Consciousness-raising activities

Dave Willis and Jane Willis

Introduction

Language is so vast and varied that we can never provide learners with a viable and comprehensive description of the language as a whole. We can, however, provide them with guidelines and, more important, we can provide them with activities which encourage them to think about samples of language and to draw their own conclusions about how the language works. The general term for activities of this kind is consciousness-raising (C-R . C-R activities have been a part of language teaching for a ver! long time. "ndeed the grammartranslation approach to language teaching certainl! embodied C-R. Learners worked from language data to formulate rules for language production. #nder grammar-translation, however, there was generall! a ver! restricted range of C-R techni$ues and the methodolog! paid a ver! high price in other wa!s % b! restricting e&posure to the target language, for e&ample. "n the '()*s and '(+*s a good deal of the research into language learning suggested that, given e&posure to the language, learners could be left to work out the grammar for themselves. ,ormal instruction was seen as contributing ver! little to learning. -uch views are associated particularl! with .rashen (.rashen and Terell '(+/ . Current concern with C-R, however, is largel! a reaction against approaches to language learning which pla!ed down the contribution of instruction. 0ne of the earl! attempts to define C-R (-harwood--mith '(+' specificall! addresses .rashen1s work. Rutherford1s ('(+) Second Language Grammar: Learning and Teaching is a landmark in the development of C-R and there are man! recent contributions2 some (eg 3ames '((4 taking universal grammar (see -hortall, 5aper 4 as a starting point, others(eg 6llis '((7 taking a more general approach. 8 highl! accessible introduction to the notion of C-R is to be found in 6llis ('((/ . ,or the rationale which lies behind C-R we would refer !ou to the sources cited above. This article is intended more as a do-it-!ourself manual for the anal!sis and construction of C-R activities than as a discussion of the nature and value of C-R. We will offer a brief definition of C-R and will then move on to look at what aspects of language it can help us to stud! and how we can organi9e that stud! for our learners. What is C-R? 6llis ('((/ contrasts C-R with practice activities. 8mong the characteristics of C-R he lists:

The ;attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused attention1. ,rom the wealth of language data to which learners are e&posed we identif! particular features and draw the learner1s attention specificall! to these. The provision of `data which illustrate the targeted feature1. "t is our contention that this data should as far as possible be drawn from te&ts, both spoken and written, which learners have alread! processed for meaning, and that as far as possible those te&ts should have been produced for a communicative purpose, not simpl! to illustrate features of the language. The re$uirement that learners 1utili9e intellectual effort' to understand the targeted feature. There is a deliberate attempt to involve the learner in h!pothesi9ing about the data and to encourage h!pothesis testing.

"f we believe that the successful learner is activel! involved in looking for regularities in language data and in drawing conclusions from those regularities then we have an obligation to encourage this process. "f we are successful in this we will not onl! succeed in making specific generali9ations about language available to learners, we will also succeed in inculcating learning habits which will pa! valuable dividends whenever and wherever the learner encounters language. C-R, then, can be seen as guided problem solving. Learners are encouraged to notice particular features of the language, to draw conclusions from what the! notice and to organi9e their view of language in the light of the conclusions the! have drawn. This relates closel! to the three-part process ObserveHypothesi e - !"periment described b! Lewis (5aper 7 . What should learners notice about grammar? <ost pedagogic grammars are ver! unbalanced. 8 look at the list of contents in most coursebooks or students1 grammars will show that there is a preoccupation with the grammar of the verb phrase, particularl! tense. 0ther important elements of the grammar, such as the structure of the noun phrase, are often overlooked. "n particular we need to look more closel! at the behaviour of individual words and classes of words. We need perspectives on grammar which take account of the interface between grammar and le&is. Willis ('((/ identifies a number of perspectives on grammar. -ome aspects of the grammar can be efficientl! described b! a s!stem of rules. 0ther aspects def! description of this kind. The! need to be noted and learned rather than generated b! base rules. =ere is a brief summar! of five perspectives on language: The grammar of structure "t is possible to offer ver! powerful rules describing the structure of the 6nglish clause. "t contains a sub>ect and a verb, nearl! alwa!s in that order. ?er! often the verb is followed b! some sort of necessar! completion - an ob>ect, a complement or a prepositional phrase of some sort. 8lmost alwa!s these elements come after the verb. =owever, in terms of order, adverbials in 6nglish are problematical. Temporal adverbs, for e&ample, ma! come more or less an!where in the clause. -ome adverbs, adverbs of degree, for e&ample, have particular restrictions on their position in the clause: # en$oyed the party very much%

