Transcript MCLTH Chapter 3

Chapter 3
Communicating in
the Classroom
In this chapter we
explore:
 The process of learning to communicate
 The nature of communication
 The informational-cognitive purpose of
communication
 The discourse that results from using
communicative drills
 Developing information-exchange tasks
 Non-Atlas roles for instructors
Learning to
Communicate
 In 1972 Savignon published a study that
compared three groups learning French in
a first-semester college classroom.
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Group1 received classical ALM training 4 days
and one lab day per week.
Group 2 received the same ALM training 4 days
and one cultural studies day per week.
Group 3 received ALM training, but lab day was
devoted to training in communication.
Savignon’s tests
 Savignon subsequently gave students from
all groups a test of communicative
competence that involved 4 kinds of
activities.

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Discussion with a native speaker
Interview with a French person
A monologue on a topic
Narration
 In addition, all students were given the
College Entrance Examination Board
(CEEB) tests for listening and reading in
French
Results from Savignon’s
study (1998)
Group
N
CEEB
CEEB Evaluation
listening reading
of Oral
Skills
Test of
Communicative
competence
ALM
only
15
6.67
6.00
14.80
34.27
Culture 15
6.20
6.67
15.87
44.27
Comm. 12
9.00
8.08
19.92
66.00
F-ratio
1.11
0.56
3.98
p<.05
8.54
p<.001
Results continued…
 The learners in the third group, the
“communication” group, scored
significantly higher than the others
on the tests of communicative
competence.
 The control ALM group scored quite
low on the tests of communicative
competence.
Practice makes perfect
 One learns to communicate by practicing
communication.
As Savignon states,
“Those students who had been given
the opportunity to use their linguistic
knowledge for real communication were
able to speak French. The others were
not.”
(1983, pp.78-79)
Other studies
 Hatch (1978a) suggests that during
communication, learners “negotiate” and even
“regulate” the kind of input they receive so
that they obtain input suited to their individual
needs.
 Swain (1985) argues that communicative
production encourages learners to attend to
input better since they themselves need to
use language they are hearing around them.
 Others suggest that some aspects of grammar
and syntax cannot be acquired through
everyday communication (Sato, 1986).
Language ability
 Communicative language ability-the
ability to express one’s self and to
understand others-develops as
learners engage in communication
and not as a result of habit formation
with grammatical items.
Communication and
communicative language
ability
 The act of communication in most
settings involves the expression,
interpretation, and negotiation of
meaning (Savignon, 1998).
 A person wishes to express an idea to
someone else and does so.
 The other person must understand
both the message and the intent of
the message.
Expressions
 Sometimes interpretation is partial,
and some negotiation is needed.

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
I’m sorry. Did you say…?
I’m not sure what you mean.
I don’t get what you’re telling me.
What are you getting at?
Say what?
Communication
breakdowns are likely
 Learners might not have the
resources to express themselves
easily or to interpret a speaker of the
second language.

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Missing vocabulary
Missing grammar
Pronunciation is a problem
An example
 Leeman Guthrie (1984) provides an
excellent example of an exchange
between a classroom learner and his
instructor in which a problem in
communicating an idea leads to
negotiating the meaning.
 Both the instructor and the learner
are negotiating meaning.
 I: Roger, vous venez de faire la
conaissance d’un Français. Quelles sont
vos impressions?
 R: Ah… c’est…. C’est ne Français typique.
 I: Il n’était pas typique?
 R: Ne personne est typique
 I: Personne n’est typique? C’est à dire qu’il
n’est pas posible de généraliser, cést ça?
 R: Oui.
English translation
 I: Roger, you have just met a French
person. What are your impressions?
 R: Ah…. It is.. It is no typical French.
 I: He wasn’t typical?
 R: No person is typical.
 I: Nobody is typical? That is to say
that it isn’t possible to generalize, is
that so?
 R: Yes.
Analysis of example
 Roger realizes from the instructor’s
response that he must reformulate his
utterance, and say it in another way.
 Eventually the two work out what Roger
means to say.
 Both Roger and the instructor demonstrate
a certain strategic competence: Instead of
abandoning the idea, they attempt to get it
across in another way.
Negotiation
 Although negotiation occurs as a result of
partial interpretation and incomplete
comprehension, it can also be a natural
part of a communicative exchange.
 There are many everyday scenarios during
which we negotiate meaning.
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Getting the best price when trading in a car
Consulting a sales clerk when buying shoes
(comfort, style, price)
Purposes of
communication
 The psycho-social purpose of language
involves using language to bond socially or
psychologically with someone or to engage
in behavior in some way.
 The informational-cognitive use of
language involves communication for the
purpose of obtaining information,
generally for some other task.
Examples
 Psycho-social example

