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Abstract: This essay tends to demonstrate the practical application of discourse analysis in language teaching. By exploring the rationale and evaluated the classroom activities, it is easy to see how discourse analysis works in language teaching.
Key words: discourse analysis; schema theory
Task 1 Reading
Pre-reading activities
1. Have students divide into groups of four.
2. Have two students in each group interview their classmates randomly and put the following questions on board for their reference.
Questions: Do you think it’s a shame to talk about your own failure? What do you count as a failure in your life? Can you recall any failure that upset you very much? What effect did that failure have on you? What do you count as a success?
3. The third student in each group is to note down the interview. The last student is to summarize their survey by referring to his or her own observation as well as the notes taken by his group member.
4. Two to three groups are to be selected to present their survey.
While-reading
1. Have students open their books and turn to page 98.
2. Have students skim the text ‘Turning Failure into Success’, use context clues, common sense and their knowledge of the world to speculate about the possible answers to the questions. (top-down process)
Questions: What positive aspects does Vicky now see in that experience? What does “two-valued orientation” have to do with success and failure? What point does the author want to make with the famous politician? What point is the author illustrating with the story of her teenage experience with a job interview?
3. Ask students to find the main idea of each part. At the same time, students workout the meaning of unknown words, phrases and analyze the grammar points, coherence and cohesion in the text. (bottom-up process)
4. Have students pay attention to the paragraph 2 and 3 and analyze these two paragraphs, find out how the author presents her argument.
Rationale
1. The application of schema theory
Schema theory suggests that readers have different conceptual frameworks, such as a set of background knowledge including culture, beliefs, expectations, values, and other past experiences which help the readers understand the underlying meaning of the text. As Clarke & Silberstein propose (1977: 136-137), “…Skill in reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world”. In the pre-reading activity, the teacher employs students’ schemata by asking students to do the survey, and summarize their survey in the class which arouses their interests in the reading, and students predicate what they are going to read next. While during the reading, through the designed reading activities, students use their schemata to fulfill the reading tasks. 2. The interactive reading model
Reading process is very complicated. It involves three reading models: top-down model, bottom up model and the recently emerging interactive reading model. According to Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000, 119), “More recently, approaches that take an interactive view of reading require an integration and combination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches to describe the reading process.” “…the reader needs to recruit his or her prior knowledge and prior reading experience, apply knowledge of writing conventions, and consider the purpose of reading in order to engage in top-down processing… at the same time, the reader needs t recruit his/her linguistic knowledge and various reading strategies in order to decode the written text through bottom up processing.” (Celce-Murcia, 2000, 119-120) “
Evaluation
Warm-up activity is always served as preludes before more serious classroom teaching is introduced. The success of teaching and learning a new language item depends heavily upon the carefully prepared warming-up activity. The pre-reading activity the teacher designed here was very effective in getting students into the right mood before starting the new task. While during the reading, the teacher asked students to skim the text, find the answer to the questions and get the main idea of each part. During this section, the teacher employed both top-down and bottom-up approaches, mainly focused on different discourse structure. The teacher helped students analyze the features of different discourse structure; work out the outline of the text.
Task 2 Speaking
1. Leading-in: the teacher write some questions on the board for students to discuss in pairs: When was your last job interview? How was your last job interview? What advice would you give someone going for an interview?
2. Ask students to read the advert to find out what jobs are being advertised.
3. Divide students into two parts. There are 20 candidates and 15 interviewers. Tell them that they are going to role-play an interview.
4. Candidates work in 4 small groups. The teacher asks them to read the “During the interview” notes.
5. Interviewers work in 3 small groups. They read the “Interview procedure” notes.
6. Each group will have one representative to role-play the interview in front of the class. So there will be four candidates and three interviewers. Three interviewers will sit behind a table. Students will role-play the entire interview. The teacher will apply politeness and cooperative principle to analyze students’ language errors, their positive or negative body language and manner. 7. Finally, interviewer will report briefly on whether they would give their candidate a job and why / why not.
Rationale
1. Give students “authentic task” to practice language.
Since Chinese students are learning English in a foreign language context. Giving them authentic task to practice is very important. “Job interview” is the task that every student may encounter in his/her life, so understanding the interview procedures and skills will be great help for the students. Role-play gives learners the opportunity to be creative with language and simulates real life interaction.
2. Combine students’ linguistic ability with sociocultural considerations
Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000, 169) suggests that “The linguistic features may have a serious impact on successful production of spoken discourse. Yet, it seems that sociocultural norms may play an even more significant role in successful interaction.”
“The cooperative principle proposed by Grice (1975) is particularly strong in maintaining the flow of exchange between speaker and hearer.”(Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000, 171). When students do the role-playing “job interview”, they need to adhere to cooperative principle as well as politeness principle to choose appropriate words, body language and manner in order to make a good impression on their interviewers
Evaluation
In the leading-in activity, the teacher aroused students’ interests by asking some questions, students used their previous knowledge and experience forming some ideas in their mind. In the candidates groups, students anticipate questions they might be asked and practice their responses. They also discussed the questions they are going to ask the interviewers. In the interviewers groups, they prepared questions to ask about the candidate’s experience and qualifications. During the role-playing, the teacher observed their speaking, body language and manner. According to Grice (1975), in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share a cooperative principle. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers. The principle can be explained by four maxims. The teacher observed when candidates answered the questions, they did not simply say “yes” or “no”, which adheres to the maxim of quantity. When they were asked to describe themselves, they focused their answers on their background and a few professional and personal accomplishments which obey the maxim of quality and relevance.
Conclusion
Through the implementing of the tasks, it is believed that teachers can use discourse analysis to achieve more in their teaching practices. Students also can benefit from using discourse analysis to explore what a real language is and to achieve the goals of using language for communication.
