Three Discourse Lessons

Presentation Review

Group 1: Osaro & Jim

I like the music and imagery. Also, hearing Osaro speak is powerful because English is her second language. This could be motivational for students. I think it’s a shame that many schools abroad, only hire native English speakers because a lot of ELLs are fluent, and more grammatically accurate. It is cool she talks about an authentic listening experience though. Jim presents great information, and uses intonation to emphasize information, questions, and specific information he wants to share. They did a great job adding in videos into their presentation, I need to learn how to do that. They also, met the time length considering they only have two people. I like how Osara ends the presentation. I think they did an awesome using cool DML tricks for their complete presentation!

Discourse & Pragmatics

TESOL Concepts and Communication strategies, through Immigrant, ELL, Conversation Observation:

Alexandria White

Discourse and Pragmatics

MA-TESOL, USFCA

Introduction

            This paper evaluates conversations between native, English speaking students, in their one-on-one meetings with recent, one to three year, US immigrant students, who attend Newcomer school, which specialized in TESOL, specific academics. Approximately four minutes, of conversation and transcript is observed from New Immigrants Share their Story video, Youtube, 2011.  This video was chosen because the conversation emphasizes Gee’s, seven building tasks to efficient English language learning, sociocultural influences, and pragmatic deconstruction, for ELL conversation practice (Gee, 2014)

Self-Assessment:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1W-o7MzWZbn860j6JVYjyIuktVGO9ADDQT2lC6LhsCxQ/viewform

This form created through Google docs. would be a great way to assess student communicative competency levels. I would use discourse analysis in reading their responses. I created short answers, paragraph answers, and multiple choices to get an idea of where students are in their comprehension, reading, and writing skills. This would be used to introduce student, and give me an idea of areas we can improve and strengthen. My favorite question is asking "where knowing English would help the student most?" This way I can plan, and create a curriculum that fits student communicative needs. I would incorporate simulation, spontaneous speaking, and role playing activities for better discourse analysis. 

Group Presentation

Grice's Maxims

1. The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
   
2. The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
   
3. The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
   
4. The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.
   
   
   As the maxims stand, there may be an overlap, as regards the length of what one says, between the maxims of quantity and manner; this overlap can be explained (partially if not entirely) by thinking of the maxim of quantity (artificial though this approach may be) in terms of units of information. In other words, if the listener needs, let us say, five units of information from the speaker, but gets less, or more than the expected number, then the speaker is breaking the maxim of quantity. However, if the speaker gives the five required units of information, but is either too curt or long-winded in conveying them to the listener, then the maxim of manner is broken. The dividing line however, may be rather thin or unclear, and there are times when we may say that both the maxims of quantity and quality are broken by the same factors.