A Genre-based Approach to Developing Oral Skills in an Adult Thai EFL Context

Paper presented at the Fifth Pan-Asian Conference on Language Teaching at FEELTA, Vladivostok, Russia, June 20, 2004
Phil Chappell
University of Wollongong, Australia
AUA Language Centre, Thailand


Orientation

This paper provides an outline of a cycle for the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) oral skills, taking whole texts, or complete stretches of discourse, as the point of departure. After a discussion of the constructs of the nature of language and learning, a teaching/learning cycle is outlined. Following this, a practical application of the cycle is detailed, with data taken from a lower-intermediate adult EFL classroom lesson in a language centre for adults in Bangkok, Thailand. Preliminary observations from this data reveal several positive outcomes from using the teaching/learning cycle, as well as several areas that would benefit from a more in-depth level of inquiry.

Oracy in a Thai EFL Context

Currently, the notion of English as a Foreign Language in Asian contexts is a topic of debate, as language educators seek to redefine the role of English in countries where communication in the language is often between two interlocutors from countries where the first language is not English.[1] The construct (EFL) as used in this paper is intended to foreground the following:

Most learners are in a high enclosure context (Brown, 2001) where they do not have ready access to communicative
situations in English outside of the classroom.

Most often, when learners do use English in social, commercial and academic situations, it is with a speaker of another
Asian language.

Many learners who elect to learn English outside of the mainstream education system, i.e. in private language institutions,
do so for reasons related to future opportunities, such as for employment or travel.


The task, then, for language teachers in EFL contexts is to create socially meaningful situations within the classroom whereby learners can gain control of using English for a vast range of communicative purposes. Unlike other contexts, such as ESL ones, where the lingua franca is English, learners in EFL contexts do not have real-life exposure to the ways that English is used to “get things done” (Halliday 1994). If we consider the difference between a Thai adult in Thailand learning an everyday social practice such as returning faulty goods to a point of purchase, and another Thai adult learning the same practice in Australia, it is immediately clear that the adult in Australia can not only try out the practice in “real life”, but can also observe how it is done by experts in “real life”. The same learner in Thailand does not have these ready-made opportunities, and is left at the mercy of the language teacher to create the situations within the classroom arena.

It is against this backdrop that a text-based syllabus (Feez, 1998) informed by a social theory of language (Bakhtin, 1952/1986; Halliday, 1978) and learning (Wood, et. al., 1974; Vygotsky, 1978), and utilising a teaching/learning cycle (Feez, 1998; Macken et. al. 1993) that is explicit in its coverage of the relationship between contexts of language use and forms and functions of language within those contexts has been applied to an EFL classroom.

A Social Model of Language

As outline above, curriculum objectives in Thai EFL contexts are most likely to focus on the communicative potential of language learning, rather than foregrounding the formal properties of the language. Therefore, a view of language as a systemic resource for acting on and in the world seems appropriate for this teaching/learning context. Russian language philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1952/1986) outlines this view quite succinctly:

All the diverse areas of human activity involve the use of language. Quite understandably, the nature and forms of this use are just as diverse as are the areas of human activity… Language is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity. These utterances reflect the specific conditions and goals of each such area not only through their content (thematic) and linguistic style, that is, the selection of the lexical, phraseological, and grammatical resources of the language, but above all through their compositional structure. All three of these aspects – thematic content, style, and compositional structure – are inseparably linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communication. Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres. (Bakhtin, 1986, p.60)

Within his discussion of the nature of language, Bakhtin acknowledges the social nature of language in human activity, the social purpose of the activity and the language choices made by the interlocutors, the explicit recognition of a lexical and grammatical system linked to meaning making, and the argument that within a culture, there exists relatively stable types of texts (genres). This view resonates with the “sociosemiotic” theory of language developed by Halliday (1978), and which informs much of the application of genre pedagogy in Australia today[2], of which the main components are:

—Language is a resource for making meaning.