Key words: discourse analysis; schema theory
Task 1 Reading
Pre-reading activities
1. Have students divide into groups of four.
2. Have two students in each group interview their classmates randomly and put the following questions on board for their reference.
Questions: Do you think it’s a shame to talk about your own failure? What do you count as a failure in your life? Can you recall any failure that upset you very much? What effect did that failure have on you? What do you count as a success?
3. The third student in each group is to note down the interview. The last student is to summarize their survey by referring to his or her own observation as well as the notes taken by his group member.
4. Two to three groups are to be selected to present their survey.
While-reading
1. Have students open their books and turn to page 98.
2. Have students skim the text ‘Turning Failure into Success’, use context clues, common sense and their knowledge of the world to speculate about the possible answers to the questions. (top-down process)
Questions: What positive aspects does Vicky now see in that experience? What does “two-valued orientation” have to do with success and failure? What point does the author want to make with the famous politician? What point is the author illustrating with the story of her teenage experience with a job interview?
3. Ask students to find the main idea of each part. At the same time, students workout the meaning of unknown words, phrases and analyze the grammar points, coherence and cohesion in the text. (bottom-up process)
4. Have students pay attention to the paragraph 2 and 3 and analyze these two paragraphs, find out how the author presents her argument.
Rationale
1. The application of schema theory
Schema theory suggests that readers have different conceptual frameworks, such as a set of background knowledge including culture, beliefs, expectations, values, and other past experiences which help the readers understand the underlying meaning of the text. As Clarke & Silberstein propose (1977: 136-137), “…Skill in reading depends on the efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world”. In the pre-reading activity, the teacher employs students’ schemata by asking students to do the survey, and summarize their survey in the class which arouses their interests in the reading, and students predicate what they are going to read next. While during the reading, through the designed reading activities, students use their schemata to fulfill the reading tasks. 2. The interactive reading model
Reading process is very complicated. It involves three reading models: top-down model, bottom up model and the recently emerging interactive reading model. According to Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000, 119), “More recently, approaches that take an interactive view of reading require an integration and combination of both top-down and bottom-up approaches to describe the reading process.” “…the reader needs to recruit his or her prior knowledge and prior reading experience, apply knowledge of writing conventions, and consider the purpose of reading in order to engage in top-down processing… at the same time, the reader needs t recruit his/her linguistic knowledge and various reading strategies in order to decode the written text through bottom up processing.” (Celce-Murcia, 2000, 119-120) “
Evaluation
Warm-up activity is always served as preludes before more serious classroom teaching is introduced. The success of teaching and learning a new language item depends heavily upon the carefully prepared warming-up activity. The pre-reading activity the teacher designed here was very effective in getting students into the right mood before starting the new task. While during the reading, the teacher asked students to skim the text, find the answer to the questions and get the main idea of each part. During this section, the teacher employed both top-down and bottom-up approaches, mainly focused on different discourse structure. The teacher helped students analyze the features of different discourse structure; work out the outline of the text.
Task 2 Speaking
1. Leading-in: the teacher write some questions on the board for students to discuss in pairs: When was your last job interview? How was your last job interview? What advice would you give someone going for an interview?
2. Ask students to read the advert to find out what jobs are being advertised.
3. Divide students into two parts. There are 20 candidates and 15 interviewers. Tell them that they are going to role-play an interview.
4. Candidates work in 4 small groups. The teacher asks them to read the “During the interview” notes.
5. Interviewers work in 3 small groups. They read the “Interview procedure” notes.
6. Each group will have one representative to role-play the interview in front of the class. So there will be four candidates and three interviewers. Three interviewers will sit behind a table. Students will role-play the entire interview. The teacher will apply politeness and cooperative principle to analyze students’ language errors, their positive or negative body language and manner. 7. Finally, interviewer will report briefly on whether they would give their candidate a job and why / why not.
Rationale
1. Give students “authentic task” to practice language.
Since Chinese students are learning English in a foreign language context. Giving them authentic task to practice is very important. “Job interview” is the task that every student may encounter in his/her life, so understanding the interview procedures and skills will be great help for the students. Role-play gives learners the opportunity to be creative with language and simulates real life interaction.
2. Combine students’ linguistic ability with sociocultural considerations
Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000, 169) suggests that “The linguistic features may have a serious impact on successful production of spoken discourse. Yet, it seems that sociocultural norms may play an even more significant role in successful interaction.”
“The cooperative principle proposed by Grice (1975) is particularly strong in maintaining the flow of exchange between speaker and hearer.”(Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000, 171). When students do the role-playing “job interview”, they need to adhere to cooperative principle as well as politeness principle to choose appropriate words, body language and manner in order to make a good impression on their interviewers
Evaluation
In the leading-in activity, the teacher aroused students’ interests by asking some questions, students used their previous knowledge and experience forming some ideas in their mind. In the candidates groups, students anticipate questions they might be asked and practice their responses. They also discussed the questions they are going to ask the interviewers. In the interviewers groups, they prepared questions to ask about the candidate’s experience and qualifications. During the role-playing, the teacher observed their speaking, body language and manner. According to Grice (1975), in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share a cooperative principle. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers. The principle can be explained by four maxims. The teacher observed when candidates answered the questions, they did not simply say “yes” or “no”, which adheres to the maxim of quantity. When they were asked to describe themselves, they focused their answers on their background and a few professional and personal accomplishments which obey the maxim of quality and relevance.
Conclusion
Through the implementing of the tasks, it is believed that teachers can use discourse analysis to achieve more in their teaching practices. Students also can benefit from using discourse analysis to explore what a real language is and to achieve the goals of using language for communication.