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Beyond the Sentence - Introducing Discourse Analysis PDF

196 Pages·2016·21.25 MB·English
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Beyond the Sentence TalecorelUlellae Rel eel lee TAIN Scott Thornbury Macmillan Books for Teachers c/o cL —_ Macmillan Books for Teachers Beyond The Sentence Introducing discourse analysis Scott Thornbury oA MACMILLAN Feng nn O42 Times econ eo aes ow ineet ranger mcrae heh Mo ase Sister ta tn anes Rc eG EE Mite tee tenaesotser, ‘inte aaa Nene Cone add ese 958, Here ei epee ener, Fe eet i Sete be ea ice Phe emia Se aeaattaeciateemphaes tr wiecla santos stance ey ie ae eno 9133) LannneeoePaths near castes baie Port Pare? Contents About the author About the series Introduction, Beyond the sentence 1 Unlecking text 2 What makes atesi? 3 Wastmakes a texcmake sorse? 4 Spoken texes 5 Tex incoatest 6 Classroom texts 7 Viaerary texrs and leaded texts & Learner texts Classroom activities Phewweupiable task shests Reading list and References Index 186 190 About the author ‘My teaching end training experience has boon mainly in Dgypt and Spin, with dmay native New Zealand, Now| divide my lime between rations, and writing Ihave an MA in TEFL trom the University of Reading, 2s well asthe RSA/GOLES Diptoma, Thave written annumher sflsooke for ceackers on the teaching of language systezs und skills, as wel as aesieully-tines! grammar for students. Lam presen'ly writing a dicuonsary of HIT Thanks. ‘to my informaats (Catriona Akana, Anns Tsevckidou. Denis Newsein}, my ext sources (Rod llainen, Peter Coles, Sandra MacKay, the PTAS conference speakers, and Tessa); also 19 zaders Matt Jones and Felicity O'Dal for thet alseports, and io Ben Goldsscia for his Helpludfeedinack oa Chepter \pecial shanks 20m ing) menrors, whose presentations, uricies, and. souks have been a constant souice of inspizalion, purticlatly Ror Carter, Guy Cook, Mickaol Hoey, Mike McCarthy; John Sineiaiz. ad Heary Widdowson The usual caveats and waivers apply.) No dunks te HSBC for efusing permission to use a key tt nd enormous thanks, finally to Llavic ley, J Florent andl Adrian Underhill, whose joint guidance and ue lgggingreathesiasm eprme on track, and to Alyson Maskell, whose editorship, once aguin, husbeen -mplat; Dedication To Afurvay-forel she eras we hee shaves. Aroha, About the series Macmillan Books for Teachers Weleome to the Macmillan Books for'sackcrs: yom area trainee te s. These books are fur youil ‘her, practising wacher or teucher trainer. They help you 10: + develop your skills and confidence x ‘astyoudo and why you de it + infos your practice with theory. + imponge your practice same the best each wer you can be The handhoois are wrinten fom a humanistic and studeat-venteed perspes bey oller: ‘+ practical techniques and ideas for classroom + key insights into zelevant buckgrourd theory -choiques and insigiats ia your work arc teachers aud Gainers, We lake « learning as you ge” appraach in sharing cur experience with you. We help you reflecr on way’ you can facilitate ‘earning. and Pring yorr persenal sticagths to your work, We oller you insights from research into language and language lewning sad suggest ways of using hese insiubis in your classroom. You ean alee go t2 “attpy/iwww.onestepenglish.com anc ask theaurhors taradviee, We encourige you to experi can understand she how an: confidence in you: own tes ‘new silusiuns. ctivities ent und to develop variery and choice, so thar you why of your werk. Webope you will develop jog su in your abilly to respond ereati Adrian Underhill Titles in the series Bey the Seusence Scott Thornbury Childzen Learning English Jayne Moan Disenaer Brylish Rod Bolitho & Briun Tomlinson, Lear ins Teachings Jim Secvener ‘Sound Founclarions ‘Adrian Underhill Teaching Practice Roger Gower, Diane Phillips & Steve Walters Teaching Reauliny Skits Caristine Nuzall Uncovering Grammar Seert Thornbury 260 Claservons Hetionties David Seymour & Maria Popova Introduction to Beyond The Sentence text, n. A continuous piece of spoken or writin language, expecially ome with c-recoynizable beginning arid ending." Language is realized, trst and foremost, as text, Notas iselated sound, or words, crsentenees, buts whole taxts, And users of language have te cope with texts ‘They have to make sense of them ars theyrhave ts produce them, 'Ihis sas true for sccond language uscrs as its lor fssl language nsers. As teachers of second lungeanige users, therefore, our top priority is co Lely ous Keasners engage with "Tals book sets out La shiny Huaw this eon bee done, Welive ina world of ext. We are surrounded by text in our homes, in the street, acwork and at school, I'you are like me, you wake up in the morning hscening te radio txt, you glare idly at the cereal pacice: text 36 vou skin the morzing paper, ridge is festooned with censinders und messy, sou go on-line and check ‘your e-mil, you reud the ads on the ous on the way’ To work andl work iself ig ‘erie deluge of texts: spoken and written, kandwrittsa and cleetronic, Forrnal and informal. Apparently the average Americun is argered by 3000 messages por ‘uy. That includes phone calls, e-mail, scetings and conversations.? According 10 some estimates, ypieal workers end and receive some 200 messages aad documents 4 day. On average we ate cxposed to angtung Lsom 6010 1 1600 advertising messages a day, depending on which source you consul: ad these figures pre-dace the advent of text messaging. By 2003, in one day slone people in Britain were sending $6 million text messages te each othery¢ figure thas had. doubled injusta year. By the ead of that year they had vent 20 ballon messages, Tp Lael, 0 accustomed une we to text that its hard ro imagine wre ite rust hae bbeen lise in the pre-elecr-onic, et alone the pre-Gutenberg, cra ‘This steady exposite to language inthe form of texts is a boon, a eeurse, ts language learners ~assurning, thal i, thal