—Users of the language construct texts to make meaning.

—The meaning potential of a language system is represented in its context of culture; “…the entire semantic system of the language” (Halliday, 1978, p. 109), and its context of situation, “…the environment in which the text comes to life” (1978, p. 109).

—The context of situation, often referred to as the social context, is created by the social activity in which the text is constructed, the role relationships among the interlocutors, and the function of language within the activity as well as the medium chosen (1978, p. 110).

—As Bakhtin (1952/1986) also notes above, texts are viewed from their overall “compositional structure” (1952/1986; p. 60) as well as at the lexical and grammatical level. In the Hallidayan model, texts are viewed at the level of the rhetorical structure of the text, the lexicogrammatical choices made, and the lower level of graphemes and morphemes.

A Social Theory of Learning

Given the nature of the language learning objectives in Thai adult EFL contexts, namely for learners to gain control over the co-construction of a variety of text types within a variety of social contexts, a social interactionist view of learning is posited. In fact, much genre pedagogy is firmly grounded in theories inspired by L.S Vygotsky (1978) and Jerome Bruner (e.g. Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976), both of whom foreground the social, contingent supporting role of expert others in the course of appropriating social processes. It is important to locate this view of learning within the broader context of educational theory, especially as related to recent curriculum-centred (Skinner, 1968) and student-centred (Piaget, 2000) theories of learning.

Approaches to learning that are grounded in the work of Vygotsky and Bruner are often labelled sociocultural approaches (Lantolf, 2000; Moll, 1990; Rogoff and Lave, 1984). A sociocultural approach to learning views learning as the transformation of participation (or the appropriation of new forms of social and cultural ways to act in the world) in concrete social activities (Engestrom, 1999), and can be contrasted with curriculum-centred approaches, which view learning as the successful transmission of knowledge from an expert other (c.f. Skinner, 1968). Further, student-centred approaches, which conceive of learning as the successful acquisition of knowledge from an expert other (c.f. Piaget, 2000) differ fundamentally from a sociocultural approach.

The pedagogical implications of this approach lie in the view that, rather than knowledge being transmitted or acquired, knowledge is socially and culturally constructed (Vygotsky, 1978), hence the metaphor of transformation, which suggests that at the individual level, learners internalise “…culturally given higher psychological functions” (Engestrom, 1999). Thus, what and how the English language learner learns is dependent upon what opportunities for the appropriation of new ways of acting in the world using English language meaning-making resources the teacher provides. Put simply, the sociocultural view of language learning foregrounds the interactions the language learner has with expert others (both teacher and fellow learners; Donato, 1994; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988) during meaningful, concrete human activity. It is neither a curriculum-centred approach nor a student-centred approach; rather, it is a teaching/learning centred approach.

A Teaching/Learning Curriculum Framework

A teaching/learning curriculum cycle developed by Martin and colleagues (Macken et. al., 1989, cited in Cope and Kalantzis, 1993) through the Disadvantaged Schools Program in Sydney, Australia forms the framework for the teaching/learning cycle used in this project. This cycle "…attempts to engage students in an awareness of the social purposes, text structure and language features in a range of identified text types or genres" (Callaghan, Knapp and Noble, 1993:180).

The cycle begins with field-building activities; that is, activities aimed at immersing the learners in the context of culture (Halliday, 1978) and the social purpose of the spoken texts, their temporal and spatial contexts, the roles and relationships of the interactants, and the role of language within the activity, as well as the medium chosen. This is essentially Halliday’s (1978) context of situation described above. The cycle then moves on to text modeling and a deconstruction of the text. This involves analyses of the rhetorical staging of the spoken text, the lexical and grammatical resources used, and prosodic features of the text. Next, joint production (or co-construction) of similar spoken texts is carried out by the teacher and learners, leading to independent co-construction of texts by the learners themselves. The cycle is recursive; the teacher can enter each stage where necessary, and return to the various stages based on the students' needs (see below). The attraction of the cycle is best summed up by Callaghan, Knapp and Noble (1993), "[the curriculum cycle] requires that teachers be clear about the reasons they are in any one stage at any particular time…the more clearly defined each language activity, the more specific each of the learning outcomes for the activity can be" (1993:181).