Asking someone “How’s it going?” might be
less a desire to know the actual details of
someone’s life than a means of exchanging
pleasantries.
 Informational-cognitive example

Stopping and asking someone “Do you have the
time?” if we think we are running late.
 Psycho-social and informational-cognitive
uses of language can and often do cooccur.
The language classroom
 The instructor may use language for both
psycho-social and informational-cognitive
purposes.
 It is doubtful that the learner would use
language for many psycho-social
purposes.
 The classroom does lend itself
exceptionally well to the use of
communicative language for informationalcognitive purposes.
Classroom discourse
 Communicative drills differ in terms
of who controls the response and
what types of messages they contain.
 The learner controls the response
and provides new information for
communicative drills.
 The differences are summarized on
the next slide.
Factors determining
practice or drill type
No info. to
Info.
Info.
communicate Already
Unknown
known by to listener
listener
Learner Mechanical
does not Drill
control
response
Learner
controls
response
Meaningful
Drill
Communicative Drill
Communicative drills
 Although communicative drills might have
the semblance of real communication, they
fall short of providing learners with
opportunities that allow them to work at
expressing.
 Such drills fall short of providing an
extended exchange between two or more
people because once an answer is given,
the learners simply move on to the next
question.
In a revealing study…
 Brooks (1990) found that learners
reproduce in pairs those behaviors that the
instructor uses at the whole class level.
“Rather than use the exercise to participate in a
communication simulation activity, as originally
intended by the teacher, the students seem to
have turned the activity into another change to
reinforce the rules of Spanish grammar,
thereby getting ready for the subsequent quiz…
It appears as though the two students have
learned through imitation and reference, rather
than explicit instruction, an acceptable manner
for doing this type of activity.”
(Brooks,
1990, p. 162)
Pattern of interaction
 The following two exchanges from
Brooks’s study demonstrate his point.
Note the pattern of interaction
between instructor and learner in A
that is subsequently played out
between two learners in B.
A. Teacher-fronted activity
I: ¿Es antipática?
L: (several together) No.
I: No es antipática.
L: Es muy simpático.
I: ¿Simpático? (said loudly with rising
intonation)
L: Simpática.
I: Sí, es muy simpática.
A. Teacher-fronted activity
English translation
I: Is she mean?
L: (several together) No.
I: She isn’t mean.
L: He is nice.
I: Nice? **
L: She is nice.
I: Yes, she is very nice.
** The Spanish adjective is influenced for
gender as well as number.
B. Paired-student activity
A: Ah, ¿cómo son Carolina y Luz?
B: Carolina y Luz es… no…. Son rubiØs
(final vowel inaudible)
A: Son rubi….a…rubias
B: ¿<<a>> o <<as>>?
A: <<as>>
B: <<as>>, sí. Rubias (prosodic stress
on “as”)
B. Paired-student activity
 A: Ah, what are Carolina and Luz like?
 B: Carolina and Luz is… no… are
Blonde
 A: are… blo..n…d
 B: <<a>> o <<as>>?
 A: <<as>>
 B: <<as>>, yes. Blonde.
In sum…
 Brooks demonstrates that as far as
communicative drills go, whether led
by an instructor of carried out by
pairs of learners, communication and
negotiation of meaning may well not
be taking place.
Teacher-fronted versus
Paired or group interaction
 There is quantitative research on
interactional patterns and
communication in the language
classroom.
 This research reveals that teacherfronted activities provide few
opportunities for the expression and
negotiation of meaning among
participants.
Rulon and McCreary
(1986) report:
 Small group work produced twice the
number of content confirmation
checks.
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I got it. Then what?
 Small group work produced 36 times
the number of content clarification
requests.
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Right? Do you follow? So… you mean?
Informational content