Pe texts rein the Inagusge that te learner is learning. Tn the case of English. this is often so, even in plucex where English is not zhe ast ragunge. You'd be rd put te fing onywvhere on earth that ‘heyons the reach of an English language pop soag, website, movie, or even ‘Tshirt. Forbener or worse, Rngtish-nguage texts ubiquitous, This, i tan, is good news forthe teacher of Enalish. Or should be, But with so much Engkise Tanase text availble, its no: always easy to know what to select for tesching, nurposes, or how to use it. Moreover, language teaching hes wraditionally been, more concerned with individual sentences aller Usan Lents as sich, Piven in this supposedly communicarive era, alot of the langage presentation ane practice material available in published coursebook is sentence-based. ‘Vere is good reason for this sertiemess ier all, are key building blocks of language abd ive relatively fixed and describabie g:aarvar. BuCanguage, ines natural state, isnot isolated sentences: istext. As one lingnist pntit, Language always happens textand nct as isolated words and sentences, Foot an uesttene, sncsl or sducational perspectiveits the textwhich isthe sign‘ficcst unit of aguage:? Going “beyond the sentence’ in order to exploce the servcture and the purposes of whole tess alls wii Une orbat of whats called discourse anaiyis, Par singly, discourse isthe way thar languege either spoken or written —is-uscd for eae 110 Beyond The Scuteaos comuuupicative effect in real-world situat such language, and the anclysis of the features and uses of texts~or ret analysis — ig un integral component of discourse analysis, One way of looking at te distinction between discourse and fextis wo tink of discourse as Ue process, and he text as the product. Taatis, speakers (ar writers) engage in a communicative process that involves language ~ such 8 4 shopping exchange, er the expression, ofbirchday greetings —andl the record of dhe language thal is used in this discourse is called ite text Discourse analysis is the study of Recogaitien of the primacy of text has meant that texts have started to play a more prominent role in teaching materials and have even penetrated into the public examinations: Gre Cambridye First Cerlilicate in Knglish (KCH) exantination, for exaraple, ismow almost entirely text-based, Nevertheless, many lenciers arestilly 8 0 heww to explnic texts in rheir teaching. Often texts are used simply as a velicle for te: cloetod item of scatonce grammar Or thev are used to develop the skills und subskills of listening and reading, without mich attention being given to the rext-specific feanares of their campasition. The lexis Llemselves are often somewhat bland and arc typically inauthentic — thats. they have heen especially written for teucking purposes. Literary texts are often treated with suspicion by teachers, ne presenting too many problems of hath a linguistic snl cultural xin This book aims to areas these issues. Ry rhe en idea of + what e texts and whar its characteristic fearares are + how to categorize and deseribe texts, og according to their genre, funetion, organization and style + how to find, select and adapr texts + how to exploit texis for language teaching and skills Cevelopment purposes + how to unpack the biden messages of texts + howto use literary texts ih som and + how to evaluaieand use learners" texts, ‘Move generally, itis hoped thar you will come away convinced of the value of text used language aching and be motivated to go “beyond the sentence’ and explore this zich resource with your learners, ‘hiebook has been written with both novice and expericneed teachers in mind. ‘While some linguistic terminology is inevitable, this has been kept toa rsinimus as have references to academic and theoretical literature, For those interested in. folleing up some of the themes of the book, reading list of selected hooks and articles car, be found az the back Chapter 1 Unlocking texts yLA Unlocking texts Pat yours tho position of @ begin inner. Here isa text ‘comes from the tam of an Egyptian na: cl hausane years aga Fi assunt ig you aun wether reas hletoglyphs nor speak Anclent Egyptian. But study :ciosely. Can you make any sense sft? Can you at least spat some Pallas or regulatities? Discovery ac Commentary mam ‘The age to make sease of text even el the text ult language that we neither peu nor read is such that we are quite eapablc ef inventing meaaings en the basis of te dimsicstof evidence. Ics possible, lor example, that yor took guess thar the text ahaur hi nares of birds occur fequenly. This, in faci ‘was the strategy edogced by those scbulars wha si ullemptes te decipher hieroglyphs: “They all looked fora symbolic meaning for enc’ hieroeinahic sign, They expected a picture of three wavy lines te mean water and omiy waters 2 picture ofa head w mean a nead, thar of an owgls0 mean. an oor and so on, They made no allowance for the fae: that such pictuzes may, it fact be photogs jund signs), o, iaceed, letters ut anailphutel rather than pictographs, *Tetole before this very literal and ‘bectom-up” approacit w devipherment was evertielass some ofthe sprabuls in the rexr arepictographs, a3 we shall ee, sn Phe srategy is nor enpeely unpeactaetive. Onnthe other ancl, knowing that the text was Found ina wml, you may have guessed hat i hud religions significa, chacitweas« sacred sex, or @ biography of the deceased, for example, This ‘twp~owi’ suruiegy, using eantextual cues, ‘would ave put you om the mghrtrack. You may also neve noticed some repetition of elements ~ the feur owls and theirassociated slant-like symbols for example, (Or the four ses of thuee vertical hars, Paling iwtmarid-iwn toechor and using your huckyraura knowledge of exc types and foncrary culture, yeu sight have B these zeiteraloms indicute u rituulisie discourse syle, as befits 2 funerary text, such ns a prayer o¢ sncantatin.

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