Teaching/Learning Cycle for Oral Skills Development

Below is an outline of the teaching/learning cycle that has been adapted for the teaching and learning of oral skills in the context outlined earlier in this paper. For sake of convenience, it is presented in a linear format, however it is important to reiterate that the cycle is recursive; it is possible to enter each stage of the cycle at any time during a lesson or unit of work. For example, the students may already be familiar with the social context, thus the first stage could be skipped. Further, some students may face difficulties in the independent construction stage, thus the joint construction stage may be re-entered (Feez, 1998) as a whole class or small group activity. This contingency management (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988) is a central role of the teacher, and is employed through a comparison of explicit goals and objectives of learning activities with actual student performance. If the goals and objectives are available to the learners, and, in fact if they are co-constructed with the learners (Nunan, 1988), it is possible that not only the teacher, but also fellow learners can assist performance throughout the cycle (Donato, 1994; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988).

The Teaching/Learning Cycle

Building the Context

Purpose

• What is the social purpose of the conversation?

• What is the goal of each speaker in this kind of conversation?

Field

• What objects, ideas, opinions, etc. are often talked about in this context?

• Where does this kind of conversation occur?

Speakers

• What role does each speaker have in the conversation?

• What kind of social relationship do they have?

• What kinds of attitudes, opinions and activities characterise each speaker?

Mode

• Is this face-to-face communication? Telephone? E-conferencing? Etc.

• What is each speaker doing while he or she is talking?

Modelling and deconstructing the conversation

Staging

• What are the major stages of the conversation?

• What stages are necessary and what kinds of optional stages could there be?

• How does this kind of conversation differ from others?

Grammar and vocabulary

Flow

• How do pronouns and conjunctions make the conversation more cohesive?

• What conversational gambits help the conversation flow?

Functions

• What key grammatical functions in the conversation should be focused on?

• What is grammatical form of each of these functions?

Vocabulary

• What key elements of the noun group, verb group and prepositional group should be focused on?

Pronunciation

• What key sounds, stress patterns, intonation patterns should be focused on?

Joint production of a conversation

• Modelling a conversation between teacher and students and between students.

• Teacher assists performance.

Independent conversation

• Students create their own conversations.

• Teacher and peers assist performance.

Assessment

• Individual conversational partners enact conversation for class, or for other groups.

• Teacher and peers assist performance.

• Enter any of the previous stages as needed.

Practical Application of the Teaching/Learning Cycle for Oral Skills

The teaching/learning cycle was trialled by the writer and a group of 13 adult and young adult EFL learners during a lower-intermediate course at the AUA Language Centre, Bangkok, Thailand. A vignette of one lesson is included in Appendix A. A series of possible activities, and a record of actual activities of the sample lesson are provided below.

Using Role Plays

Upon reading the vignette of the lesson (Appendix A), it will be immediately apparent that role play has been utilised at various stages of the lesson. This is a conscious decision of the teacher, and reflects the need to promote communicative oral practice in the classroom. Role play also serves a vital role in assessing student performance at various stages of the teaching/learning cycle; it not only helps the teacher to assess performance, it also functions as an awareness-raising tool for the learners. For example, the third role play (discussed further, below) was undertaken at the context building stage of the cycle. The social purpose, field, role relationships and mode of discourse had been covered through the unfolding drama of the shopping expedition, however an examination and deconstruction of sample texts, including rhetorical staging, key lexis and grammar and salient pronunciation concerns was yet to come. By having the learners perform at their current level of ability at this stage allows both the teacher and the learners to gauge the actual developmental level through independent problem solving, and thus establish, in various forms, goals and objectives to raise performance to higher levels. Thus, in this instance role play is providing a measure (for the teacher and the learners) of a learner’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), which is defined as:

