Conversation analysis (CA) is an integral part of the study of language in communication, in which preference organization is an important topic for pragmatic research. This paper makes a study of preferred and disp...Conversation analysis (CA) is an integral part of the study of language in communication, in which preference organization is an important topic for pragmatic research. This paper makes a study of preferred and dispreferred second turns in naturally occurring interactions to show structurally expected or unexpected responses from the second parts of the adjacent pairs. The study is based on the analysis of examples of people's actual conversations. It is concluded that in actual conversations, the speaker may make a preferred or dispreferred answer in either marked or unmarked form according to the speaker's intention and conversation circumstances.展开更多
This article makes an investigation of 114 English majors' level of a particular communicative performance and the general ability to perform in small-group conversations in their conversation class, and thereafter e...This article makes an investigation of 114 English majors' level of a particular communicative performance and the general ability to perform in small-group conversations in their conversation class, and thereafter explores the reasons for their current level with the aid of questionnaire based on a rating scale, together with observation and interviews. Some countermeasures are provided to call for teachers' attention in their teaching practice.展开更多
As foreign language teachers, we always wondered about the silence of our students during the lessons. However, after we started the project "Conversation Table in Portuguese" (CTP), we realized that the students ...As foreign language teachers, we always wondered about the silence of our students during the lessons. However, after we started the project "Conversation Table in Portuguese" (CTP), we realized that the students assumed a more active role during the interactions, probably due to the less hierarchical situation they were in. The CTP provided the students the opportunity to express themselves in a foreign language without the interdiction they felt inside the classroom. Within this new context, the lack of confidence they might have been facing when communicating in a foreign language started to disappear, giving place to a motivation to express what they felt in this "new" language. Therefore, the target language started to become a new locus, a new way that made them not feel scared, but free and curious to say things that they would not say in similar situations when communicating in their mother tongue. In other words, the foreign language can be the place where everything seems to be possible as we do not have the control or interdiction imposed by the social values presented in our society and manifested in our mother tongue. In this study, we analyze some discursive situations taken from a session of CTP in which the students show their new identities in the foreign language. The results show that acquiring another language is much more than acquiring new linguistic aspects of communication, but also giving birth to new identities that make us become new subjects.展开更多
All of us make conversations with others in a certain social context every day, though the mode to start them is various from different persons, occasions and circumstances. This paper is an attempt to analyze the var...All of us make conversations with others in a certain social context every day, though the mode to start them is various from different persons, occasions and circumstances. This paper is an attempt to analyze the variety of modes to open a conversation in different situations from the viewpoint of discourse analysis.展开更多
According to the principals of the Course Standard of English for Ordinary Senior Schools, published by China Education Ministry in 2001, the general goal of English curriculum on the basic education stage is to foste...According to the principals of the Course Standard of English for Ordinary Senior Schools, published by China Education Ministry in 2001, the general goal of English curriculum on the basic education stage is to foster the students' cross-cultural awareness, which is to develop their cross-cultural communicative competence. To achieve this goal, most of all, teachers of English at high school must have a good command of cross-cultural pragmatic competence. By looking through papers in various periodicals and the Internet, the writer finds that most of the studies have coped with pragmatic failures of ESL students but few of ESL teachers'. Therefore, this thesis studies the present situation --- how much do schoolteachers of English know about pragmatics? What about their cross-cultural communicative competence? Can they communicate with the native speakers fluently and appropriately? What are the most serious problems among them in pragmatics? What can be done to solve the problems? With all the questions, this research has collected considerable firsthand data and information. Only after the basic situations are known overall, can actions be taken to solve the problems existing in everyday ESL teaching. So this research is necessary and urgent for the present basic English pedagogy. However, since the present writer's ability and research conditions are limited, it is not possible to make a wider investigation in many places. Therefore, the district --- Bameng League, Inner Mongolia, China, is selected as the basic range of the survey, the situation of which is believed to be able to represent the basic educational ones in the poor and remote districts in the north and the west of China where education is more backward. The questionnaire consists of two parts: a table of individual information and a test paper. The former investigates informants' basic information, including the items of name, age, sex, teaching age, title of the technical post, degree, academic career, college or university that they graduated from, working unit, grades for teaching and the others. The latter is the test paper cited from He Ziran and Yan Zhuang (1986), that is, Chinese Students'Pragmatic Failure in English Communication --- Survey of the Pragmatic Difference between Chinese and English. And it contains 48 items, with items of pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic competence mixedly arranged. 