Page. HTML editors really

take the headache out of creating pages. If you are using a geocities as mentioned

above, they have a text editor which you can use to help you create your site along

with a lot of preformatted pages.

Online Assessment

A newer area of the internet to explore is online assessment. You can create

your own tests online through your own website. These require knowledge of the

internet, so many new users might not be quite ready for this. Although, it might be

a great way to interact with Advanced Placement students over vacations and the

summer if you still have some energies!!. In the near future, there will be many

companies who will offer not only online testing but also instant grading of exams.

Does it ring a bell?

Concerns and Issues

It is important to consider problems that might arise when

integrating the internet into the classroom. Talking about

this may be not new to you, since you have decided to do

your studies long distance. Have you ever had technical

problems? How did you solve them?

Concerns

1. Time

Objection: Teachers hardly have enough time to do all that is expected of them as it is.

Where do we find the time to implement this into the curriculum without 'wasting time'?

Possible Solution: Teachers have to do what works for them. The internet, just like any other

technology, is a tool. Many times information can only be passed on through books and lectures.

However, if you feel that integrating the internet is important, just try one project each year.

2. Knowledge

Objection: Learning about new technology and the internet is confusing. You will be

teaching with something you may not completely understand.

Possible Solution: There are some online help sources. WebTeacher is a great place to get

started with online tutorials.

3. Quality

Objection: Quality on the internet is not guaranteed. It is easy to run a biased and

inaccurate website with no regulation whatsoever.

Possible Solution: First, when you are thinking about having your students research a topic, do a

search to make sure the information is available. A lot of time is wasted searching for obscure

topics on the web. Second, review websites either on your own or with your students. Here is a

great site with information about evaluating web resources. http://www.fno.org/jun97/eval.html

4. Plagiarism

Objection: When students research off the web to produce a traditional research paper, it

is often difficult for teachers to tell if it is plagiarized. Not only that, but students can BUY

papers off the web.

Possible Solution: First, educate yourself. Find out what's available. Here are some resources

with which to start. Also, a solution that works well is oral defences. Students answer questions I

pose and must be able to explain their findings. If nothing else, they have to learn what they have

stolen (or bought) off of the internet.

5. Cheating

Objection: There is nothing stopping students from cheating with each other while on the

internet, especially if you are giving online assessments.

Possible Solution: First, cheating off of each other has always existed, but the internet seems to

make it easier. Many schools make the sending of emails and instant messages against the

school code because of possible abuses. Therefore, if students are caught using these during an

assessment, they would not only be guilty of cheating but also of violating school rules.

Second, if online assessments are given, watch students carefully because they could switch

back and forth between the test and web pages that might give them answers.

If you are interested in getting to know more about

cheating visit this webpage suggested by

Dearman:

http://712educators.about.com/od/cheating/Cheati

ng_and_Academic_Integrity.htm

6. Parental and Community Objections

Objection: The internet is full of items that most parents would rather keep away from

their children: pornography, foul language, and subversive information are examples.

Parents and community members might fear their children would be able to access this

information if given the opportunity to use the internet at school. Also, if students' work is

to be published on the internet, it might be necessary to gain a parent's approval.

Possible Solution: Unlike public libraries, school libraries have the ability to restrict what is viewed

on the internet. Students caught accessing information that is questionable can be subject to

disciplinary action. Libraries would be wise to make sure that computers with internet access are

easily observable in order to monitor student activity. Classrooms pose a different problem,

however. If students are using the internet, the teacher needs to check and make sure they are

not accessing questionable material. Fortunately, teachers can look at the 'history' of what was

accessed on the internet. If there is any question whether a student was viewing something that

was inappropriate, it is a simple matter to check the history file and see which pages were

viewed.

As far as publishing student work, a simple permission form should work. Check with your school

district to see what their policy is. Even if they do not have a set policy, you might be wise to get a

parent's approval, especially if the student is a minor.

Is it Worth it?

Do all of the objections mean that we should not use the internet in the classroom? No. However,

we must address these concerns before we fully integrate the internet into the classroom. The

effort is definitely worth it because the possibilities are endless!

END OF UNIT 3