…the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotsky, 1978, p.86)

It is this synthesis of the construct of scaffolding (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976) in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) that forms the foundations for the sociocultural theory of learning discussed earlier. In the context of the sample lesson described in this paper, role play provides data which helps the teacher develop an understanding of the learners’ acts so that, at the various stages of the teaching/learning cycle s/he can:

…recruit [the learner’s] attention, reduce degrees of freedom in the task to manageable limits, maintain “direction” in the problem solving, mark critical features, control frustration, and demonstrate solutions when the learner can recognise them. (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976, p.99)



The Lesson within the framework of the Teaching/Learning Cycle

Bellow is the lesson applied to the framework of the teaching/learning cycle. The left hand column indicates in general terms activities that the teacher and students can engage in at each stage of the cycle. The right hand column indicates the actual activities that were carried out during the lesson described above.


Assisting Learning

Building the Context

Pictures, video, students' own recall of past experiences


Vocabulary building tasks, role plays (students role play achieving purposes and goals), focused listening of sample dialogues




Establish the relationship between the speakers (equal/unequal --formal/informal, etc)
Focused listening to a sample dialogue, analysing students' role plays
Is this speaking while doing something else, or is the main activity speaking?






Modelling and deconstruction of text
Jumbled dialogues, students reorder the stages, students name the stages


Delete stages and analyse whether the purpose and goals were achieved

Compare/contrast different dialogues


Gap-fills in dialogues, pronoun trace tasks, creating multiple clause sentences
Identifying words or phrases that "keep the conversation going"



Students analyse/identify "how someone said something" to achieve his/her goal
Grammatical tasks focusing on form
Relate vocabulary tasks in 'building the field' section above

Pronunciation recognition tasks, pronunciation drills, minimal pairs, etc


Joint construction of text
Open class Role plays, problem solving dialogues, casual conversations, etc between teacher and students and students together

Independent construction of text
Students work in pairs/threes to create dialogue


Assessment
Self assessment, peer assessment, teacher assessment using observation, video recording, audio recording Example

A service encounter: returning faulty goods to the store

Students discuss prior experience of purchasing and returning faulty goods


Students brainstorm items they like to buy (nouns) and problems that can occur with the item(participles e.g It's scratched).
Students role play returning a faulty item.
Students listen to a sample dialogue.



Check that students understand the level of formality and the service-customer relationship (check during role play above and through focused listening)
Video would be useful, but in this case, groups brainstormed all activities that accompany this dialogue (e.g. checking faulty good, handing over receipt, going to store room, etc)







Students were given strips, each containing one stage. In groups, they ordered the stages, then listened to the dialogue again and revised

This stage was omitted


The level of formality and staging of a previous dialogue were compared with this dialogue

The transcript of the dialogue was analysed for pronoun references (personal and impersonal) and ways to express more than one problem with a good. Also, ways that the salesclerk could offer reasons for the faults. Gambits not covered


Students re-ordered jumbled sentences that stated problems with goods (e.g. The handbag is scratched and there's a tear inside). Further vocabulary development was done through the students drawing the item and labelling problems

'ed' endings (e.g scratched, damaged) were highlighted - extra syllable noted and practiced in a pronunciation game with minimal pairs



Teacher and a student role play --class observes. Repeated with two students.




'Closed pair practice'



Students formed groups of 3 -- one student observed and gave feedback on the role play -- repeated changing roles
Teacher observed and assessed selected groups, giving feedback on role play and the process of peer feedback



Comments on the Performance of Two Learners during Dyadic Text Production[3]

May and Urn worked through most of the lesson as a dyad. In fact, throughout the course they enjoyed working together; they demonstrated many excellent examples of how students can assist each other in language learning activities. They each took on the role of expert other at different times, although May was more proficient in English overall.