 At the same time, these researchers found
no statistical difference between group
and teacher-fronted activities in terms of
the amount of informational content
covered.
 There seems to be more communication
occurring in paired work than in teacherfronted activities, with just as much
content covered.
Porter’s findings
 Porter (1986) also found that learner-tolearner interactions in the classroom
resulted in increased opportunities for selfexpression for the learner.
 Advanced-intermediate pairings resulted
in increased negotiation for both learners
compared to intermediate-intermediate
pairings.
 Porter reports only one “negative” finding:
that sociolinguistic competence is not
something that can be developed in the
absence of native-speaking interlocutors.
Lee’s study
 Lee (2000) conducted an experiment
comparing the participation and
content remembered by different
groups of learners.
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Two classes participated in a teacherfronted discussion, answering questions.
Two classes performed group work
developed from the discussion
questions.
Lee’s findings
 Lee’s findings support Porter’s and Rulon
and McCreary’s findings.
 Only 11 of 42 learners spoke during the
Q&A discussion.
 46 of 46 learners spoke during the group
work.
 The learners who participated in the group
work recalled almost twice as many ideas
as did those who participated in the
discussion.
Conclusions
 Teacher-fronted activities may not be
optimal for providing opportunities to
develop communicative language
ability.
 Paired and group work, on the other
hand, do seem to provide these
opportunities.
Classroom communication
as information exchange
 We focus now on creating classroom
activities that allow for
communication within the context of
the language classroom.
 “Information-based” tasks require
learners to obtain information from
each other that is then put to use in
some way.
Construction of
information-exchange tasks
Identify the topic or subtopic to be
addressed
Design an appropriate immediate
purpose
Identify the information sources
Identifying the topic
 Identifying a topic or subtopic for a task is
best achieved when a concrete question
can be asked.
 The topic can be explored by questions
that learners will eventually answer with
the information they obtain.
 Certain questions rely on personal
experience, whereas others involve the
world outside our own.
Time and material
management
 What needs to be kept in mind is lesson
planning, that is, time and material
management.
 When moving their classes toward
communication through information
exchange, instructors need to ask
themselves such questions as “What topics
can be treated in a 50-minute class
period?”
Designing an appropriate
purpose
 Once a topic is selected and a
question is developed, an appropriate
immediate purpose needs to be
designed.
 The immediate purpose can take the
form of a task that learners must
complete.
These tasks include:
Filling in a grid, chart, or table
Writing a paragraph
Making an oral report
Answering questions
Sharing information with others for
comparative purposes
 Creating an outline
 Creating a survey
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The purpose of the task
 Is is important not to mistake “getting
or exchanging information” as the
purpose of the task.
 Learners will not only get and
exchange information- they will do
something with it.
 What they do with the information is
the true purpose of the task.
Comparing two versions
of the same activity
 On the next slides, two versions of the
same activity are given.
 In the first version, even though learners
exchange information, the activity lacks an
end: the learner is not given a purpose for
obtaining the information.
 In the second version, the learner is asked
to fill in a chart and make a comparison.
The learner now has a reason for getting
information and knows what to do with it.
Version 1: Compare your
birthday experiences
 Working with a classmate, compare how
you have celebrated your birthdays by
asking and answering the following
questions:

