GENERAL DISCOURSE ACTIVITIES

12.1 INTRODUCTION

Activities concerning They ‘top’ level of discourse inherently holistic.The activities we have examined so far in 8-11 have focused upon particular aspects of discourse processing and production ,rather than general practice. We need know to consider activities which can develop discourse skill, without concertration on any one aspect in isolation. These will be activities in which student handle all they interlocking system of discourse at once and those of grammar, vocabularry, and pronounciation as well. The problem is to develop such activities within the spesific environment of they institutional classroom, with its very limited and idiosyncratic social framework, in which ,traditionally,the student enter into only two kinds of  relationship : passive subordination to the teacher , and elagitarian camaraderie with fellow student .

if we wish our students to become competent in discourse,we will need to involve them in communication with a variety of interlocutors in different relationships to them ,though a variety of  discourse types, with a variety of functions, in both speech and writing and process and production ,to deal with the interaction of these elements in discourse, in different combinations-and with rapid change too.

The communicative approach has designed many such activities , because  using language for communication of necessity discourse in operation. Activities in which students handle discourse most fully are considered to be in some way marginal :entertainments to fill a few minutes at the end of a lesson.Atomistic activities are more easily examined and graded,and the pressure on many students and teachers of  language to substitute the goal of examination success for that of communicative competence is perhaps another reason for their elevation.

12.2 General activities : an example

With the need for general discourse practice in mind ,it is as well to examine any language teaching activity for the practice it provides in the elements of discourse , so that student may have varied practice ,either within one activity or over a range of them .we shall assess one activity in this way ,a an example. It comes from Towards the Creative  Teaching of English ( Melville, Langanheim ,Rinvolucri,and Spaventa 1980 ) and draws on an exercise which is a staple of communicative language teaching, and which we have already mentioned ( 9.6 ) for its role in sensitizing students to discourse  structure : the re-ordering of  jumbled sentences.

The procedure is as follows . Each student is given a piece of paper on which is written one sentence of the following story.

There were four people sitting in a train in Vietnam in the late sixties . The four people were as follows: a young Vietnamese who loved his       country, an old Vietnamese grandmother , a beautiful young girl of       about eighten, and an ugly American soldier. Suddenly the train went into a tunnel. There was the sound of the a kiss. All four people heard a slap. When the train come out of the tunnel , the Vietnamese could see that      the G.I.’s face was red. The beautiful young girl glance at the garnny and the soldier in astonishment. The granny was asleep in the corner of the compartment. The young patriot grinned happily. The problem is : who kissed who and who slapped who?

( Melville, Langenheim, Rinvolucri, and Spaventa 1980:85 )

As in other recombination activities in the book , the following rules must be obeyed:

-          You can read your paper out to the group, but you must not show it to anyone.

-          Don’t wtite

-          Only ask me, the teacher ,language question.

The teacher recommended to avoid intervention in the task by ,for example ,pre-teaching vocabulary, sitting outside the group, avoiding eye- contact, only intervening if absolutely necessary and then only by writing on the blackboard.