Rhetorical structure, lexical and grammatical resources employed

In the lesson under discussion here, May and Urn took to role play activity 3 (returning faulty goods to the store) with enthusiasm, and demonstrated a firm understanding of the social purpose. The staging of their text indicates that they were not only familiar with the situation, but also with the social process of the service encounter[4]. The rhetorical structure of the text is:

Request for service>Statement of problem>Service available? Yes or no> Transaction of service> Exchange of goods> Thanks/Closure

In terms of the lexical and grammatical resources used, it is clear that both May and Urn used language appropriate to the register (a formal business encounter), as we can see by polite openings and closings, and the accommodating nature of Urn as service provider:

May: Can I change it?
Urn: Yes….you wait for me for for a minute/?
May: Yes/
Urn: /because* er I would like to check (o)first the stock room.
May: Okay. (enacted pause) YES, that's RIGHT. Can you wrap for me?
Urn: Yes.

It is interesting to note that the role play carried out in the independent construction stage is both longer (in terms of the amount of turns of each student), but also more complex in its staging. After significant scaffolding vis-à-vis the activities in the modeling and deconstruction stage, and the joint production stage, May and Urn clearly approached the creative, independent construction stage with much more knowledge of the field, particularly the optional stages that may be utilised. Hence, we find more authentic activities, such as the negotiating the complication of the exchanged item being bigger and thus more expensive, and the offering of a special service to offset the inconvenience of receiving a faulty good. The groundwork in the earlier stages of the teaching/learning cycle certainly appears to have provided the students with sufficient knowledge of the genre, a broader range of lexis and grammar, and the motivation to take to the independent construction stage without undue uncertainty, a problem with many “free practice” speaking activities in Thai adult language classes.

Part of the learning objectives (as dictated by the course syllabus) was to gain an awareness of the form and function of specific language features (describing the problem with a damaged consumer good). It is clear that neither May nor Urn utilized these resources in their initial role play (and the other six dyads, as far as the teacher could ascertain did not either). Therefore, this role play did suggest this as one area of focus in the forthcoming stages of the cycle. As can be seen from the independent construction stage later in the cycle, both learners employed more lexical and grammatical resources to describe faulty goods:

(Note May’s use of clauses using participles as adjectives)

May: Uh…Yes…uh yesterday I buy a… a BLACK bag..handBAG. A black handBAG. Yes. But...I went home I get uh some problem. This handbag inside there is uh… inside…inside the handbag is torn.
Urn: Is torn?=
May: =Yes a::nd the outside of the handbag is scratched.
Urn: Hm Mm?
May: And then I…I see the stripe…the strep (strap) of the handbag is loose so I would like t:o give this for this problem.


(Note Urn’s attempts to use the participles as adjectives by repeating the problems)

Urn: …Uh…is to::rn?
May: Yeah.
Urn: And…scrat.
May: SCRATCHED=



Peer assistance during independent co-construction of text

In the role play enacted in the context building stage, there is little to suggest that May and Urn provide assistance to each other in their endeavours to use English to get the job of exchanging a faulty good done successfully. However, in the follow up role play, two interesting phenomena emerge.

First, note how May assists Urn with her pronunciation of ‘ed’ endings, a feature worked on the deconstruction stage.

Urn: And…scrat.
May: SCRATCHED=
Urn: =scratch

Although Urn’s final production of the word ending is not successful, it is clear that May took on the role of expert other at this point. It might be inferred from this episode that the assistance offered was not within Urn’s immediate zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1986).

