ANM-ANG-113 - ELTE BTK/PPK MA in ELT Methodology Lectures – Dávid Veljanovszki

A Square Peg in a Round Hole? – Spoken Genres in the ELT Classroom

1.  Definitions: what is genre?

Swales (1990): “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes.”

Hyland (2008):

Genre “is based on the idea that members of a community usually have little difficulty in recognising similarities in the texts they use frequently and are able to draw on their repeated experiences with such texts to read, understand and perhaps write them relatively easily.”

Martin (1992): Genres are staged, goal-oriented, purposeful social processes.

·  Staged: a genre is staged as the meanings are made in steps; it usually takes more than one step for participants to achieve their goals.

·  Goal oriented: a genre is goal oriented in that texts typically move through stages to a point of closure, and are considered incomplete if the culmination is not reached.

·  Social process: genres are negotiated interactively and are a realization of a social purpose.

2.  Why genre in ELT? Different understandings of grammar

Two traditional interpretations of grammar in ELT:

a.  mental grammar: a mental system which is cognitive constituent of the brain (Chomsky 1980)

b.  descriptive grammar: a set of rules (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, &

Svartvik, 1985)

Problems with these two: despite their importance in language instruction, they leave a narrow scope for linguistic analysis. à

c.  functional grammar: Genre theory is a component of functional grammar. It focuses on grammatical composition grounded in the functional concept of the nature of language. According to the functional concept, language is viewed not only as a linguistic system but also as a means for doing things. Most of our everyday language use involves functional activities: offering, suggesting, advising, apologizing,etc. à more beneficial for ELT practitioners (Halliday, 1985; Martin, Matthiessen, & Painter, 1997).

3.  What benefits are there of a genre-based approach in EFL?

3.1.  It reflects communicative language teaching: analyses of both formal and functional aspects of language in social and cultural contexts: language , content, context of discourse production, interpretation (Paltridge, 2001)

3.2.  Language teaching through authentic situations: learners actively practise doing things with language. Possible learner roles: receiver, processor and producer. Chances to respond to diverse situations à skills for successful communication in different discourse communities (Swales, 1990)

3.3.  Close relationship with the theory of register: helpful in text-based and literature-based ELT à learners distinguishing between literary genres and demonstrating how meaning is created through language (Hyland, 2008)

3.4.  Combined with theory of register: great contribution to the teaching and learning of productive skills. Language as social event à speaking and writing are linked to power, gender, age and geography

3.5.  In ESP: constructing texts that are also in agreement with discipline-specific situations (Hyland, 1990; 2004) (e.g. a job interview, hotel room reservation)

3.6.  Learners can grasp pragmatic meaning from spoken narratives: phrases of chronological order (Initially, At first, Then), discourse markers to introduce (Now ...) or delay topics (... OK ... erm ...); conversational strategies:

·  to maintain harmony

·  to save face

·  to avoid conflict, etc.

è  politeness functions

4.  What is in the focus of teaching spoken genres in the ELT classroom?

Features / Spoken Texts tend to:
Discourse
Level
(context and
organization) / be produced in context with the listener
be produced in conjunction with other
speakers
have repetition, reformulation, and refinement
between speakers
Grammar
and Sentence
Level / use simple and short clauses with little elaborate embedding
have a high incidence of coordinated clauses (and, but)
have indicators of interpersonal dynamics (tag questions, interruptions, unfinished clauses) and indication of presence of speaker (first person pronouns)
Lexis and
Word Level / have low lexical density
use general vocabulary and more idioms
use terms dependent on the context (this one, that one, it)