Teaching through discourse

Бюллетень науки и практики / Bulletin of Science and Practice

UDC 372.881.1                                      

Since Communicative Approach has been introduced in language learning and teaching, it has become a need for language teachers to be able to integrate other disciplines rather than approaching the language separately. Discourse analysis, one of those areas, has a number of definitions from a variety of perspectives. Before we go down to discuss approaches to the definition of discourse analysis, the word “discourse” needs defining. According to Celce-Murcia &Olshtain (2000), defining a discourse should not be limited with formal and functional approaches [1]. They claim defining discourse as a unit of more than one sentence (formal approach) is not optimal because discourse can be as short as “Stop!” “No smoking!”;

Abovementioned disciplines along with discourse analysis share common interests in how real people use real language or language in action which is immediate interest of language teachers, particularly, about how to make teaching materials, purpose or activity authentic, in the end helping learners to become more proficient in the target language. McCarthy claims that although language experienced teachers may feel what material authentic or natural is; or when it is beneficial to use artificial language, detailed insight into how texts are structured beyond sentence level; how talk follows regular patterns in a wide range of situations; and how discourse norms differ from culture to culture should be offered [2]. These all prove the role of discourse and discourse analysis in language teaching and learning.

Main Body

Although there are many types of discourse (critical discourse, genre analysis, conversation analysis, cohesion analysis, rhetorical structure theory), pedagogical discourse analysis has a special role in language teaching like identifying problems and designing activities to help learners overcome the problems. These problems can be related to miscommunication between native and non-native speakers of the language [1].

Reasons for communication breakdowns may vary – grammar, pronunciation, lexical or pragmatic inaccuracies. It is pedagogical discourse analysis which finds out the reason of miscommunication and help language teachers to bring it to the classroom as an example and practice the ways of avoiding such problems.

Celce-Murcia&Olshtain consider that three main developments in language studies have given a rise to discourse based approaches to language teaching. They are 1) linguistic theories that include discourse analysis with grammar, lexicon and phonology; 2) work in communicative approaches in language teaching; and 3) theoretical models of communicative competence [1].

Discourse based approach to language teaching is a result of opposition of a number of scholars to sentence — level paradigm and context-free model of Chomsky. In other words, both Hymes, who introduced the term of communicative competence, and functional linguist Halliday argue that language includes not only innate mechanisms for language acquisition, but also discourse and use; grammar, lexicon, phonology as integral constituents. The specific feature of this approach lies in analyzing coherent fragments of authentic language rather than artificially constructed sentences, which are typical to Chomskyan school.

Other methodologists such as van Ek and Wilkins (1976) suggested language instruction should not be limited with only grammar but notions like time, space and quantity; and social functions like request, apology and complaints should also be taken into consideration [3].

Based on Hymes’ notion of communicative competence, developed four major components of communicative competence in second language learning; 1) linguistic competence (ability to produce and interpret meaningful utterances and bear conventional meaning); 2) sociolinguistic competence (awareness of ways where language forms are chosen considering setting, relationship of communication partners, and communicative intentions); 3) discourse competence (ability to

® I select related strategies to construct and interpret texts, combining sociocultural knowledge and topdown communicative intent); 4) strategic competence (ability to find out solutions to communication problems, particularly, by rephrasing, asking for clarification or eliciting) [3].

Discourse-based grammar and vocabulary

In discourse-based vocabulary, we can investigate the role of use of synonyms, antonyms, exact and partial repetitions, part –whole relationships, words in the same semantic class, class genus word [4].

Discourse based writing and speaking

Spoken miscommunication can happen because of a number of reasons:

• a)    inaccuracy or inappropriateness in language;

• b)    not sharing the same culture, background information, and expectations;

• c)    first language interference. In order to avoid those problems, a teacher is suggested to firstly bring authentic activities to the classroom like role playing using different speech acts (requesting, complaining or ordering), oral presentations, debates and others.

Secondly, teachers should guide the learners to use communication strategies with linguistic and socio-cultural knowledge [4].

When one piece of writing is created, the author needs to consider readers` background knowledge and expectations. In other words, the notion of absent reader (who does not share physical and temporal context with the writer) should not be disregarded. Learners` written discourse can be improved by helping them compose and teaching them to use feedback to edit, correct and improve the work.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in contemporary world, as we apply communicative approach in foreign language teaching, discourse and language teaching are interrelated. EFL teachers should not forget that a language cannot be taught alone, it should always integrate authentic communicative intentions, materials and activities. To accomplish these objectives, teachers are suggested to implement discourse — based teaching for all language subskills (pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary) and skills (listening, reading, writing and speaking). When applying this approach, different components of communicative competence (linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic); and careful selection and design of activities should be regarded.