not @" en$oyed very much the party% "n general, however, it is possible to provide ver! powerful guidelines for the structure of the 6nglish clause. The same is true of the structure of the elements which make up the clause, the noun group, for e&ample: That big blac& cat over there% not '(lac& big cat that over there% The order of elements within the 6nglish clause is ver! fi&ed. This ma! be comforting for learners. Less comforting is the fact that in order to maintain this order and at the same time allow for fle&ibilit! in the wa! information is presented and highlighted 6nglish has some comple& devices like clefting, involving the use of a dumm! sub>ect it: # thought it )as someone playing a $o&e% #t's al)ays the money that gets reported* isn't it+ These devices present a learning problem. The! need to be drawn to the attention of learners and treated s!stematicall!. This can onl! be done b! looking at clauses within te&ts. -ince the structure of a given clause is determined b! its place in discourse we need to look at clauses and sentences in conte&t, not in abstract. The grammar of orientation Language learning materials alwa!s spend a good deal of time on the tense s!stem, on the articles and on other determiners such as some and any% These s!stems are central to the language because the! relate what is being spoken or written about to the real world and to other elements in the te&t. Aiven the elements in a clause )ife-)or&-garden)ee&end we know what the clause is about but we are unable to find an! 1orientation1we cannot identif! who the message is about or whether it refers to past or present time, to a particular wife and garden or to wives and gardens in general. But given the clause ,y )ife )or&s in the garden most )ee&ends you can identif! the wife as the wife of the speaker, and the garden as their garden. The tense of the verb tells !ou that the statement is a general statement relevant to present time. This is reinforced b! the use of the general determiner most% The function of the tense s!stem and the s!stem of determiners is e&actl! this, to enable us to orient ourselves to the elements in the proposition. The past tense, for e&ample, is used to refer to something which occurred at a specific time in the past. The use of the present perfect tense asserts that the action of the verb has some relevance to the present or future. The definite article tells hearersCreaders that the entit! referred to is readil! identifiable from the te&t or conte&t. These grammatical devices, then, act as ;pointers1 showing how items relate to one another in terms of time, place and identit!. Like the grammar of structure these elements of the grammar are highl! s!stematic. We can make useful generali9ations about them. 8gain the! need to be studied in conte&t, since their function is necessaril! related to conte&t.

The grammar of class Teachers are used to allocating nouns to two classes - countable and uncountable. This is an important distinction to make since the patterns in which these items occur are $uite different. The class of double ob>ect verbs -give* as&* send* etc. is another which is often identified and highlighted for learners. We are, therefore, used to classif!ing words according to their grammatical behaviour. This is a valuable procedure which can usefull! be taken a good deal further. There is, for e&ample, a ver! important class of nouns which are often postmodified b! a clause with that: /lease don't get the idea that lain a supporter of )omen's liberation% There was this theory that )omen al)ays pass first time% # got the impression that it was trying to get in% These words pla! an important part in highlighting ideas in discourse. The! pla! an important part in all kinds of 6nglish from ever!da! conversation to abstruse academic discourse. "t is important to make learners aware of words like this. "t is not clear in how man! wa!s words might usefull! be classified. The grammar of class is much more open-ended than the grammar of structure and orientation. The learner faces two problems. What classes of word are there in 6nglish and how are the words of the language allocated to these classesD Learners are obliged to work on these $uestions simultaneousl! whenever the! meet new linguistic items or become aware of new patterns of behaviour. Lexical phrase The importance of fi&ed phrases in language is receiving increasing attention (see Lewis, 5aper 7 . There are fi&ed phrases like as a matter of fact* which behave like le&ical items. There are frames like as -adverb. as possible0 )ould you mind 1ing% 8 fluent speaker of a language has a vast stock of these prefabricated phrases. -ome of them are closel! related to particular word classes. The nouns postmodified b! that* illustrated above, for e&ample, are often found in frames like: The problem2fact2danger is that %%% We can offer learners hints like this which ma! help them assimilate these fi&ed phrases, but the learning task is still ver! open-ended. -ome scholars (eg 5awle! and -!der '(+/ have estimated that there are tens of thousands of such phrases. Collocation We can think of collocation in terms of word association. ,or an 6nglish speaker the word hard calls up words like )or& and luc& because it often occurs in their compan!. "t also calls up words like cold, again because the two often go together. Words often collocate with their anton!ms - hard and soft% -ometimes several words build up as we have seen into le&ical phrases. -ets of words and the le&ical relations which hold between them contribute to le&ical