Second, note below how Urn has set herself the goal of attempting to successfully use the comparative structure, which was not a focus at any of the stages of the cycle, but had been in a previous unit of work. This indicates the agentive nature of the language learner (Lantolf, 2000) and is a good reminder of Vygotsky’s (1978) premise that learning always has a history and precedes development. It is also a reminder of the understanding within a sociocultural approach to language learning that learning is not a linear process, but a process where development moves forward at times, and backwards at others (Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994). Urn, an active agent in her own language learning, took a socially situated opportunity to develop her ability to use a grammatical structure more successfully.

Urn: Okay. I check the new one, but…uh…BIGGER THAN…than you…than uh bigger than than the one before yours…bigger than the one=
May: =okay never mind. I.. I.. I like this handbag. Can I exchange that?
Urn: Yes, but same style, but BIGGER than that one.
May: Okay. Never mind. I don’t MIND.

Summary and Conclusions

The preceding section offers a brief but necessary view of some sample data from two of the stages from the teaching/learning cycle. This exploratory study was made in order to identify possible areas of future inquiry. The main area that this writer will explore is the nature of peer scaffolding during classroom language learning activity. Oral activities in the classroom are often done with simultaneous small groups of learners; therefore the possibility of the teacher being on-hand to provide assistance as needed is almost non-existent. The potential for learners to provide peer support in activities of this type offers some exciting future developments for language teaching pedagogy.

The teaching/learning cycle for oral skills developed here does not have universal application, but it is a highly useful heuristic for educators working with learners in high enclosure contexts. However, the application of the cycle requires practitioners to have a firm understanding of a sociocultural approach to learning and the social nature of language. Indeed, perhaps the only context in which the cycle can be successfully used is in a context where the practitioner has undergone a paradigm shift vis-à-vis the epistemological and ontological assumptions informing her or his approach to language and learning.


REFERENCES

Adolphs, S (2002) Genre and spoken discourse: probabilities and predictions, Nottingham Linguistic Circular 17

Aljaafreh, A. & Lantolf, P. (1994), ‘Negative feedback as regulation and second language learning in the proximal zone’, Modern Language Journal, 78, 1v, 465-483

Bakhtin, M.M. (1952/1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Texas: University of Texas Press.

Brown, H.D., (2001) Teaching by Principles: An integrative approach to language pedagogy, New York: Longman

Callaghan, M., Knapp, P., and Noble, G. (1993). Genre in Practice in Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (1993) Ed’s

Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (1993). The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press.

Donato, R (1994) Collective Scaffolding in Second Language Learning, in Lantolf and Appel (Ed's).

Engeström, Y., (1999), Activity theory and transformation in Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., Punamäki, R-L (Ed's)

Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., Punamäki, R-L (Ed's). (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory, New York: Cambridge University Press

Feez, S., (1998) Text-based Syllabus Design, Sydney: NCELTR

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold

Halliday, M.A.K., (1978) Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold

Lantolf and Appel (Ed's) (1994) Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing

Lantolf, J (Ed) 2000 Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning New York: Oxford University Press

Moll, L.C. (Ed.), Vygotsky and education: Instructional implications of sociohistorical psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press

Nunan, D. (1988c). The Learner-centred Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Piaget, J., Weaver, H., Kagan, J., (2000) The psychology of the child, Basic Books

Rogoff, L., and Lave, J., (1984) Everyday cognition: Development in social context New York: Harvard University Press

Skinner, B.F., (1968) The technology of teaching, B.F. Skinner Foundation

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APPENDIX A: CLASSROOM VIGNETTE

The Strep is Loose and the Inside is Torn: A Day out Shopping in an Oral Skills Lesson

In this lesson, the main learning aims were to:

q Become familiar with the staging of casual conversation related to a shopping encounter.

q Focus on interactants' motives and conversational goals.

q Gain an awareness of register, particularly tenor (interpersonal features), in casual conversation.

q Gain an awareness of the form and function of specific language features (describing the problem with a damaged consumer good).

q Utilise role play to improve conversational ability.