120 of the questionnaire copies were handed out and 86 are collected, but only 64 are collected. The survey covers over 10 high schools in all the 7 banners of Bameng League, including two autonomous region-class key schools and five other league-class key schools. After the investigation, the present writer carefully corrects, marks, arranges, summarizes and analyzes the questionnaire, and obtains plenty of firsthand data and information. Then some conclusions have been drawn based on the data analysis. The result of the survey shows that linguistic competence is not equal to pragmatic competence, that ESL high school English teachers may use English rather fluently, without many mistakes in vocabulary and grammar,but it does not necessarily mean that they can use the target language appropriately to communicate with native speakers without pragmatic failures, and that the informants' knowledge of pragmatics and their pragmatic competence are rather poor. As a result, improving their knowledge and competence in pragmatics becomes a very necessary and urgent task to develop the quality of ELT in basic educational stages. In order to solve the above problems, the writer makes some suggestions as follows: (1) Pragmatics should be required as an essential course for the English majors in colleges and universities, especially in normal colleges and universities; (2) In-service high school English teachers must study courses of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication; (3) In some poor and remote districts, if educational conditions don't permit, textbooks of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication must be handed out to the high school English teachers who can study by themselves, then tests are regularly held for them and certificates will be given to those who have passed the tests; (4) In some developed districts, if conditions permit, English teachers can be sent abroad to English-speaking countries for further education in order to have a good command of the English language in the authentic contexts; (5) Modern multiple medias, such as VCD or DVD videos, TV or radio programs, the Internet, should be widely and frequently applied to training teachers; (6) More native language teachers and experts from English-speaking countries must be invited to high schools to train teachers of English.展开更多
Comprehending speaking materials in a foreign language is one of the most difficult tasks and one of the most useful skills in foreign language teaching. But for many years listening skills have not received the prior...Comprehending speaking materials in a foreign language is one of the most difficult tasks and one of the most useful skills in foreign language teaching. But for many years listening skills have not received the priority it deserves in language teaching. A traditional listening lesson often tends to test listening rather than teach it and does not practice the kind of listening that takes place in real life. This paper explores a communicative way of teaching listening--a combination of seeing, listening and speaking. The new teaching approach can inspire learners' interest, help learners develop a better awareness of how to listen, build up their skills and strategies in listening and prepare them to deal with the demands of real world communication. The present study attempts to measure the effectiveness of and student reaction to the new approach to teaching listening.展开更多
文摘Conversation analysis (CA) is an integral part of the study of language in communication, in which preference organization is an important topic for pragmatic research. This paper makes a study of preferred and dispreferred second turns in naturally occurring interactions to show structurally expected or unexpected responses from the second parts of the adjacent pairs. The study is based on the analysis of examples of people's actual conversations. It is concluded that in actual conversations, the speaker may make a preferred or dispreferred answer in either marked or unmarked form according to the speaker's intention and conversation circumstances.
文摘This article makes an investigation of 114 English majors' level of a particular communicative performance and the general ability to perform in small-group conversations in their conversation class, and thereafter explores the reasons for their current level with the aid of questionnaire based on a rating scale, together with observation and interviews. Some countermeasures are provided to call for teachers' attention in their teaching practice.
文摘As foreign language teachers, we always wondered about the silence of our students during the lessons. However, after we started the project "Conversation Table in Portuguese" (CTP), we realized that the students assumed a more active role during the interactions, probably due to the less hierarchical situation they were in. The CTP provided the students the opportunity to express themselves in a foreign language without the interdiction they felt inside the classroom. Within this new context, the lack of confidence they might have been facing when communicating in a foreign language started to disappear, giving place to a motivation to express what they felt in this "new" language. Therefore, the target language started to become a new locus, a new way that made them not feel scared, but free and curious to say things that they would not say in similar situations when communicating in their mother tongue. In other words, the foreign language can be the place where everything seems to be possible as we do not have the control or interdiction imposed by the social values presented in our society and manifested in our mother tongue. In this study, we analyze some discursive situations taken from a session of CTP in which the students show their new identities in the foreign language. The results show that acquiring another language is much more than acquiring new linguistic aspects of communication, but also giving birth to new identities that make us become new subjects.