cohesion, for e&ample. 8n illustration of this can be seen in the C-R activit! on page )', where words to do with aircraft and flight contribute to the cohesion of a te&t. What other aspects of language should be highlighted? Frequent words "t is important to provide good coverage of the most fre$uent words of the language prepositions and modal verbs, for e&ample. These words need to be highlighted for the learner thoroughl! and s!stematicall!, simpl! because the! are so common. The! are covered in other perspectives on grammar. <an! of their uses are covered under Le"ical phrases% 5repositions contribute heavil! to the structure of the noun group. But these words are of such fre$uent occurrence, and so central to the meaning and structure of the language, that the! need to be constantl! rec!cled. Text structure Work on cohesion and coherence (see for e&ample =oe! '((' and genre anal!sis (-wales '((* helps us to identif! macro-structures in te&t. etaphor <etaphors such as those described in Lakoff and 3ohnson ('(+* (;Time is mone!1 !ou can spend* save* etc both2 ;Eiscourse is a >ourne!1- !ou can go bac& to a point* come to the end* reach an agreement* ta&e another approach. give the learner the power to generate a whole set of new meanings using familiar words. !"ills There are two aspects of the teaching of skills. -tudents need to practise in the classroom the things the! will need to do with the language outside the classroom. The! need to practise processing written te&t $uickl! and efficientl!. The challenge here is methodological. =ow do we design activities which reproduce in the classroom the demands students will face outsideD But skills are based on language. To put it crudel!, the best wa! to improve !our language skills is to learn more language. When, for e&ample, readers scan a te&t for specific information the! look for ke! words. Their knowledge of word association and le&ical sets comes into pla!. There are two wa!s C-R can help. The first is b! making them conscious of what knowledge is invoked in carr!ing out a given task. The second is b! helping them to organi9e their language in a wa! which will help them tap this knowledge.

Where does language data come from?

"t is useful to think of the language to which the learner is e&posed as a pedagogic corpus (Willis '((/ . We tr! to offer learners e&posure to a bod! of te&t, written and spoken, which will illustrate for them the important things the! need to know about the language - about the wa! it is structured, about the wa! particular words behave, about the common words and phrases and so on. 0nce we have drawn up a set of te&ts which meets these re$uirements we

