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EFL
Japan "a world of difference" |
Pragmatics and American Conversational Usage |
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EFL
Japan "a world of difference" |
Pragmatics and American Conversational Usage |
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5. Appropriate reductions (disappearance of portions of grammatically correct statements) in the responses are easier to see, learn, and have explained with the use of Stimu-Con games. In American English, the speaker often eliminates parts of the sentence, much to the dismay of many learners. For example, "Do you need any help?" becomes "Need any help?" or even "Need help?" (game #9). |
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Game 9 |
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| Conversational Focus One morning, Johnny overslept ... ある朝、ジョニーは朝寝坊した。（妻のアキコと息子のハルオ、ペットのサムはとっくに起きて朝食を食べている。） |
Communication Function CharacterA / CharacterB Being late / Offering help 遅刻しそうな状況の表現／手助けしようという |
Character A / Character B 1. I overslept (this morning)! |
 What would you say? |
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This form of "real" speech is rarely taught in the Japanese high school curriculum. And because there is little opportunity for conversational interaction with native speakers outside the classroom, most students tend to talk like grammar books! The best way to introduce this type of reduced speech was to indicate in the suggestion key the acceptable reduced response with the use of parentheses. When learners SAW how the reduction occurred, in relation to the situation, they were able to incorporate these expressions more easily into their own conversation. |
| 6. The Suggestion Key and
Audiotapes are valuable resources which provide you with authentic,
usable American English, and can be used to enhance the learning
process. We initially found that learners with a background in English grammar produced many grammatically correct, but socially unused responses to our games. They were unaware of idiomatic and colloquial usages. Since we obviously felt that learners should be encouraged to converse in English, in spite of making socially unused statements, we decided to give positive feedback for ALL the efforts given AND to help learners go beyond these efforts to attain socially acceptable responses. We pointed out that non-idiomatic usages - and even ungrammatical responses - could still be understandable to a native English speaker in many cases. In this way, the efforts of learners were not lost, but were seen as a positive step in the acquisition of REAL communicative competence. We then created the Stimu-Con Suggestion Key which is a compilation of many acceptable responses for each game. This key required a great deal of time and effort because, as the editing progressed, we saw that there were numerous responses available that differed according to such elements as American locale and social and economic status. The resulting key is a consensus project, with us and our consultants agreeing as to the genuineness and Americanness of the responses used. We then had American speakers record these conversational expressions on audiotape, which provides both the learner and even non-American teachers with a standard to measure not only WHAT to say in a particular situation, but also HOW to say it! |
 John Pereira  with Samuel Schenker |
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