文摘All of us make conversations with others in a certain social context every day, though the mode to start them is various from different persons, occasions and circumstances. This paper is an attempt to analyze the variety of modes to open a conversation in different situations from the viewpoint of discourse analysis.
文摘According to the principals of the Course Standard of English for Ordinary Senior Schools, published by China Education Ministry in 2001, the general goal of English curriculum on the basic education stage is to foster the students' cross-cultural awareness, which is to develop their cross-cultural communicative competence. To achieve this goal, most of all, teachers of English at high school must have a good command of cross-cultural pragmatic competence. By looking through papers in various periodicals and the Internet, the writer finds that most of the studies have coped with pragmatic failures of ESL students but few of ESL teachers'. Therefore, this thesis studies the present situation --- how much do schoolteachers of English know about pragmatics? What about their cross-cultural communicative competence? Can they communicate with the native speakers fluently and appropriately? What are the most serious problems among them in pragmatics? What can be done to solve the problems? With all the questions, this research has collected considerable firsthand data and information. Only after the basic situations are known overall, can actions be taken to solve the problems existing in everyday ESL teaching. So this research is necessary and urgent for the present basic English pedagogy. However, since the present writer's ability and research conditions are limited, it is not possible to make a wider investigation in many places. Therefore, the district --- Bameng League, Inner Mongolia, China, is selected as the basic range of the survey, the situation of which is believed to be able to represent the basic educational ones in the poor and remote districts in the north and the west of China where education is more backward. The questionnaire consists of two parts: a table of individual information and a test paper. The former investigates informants' basic information, including the items of name, age, sex, teaching age, title of the technical post, degree, academic career, college or university that they graduated from, working unit, grades for teaching and the others. The latter is the test paper cited from He Ziran and Yan Zhuang (1986), that is, Chinese Students'Pragmatic Failure in English Communication --- Survey of the Pragmatic Difference between Chinese and English. And it contains 48 items, with items of pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic competence mixedly arranged. 120 of the questionnaire copies were handed out and 86 are collected, but only 64 are collected. The survey covers over 10 high schools in all the 7 banners of Bameng League, including two autonomous region-class key schools and five other league-class key schools. After the investigation, the present writer carefully corrects, marks, arranges, summarizes and analyzes the questionnaire, and obtains plenty of firsthand data and information. Then some conclusions have been drawn based on the data analysis. The result of the survey shows that linguistic competence is not equal to pragmatic competence, that ESL high school English teachers may use English rather fluently, without many mistakes in vocabulary and grammar,but it does not necessarily mean that they can use the target language appropriately to communicate with native speakers without pragmatic failures, and that the informants' knowledge of pragmatics and their pragmatic competence are rather poor. As a result, improving their knowledge and competence in pragmatics becomes a very necessary and urgent task to develop the quality of ELT in basic educational stages. In order to solve the above problems, the writer makes some suggestions as follows: (1) Pragmatics should be required as an essential course for the English majors in colleges and universities, especially in normal colleges and universities; (2) In-service high school English teachers must study courses of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication; (3) In some poor and remote districts, if educational conditions don't permit, textbooks of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication must be handed out to the high school English teachers who can study by themselves, then tests are regularly held for them and certificates will be given to those who have passed the tests; (4) In some developed districts, if conditions permit, English teachers can be sent abroad to English-speaking countries for further education in order to have a good command of the English language in the authentic contexts; (5) Modern multiple medias, such as VCD or DVD videos, TV or radio programs, the Internet, should be widely and frequently applied to training teachers; (6) More native language teachers and experts from English-speaking countries must be invited to high schools to train teachers of English.
文摘Comprehending speaking materials in a foreign language is one of the most difficult tasks and one of the most useful skills in foreign language teaching. But for many years listening skills have not received the priority it deserves in language teaching. A traditional listening lesson often tends to test listening rather than teach it and does not practice the kind of listening that takes place in real life. This paper explores a communicative way of teaching listening--a combination of seeing, listening and speaking. The new teaching approach can inspire learners' interest, help learners develop a better awareness of how to listen, build up their skills and strategies in listening and prepare them to deal with the demands of real world communication. The present study attempts to measure the effectiveness of and student reaction to the new approach to teaching listening.