need to design a series of communicative tasks which will oblige learners to process the te&ts for meaning, so that the te&ts become a part of the learners1 e&perience of 6nglish. (-ee 5aper F on Task-based learning. -econdl! we need to anal!se the te&ts to see what aspects of the language the! can e&emplif! for us, what can be learned from them to provide the learner with insights into the language as a whole. These aspects can then form the focus for C-R activities. "deall! a single te&t would provide the basis for a self-contained lesson. ,irst it would contain within itself enough important features of the language to provide a stimulus to learning. -econdl! these features would be well enough e&emplified within a single te&t and would re$uire no supplementation. <ost, indeed almost all, naturall! occurring te&ts fulfil the first of these re$uirements. There is normall! a wealth of possibilities to e&ploit. The difficult >udgement is what to include and what to leave out. Relativel! few te&ts, however, fulfil the second re$uirement to an! great degree. "t is usuall! necessar! to supplement a given te&t from other sources in order to find enough appropriate illustrative e&amples of a particular language item. Where then does this supplementation come fromD The first additional source to be tapped is other te&ts with which learners are familiar. Let us sa!, for e&ample, a te&t under stud! contains two isolated, but well conte&tuali9ed, e&amples of a particular use of the modal would. 8lmost certainl! there will be other e&amples of this in previous te&ts the learners have studied. There will also be other uses of would which ma! be rec!cled to build up a general picture of the word and its use. The e&emplification of the word will be firml! based in te&t the learners have alread! e&perienced. 8 second valuable source ma! be found in te&ts that learners are about to e&perience. Te&ts that are designated as part of their future stud! will !ield useful e&amples of important features of language. The stud! process is inevitabl! c!clical and e&amples taken from te&ts to be studied later will provide learners with a source which will >og their memories when those te&ts are studied in detail, and which will provide e&amples of the target item in use, not in isolation. Thirdl!, illustrative e&amples ma! be taken from a supplementar! corpus of real language. "t is, " think, important to work with real language as far as possible. There is, after all, plent! of it about. " am not arguing that authenticit! in itself is a virtue. What is re$uired is a citation which is t!pical of the use of the language feature under stud!. <ore and more dictionaries and grammars offer corpus-based illustrations of the language. #suall! these e&amples are carefull! chosen to provide an illustration of the t!pical pattern and use of the feature under discussion. The! are true to the language in a wa! in which deconte&tuali9ed e&amples concocted specificall! for the purpose of illustration ma! not be. " would not argue that concocted e&amples should never be used, but the! should be used as a last resort. The! should also be checked for t!picalit! of grammatical and le&ical environment, ie compared to corpus-based e&amples from a dictionar! or grammar. This helps us to avoid using e&amples such as /rince 3harles is no) a husband (see -inclair '(++ or 4o you li&e being a father+ that are possible but unt!pical, and unlikel! to be useful to learners.

What C-R acti#ities can we use?

We aim, then, to provide learners with language data either in the form of a single te&t or a set of e&amples from familiar sources. The! will then perform certain operations on these samples of language. The outcome of these operations will be an increased awareness of and sensitivit! to language. We will list here the kinds of operation that students might be asked to perform and will go on to e&emplif! these in the ne&t section. #dentify2consolidate -tudents are asked to search a set of data to identif! a particular pattern or usage and the language forms associated with it. 3lassify -semantic0 structural. -tudents are re$uired to work with a set of data and sort it according to similarities and differences based on formal or semantic criteria. Hypothesis building2chec&ing -tudents are given (or asked to make a generali9ation about language and asked to check this against more language data. 3ross-language e"ploration -tudents are encouraged to find similarities and differences between patternings in their own language and patternings in 6nglish. 5econstuction2deconstruction -tudents are re$uired to manipulate language in wa!s which reveal underl!ing patterns. 5ecall -tudents are re$uired to recall and reconstruct elements of a te&t. The purpose of the recall is to highlight significant features of the te&t. 5eference training -tudents need to learn to use reference works - dictionaries, grammars and stud! guides.

What possible starting points are there?

"f learners are to search language for useful generali9ations the! need a starting point. "f teachers are to help learners organi9e their language insights the! need to provide reference

points for that organi9ation. The diagram on the ne&t page summari9es a number of possible starting points.

semantic concepts
main themes, lexical fields, notions, functions, metaphor: expressing the future, movement, negatives, cause and result/effect, "Time is money" -spend* save, waste)

CONSC O!SN"SS# $% S N& %CT ' T "S Can start from(

% word or part of a word

as, in, of, any, that, would -ed, -ly, -s, & -s

Categories of meaning By 1 + - ing 2 with agent 3 time (before) 4 la!e (near, !lose to)

8ctivities based on these starting points are e&emplified in the ne&t section.