Warm up 1

Class started with an introduction to the staging of a casual conversation: a chance encounter with a friend while out shopping. The scene was set - while you are wandering through the World Trade Centre (a popular shopping mall in downtown Bangkok) on a shopping expedition, you happen upon a friend. I elicited the various stages that could characterise such a conversation by taking on the shopper's role, and asking a student to take on the other role. While we 'role played' for the class, I noted the stages and some language samples on the black board. The other twelve students were listening quite intently, and the model was interspersed with laughter and light humorous moments from we two actors as well as the audience. The final stages appeared on the board something like this:

Casual Conversation

Greeting

Small talk

Talk about…

Closing - Well, I have to go now. Nice to see you again. Nice talking to you.

Say Goodbye

After this model (and applause form the rest of the students), I asked a student to choose a partner and model the encounter for the class. As they progressed through their conversation, I assisted the flow a couple of times by pointing out the stage of the conversation that they could progress to. I did this once when a speaker abruptly ended the conversation, and a second time when there was a prolonged pause that if left unchecked may have caused discomfort with one of the speakers. After this model (and another round of applause), I directed the students to stand up and mingle around the room. Before they began, I reminded them of the context of situation - you are wandering through the World Trade Centre, on your way to begin some shopping, when you bump into a friend. You stop for a brief (5-minute chat). The class took to the task with smiles, energy and enthusiasm. I wandered around listening to various conversations, and noted that many of the pairs were spending most of the time talking about their shopping plans - where exactly they were going in the centre and what they were planning to buy. I also noted that they were referring to the stages written on the board, which seemed to help them keep going to a 'natural' close.

This prompted me to make an on-the-spot change to my lesson plan. Initially, I was going to have the students sit in groups of three and brainstorm things that they've bought recently and that they have had a problem with, naming the problems. I was going give them my own recent example as a frame:

a printer

- the paper doesn't feed

- the colours aren't clear

- the plug is loose

However, as the students seemed to be enjoying this mini role playing, and to help create a very clear context (in terms of field, tenor and mode) for the main part of the lesson, I made a quick call to extend this warm up.

Warm up 2 - leading in to the main context of the lesson

At a point during the role playing when it seemed most of the students had closed their conversations, I called everyone to attention and set a slightly different context. You have now finished shopping, and you're on your way out of the World Trade Centre. Just before you leave the centre, you see another friend. You stop for a brief chat and talk about things that you have just bought. The students commenced this second act of the morning with the same vigor and light-hearted fun that I always try to generate in free-speaking activities. I let this go on for a few minutes, and then asked all the students to sit down.

Context building: Using Role Play again

After the students had settled down, I elicited from a few of them what they had just bought on their shopping trip. A list went up on the board:

- a shirt

- a pair of shoes

- cosmetics

- a necklace

- a CD

- a T-shirt

- a watch

I then dramatised the next act of the morning. You have gone out shopping, chatted with a friend, bought what you needed, chatted with another friend, travelled all the way home, and now you are unpacking your bags. You open the bag, smiling and happy with your new purchase, and when you look at it (big frown on my face), you notice that there's something wrong with it. Look at my shirt, it has a (elicit from the class) tear in it (I frown…students laugh). What can I do? Students call out "refund", "go back to the shop".

"Okay", I said. "I'm the customer with my damaged shopping. Who wants to be the salesclerk?"

Ying[5] agreed, and we acted out for the rest of the class the conversation that takes place between the customer with a problem, and the salesclerk who is responsible for solving the problem. After this, I asked pairs (seated) to role play a similar situation.

At this point, I recorded May and Urn's conversation (see transcript 1, Appendix B).

Modelling a text

The next stage of the lesson involved listening to an encounter between a salesclerk and a customer - the customer bought a jacket and found several problems with it; therefore she has returned to the store. The listening task focused the students on the product, the problems, what the salesclerk offers to do, and how the customer responds. I played the tape and the students listened and discussed in small groups what they had heard.