How did you celebrate your birthday two years
ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Where did
you spend your day and with whom did you
spend it? Was it fun? Were a lot of people
present? What kind of food was served?
Version 2: Compare your
birthday experiences
Step 1: Fill in the chart as you interview
a classmate.
Birthday
Where? With
Food? Fun?
whom?
2 yrs. Ago
5 yrs. Ago
10yrs. ago
Step 2: Now write a paragraph in which
you compare and contrast your birthdays.
Comparison of the
versions
 If two learners were given the list of
questions in Version 1 to ask and
answer, they might fall into
perpetuating the teacher-fronted
dynamic described by Brooks.
 In the second version, the learners
become task-oriented; they must
work together to fill in the chart.
Identifying information
sources
 A reading or listening text is another
source of information for classroom
communication.
 Rather than ask and answer
questions of each other, learners can
get information from a text for the
purpose of completing a task.
The information source
 The purpose of the task will often
clarify if not dictate the information
source required.
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From the learners’ personal experience
From a reading
From a guest speaker to the class
Negotiating Meaning
 Lee (2000) identifies six reasons for
the emphasis on negotiation as an
important element in communicative
language ability.
 Negotiation takes place in various
everyday contexts.
Definition of negotiation
“Negotiation consists of interactions
during which speakers come to terms,
reach an agreement, make arrangements,
resolve a problem, or settle an issue by
conferring or discussing; the purpose of
language use is to accomplish some task
rather than to practice any particular
language forms.”
(Lee, 2000 p. 9)
Information-gap activities
 One type of activity that promotes
negotiation is the information-gap task.
 The gap refers to information that one
person possesses but others do not.
 Gaps create the absolute need to
communicate as well as the need to
cooperate.
 Information-gap activities may be based on
sources of information other than texts.
Activity: The garden
 Step one: Each person in the group except
one will receive part of a picture of a
garden. No one is to show his or her
picture to anyone else.
 Step two: Each person in the group then
describes his or her picture to the others
using only the target language.
 Step three: As a group, describe what the
original garden looked like in such a way
that the person who did not receive a
picture can draw the garden.
Group decision activities
 Activities can also encourage
learners to collaborate in solving a
problem, reaching a consensus, or
making some other kind of decision.
 Learners must negotiate to reach a
consensus.
Relieving Atlas: When
tasks dictate roles
 Under ALM and early CLT the role of the
instructor dictated the tasks given to
students.
 However, the contemporary
communicative era is now incorporating
tasks that encourage communicative
language development.
 The major roles that instructors are
beginning to assume are those of resource
person and architect.
Instructor as Resource
person
 In the classroom, the instructor
describes a visual and the students
respond with the appropriate
vocabulary word.
 The following listening activity is a
fairly common one for practicing
vocabulary.
Activity: What food is it?
Look over the food chart, getting a sense
of serving size, weight, and calories for the
various foods listed. Your instructor will
read a description twice. Listen carefully
and then identify the food being described.
Model: (you hear) A cup of this dairy
product contains 125 calories.
(you say) Yogurt.
Analysis of the activity
 This activity reflects the assumption
that the instructor is responsible for
teaching and learning.
 The Atlas Complex is a difficult
mindset to alter because both
instructors and students are
generally willing to allow this type of
dynamic in the classroom.
More analysis
 In order to share the responsibility
with the instructor or to shift it
entirely, students must be given
certain tools.
 In the next activity, the instructor has
the information and is willing to
supply it- but only when asked.
Activity: What food is it?
Look over the food chart, getting a sense of
food groups, serving size, weight, and
calories for the various foods listed. Your
instructor will read a description of a food
item. Listen carefully and try to identify the
food.
Model: (you hear) A cup of this dairy
product contains 125 calories.
(you say) Yogurt.
Activity continued…
If you cannot identify the item, then you
should ask any or all of the following
questions, depending on what you did
not understand.
What quantity did you say?
How many calories, please?
What was the food group?
The difference
 In the previous example, the students
negotiated meaning for themselves.
 They initiated part of the interaction.
 When the instructor’s role is that of a
resource person, the student’s role is
that of information gatherer and
negotiator of meaning.
Instructor as architect
 If you have observed many language
classes, particularly the more traditional
ones, you may have seen an example of the
open-ended discussion question.
 The open-ended discussion question
format is not really designed for students
to learn about the topic or from each other;
it is simply a speaking exercise.
Instructor as architect
continued…
 A discussion is a multilayered
communicative event, that is, an
interaction requiring various steps and
tasks.
 When the instructor takes on the role of
architect, the one who designs and plans
but is not responsible for the final product,
then students become builders or
coworkers, who put it together.
 Students begin to share some of the
teaching functions that instructors
ordinarily assume for themselves.
Summary of chapter 3
 Discussed the important role of meaningful
communication in learning a second
language.
 Communication involves the expression,
interpretation, and most important,
negotiation of meaning within a particular
context.
 In moving away from teacher-fronted to
teacher-assisted interactions, instructors
will necessarily behave in less Atlas-like
ways.