Spoken Discourse Three

A pleasingly practical unit, this one, so not much in the way of notes here, either. I would suggest, though, that the highest rank of discourse being the Lesson is arbitrary and artificial, and ignores concepts of curriculum planning and progression. The claim that it is possible to show ‘objectively’ where ‘one topic ends and another begins’ is also fairly brave.

Teaching as I do in Japanese high schools, the one thought that kept recurring to me throughout this unit is that all these observations are fairly strongly culturally dependent, and that, in my experience at least, the role of non-verbal responses has thus far been damagingly overlooked. How to analyze an ‘exchange’ when one side remains resolutely silent? I’ve seen classes where a transcript marked up for IRF would look like this –

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

At least in the absence of non-verbal notation, and even then…

And as for McCarthy and Carter’s final question as to whether ‘our concerns with spoken grammar [should] only begin at upper-intermediate or advanced levels’ I can only suggest that, at least at the levels I’m currently teaching, most meta-linguistic discussion is like trying to get someone to make a copy of the Mona Lisa using fingerpaints. The students just don’t have the necessarily precise tools for it to work, either linguistically or conceptually.