Following this, I played the tape again, and asked the students to work in pairs and write down how the customer described the problems with her jacket. The following language features were reconstructed by the pairs and finally written on the black board by me:

It has a tear in the lining

It's torn in several places.

Some of the buttons are very loose.

There's a stain on the collar.

Through careful eliciting and focusing, I made the students aware of the grammatical form of these now decontextualised statements (use of have + a noun; use of is + past participle adjective). I then elicited three more examples from the students' recent role play (attempt to recontextualise) and wrote these on the black board. I led some pronunciation practice of the stress patterns and problem sounds of these statements, then I had the students work on some sentence-level exercises from their textbook to reinforce the grammatical forms of these language features. Finally, the students wrote the problems that they had had with the products they recently bought at the World Trade Centre.

To focus the students on the rhetorical staging of this kind of conversation, I next assigned them to groups of three and gave each group a collection of paper strips. Each strip had a functional label for each of the stages of the conversation that they had listened to. Their task was to put the strips in the correct order, as shown below.

Greeting and offering service

State what you want

Ask for details of the problem

Give details of the problem

Offer to solve the problem

Accept or refuse the offer

Offer to solve the problem again

Each group came up with slightly different orderings of the strips, so I played the tape and had them re-think their results. I then asked each group in sequence to tell me the functional stage of the conversation, which I wrote on the board (as above). A discussion emerged about what alternative ways there are to redress a problem with a recently purchased item, and I gave time to allow the students (as a whole class) to discuss these.

Joint production of the text

We were now ready to move on to a scaffolded, joint construction of the conversation, this time allowing the students the opportunity to use language features recently focused upon, as well as to follow a more 'scripted' act (however, as can be seen from the transcripts of May and Urn (see transcript 2, Appendix B), this did not result in any kind of formulaic or prescriptive framework, but rather, it gave the students access to a bigger tool kit form which to choose than before.

I asked for a volunteer and, like above jointly produced a conversation with the rest of the class looking on. I did this with another volunteer, and then had the same pairs as previously perform their role plays.

At this point, I recorded May and Urn's conversation (see transcript 2, Appendix B).

APPENDIX B: TRANSCRIPTS 1 AND 2

TRANSCRIPT 1

(Students negotiate roles)

Urn: May I help you?

May: Yes. Yesterday I..yesterday I bought a new shirt, but I get home..this shirt is too SMALL.

Urn: Small?=

May: =Yes.

Urn: We:ll…what can I do?

May: You can help me?

Urn: Yes…you have receipt?

May: Yes. Let me see. Here's a receipt.

Urn: Okay……How 'bout the shirt?

May: Yes. I would like to aah…same…aah…same colour? Uh the size I would like aah…size L large size=

Urn: =uh huh.

May: And…uh… uh this style.

Urn: Oka::y?

May: Can I change it?

Urn: Yes….you wait for me for for a minute/?

May: Yes/

Urn: /because* er I would like to check (o)first the stock room.

May: Yes wait a minute. Yes minute.

(Enacted pause 3 seconds as salesclerk goes to collect new shirt)

Urn: Oka::y? You can exchange.

May: Yes.

Urn: Uh. Little? You can check it again.

May: Okay. (enacted pause) YES, that's RIGHT. Can you wrap for me?

Urn: Yes.

May: Okay. Thank you very much.

Urn: You're welcome.

May: Okay. Bye by::e.

Urn: Bye by::e.



TRANSCRIPT 2

Urn: May I help you?

May: Uh…Yes…uh yesterday I buy a… a BLACK bag..handBAG. A black handBAG. Yes. But...I went home I get uh some problem. This handbag inside there is uh… inside…inside the handbag is torn.

Urn: Is torn?=

May: =Yes a::nd the outside of the handbag is scratched.

Urn: Hm Mm?

May: And then I…I see the stripe…the strep (strap) of the handbag is loose so I would like t:o give this for this problem.

Urn: May I take a look?