!ome examples of C-R acti#ities

C-R activities based on a written te&t

Auto-pilot The flight ran several times a wee) ta)ing holiday#ma)ers to various resorts in the *editerranean+ On each flight, to reassure the passengers all was well, the captain would put the ,et on to auto#pilot and he and all the crew would come aft into the ca-in to greet the passengers+ !nfortunately on this particular flight the security door -etween the ca-in and the flight dec) ,ammed and left the captain and the crew stuc) in the ca-in+ .rom that moment, in spite of efforts to open the door, the fate of the passengers and crew was sealed+

' List all the phrases to do with aircraft and fl!ing. What word occurs in nearl! all these phrasesD Wh!D 7 What does )ould mean in the second sentenceD / What about ran in the first sentenceD Would used to run give the same meaningD What about $ammed and left in the second paragraphD Could used to be used hereD 4 Cover !our original te&t. Read the rewritten version of the te&t below. =ow has it been changed from the originalD

Auto-pilot The flight ran several times a wee) ta)ing holiday#ma)ers to resorts in the *editerranean+ On every flight, to reassure the passengers that everything was all right, the captain used to put the ,et on to auto#pilot and he and all the crew used to come aft into the ca-in to greet the passengers+ /owever on this flight the security door -etween the ca-in and the flight dec) ,ammed, leaving the captain and the crew stuc) in the ca-in+ .rom that moment, despite efforts to open the door, the fate of the passengers and crew was sealed+

6 7ould: Review =ere are some sentences with )ould which !ou have seen before. ,ind sentences in which i. would is used as a conditional. ii.would is the past tense of will. iii. would means ;used to1. =ow man! sentences are left overD a "f !ou were designing a poster which two would !ou chooseD b Ges, " would think so. c <! brother )ould sa!, ;0h !our mother spoils !ou.1 d 7ould !ou like to ask us an!thing about itD e Ges, !es, " )ould agree with that certainl!. f Hot the sort of letter " )ould like to receive. g 7ould people in !our countr! talk freel! about these thingsD h Then we said that we would pla! hide and seek. i 0ften there )ould be a village band made up of self-taught pla!ers. $ -ome )ould write their own songs or set new words to tunes. " What advice )ould you give to a !oung person leaving school or #niversit!D % That1s right, !es, and it )ould slo) the ship down. m " never had the light on. <! parents )ouldn't allow it. n But now a new fear assailed him. Would he get caught in the propellerD o This brief report would best be understood b! a listener who had read the earlier stor!. Commentar& This shows onl! the language focus stage of the treatment of the te&t. Before reaching this stage the te&t will have been processed as a stor!. 0ne obvious wa! to do this is to give students the stor! up to and including the word 8nfortunately and ask them to predict the ending. This will generate a good deal of talk rehearsing the le&is in the te&t. -ince the stor! is a fairl! well known one some students ma! actuall! have read it in their own language. 8ctivit! ' focuses first on a le&ical set as a wa! of helping students build up word associations and their knowledge of collocation. "t also focuses on the use of the definite article. The word the occurs with all these items not because the! have been mentioned before, but because a flight assumes passengers* captain* cre)* cabin* etc. The starting point for this e&ercise is a semantic concept, a le&ical field. The process is one of identification and consolidation.

'

8ctivit! 7 focuses first on )ould meaning used to% This use is ver! common. "n fact )ould with this meaning occurs almost three times as fre$uentl! as used to% The starting point is a word, )ould* leading, through a process of semantic classification, to a categor! of meaning. 8ctivit! / is to do with discourse structure. "t reinforces the anal!sis of )ould to show that the introduction to a narrative, the scene setting, often emplo!s a particular use of the past tense. Whereas the past tenses in the first paragraph carr! the meaning of past habit, those in the second paragraph, which carr! the narrative, refer to specific actions in the past. The teacher needs to make this e&plicit. -tudents could then be referred to other narratives and asked to identif! similar tense uses. This moves out of the te&t under stud! and links it to other te&ts the students have e&perienced. "t might also be possible to make a useful comparison with the L ', a process of cross-language e&ploration. 8ctivit! 4 is an e&ample of a recall and reconstruction e&ercise which brings together a number of language points. 0bviousl! students should not have immediate access to the original te&t while the! are doing this e&ercise. There are a number of wa!s the e&ercise can be handled. -tudents can be given the rewritten te&t and then hear the original te&t as a dictation, making notes as the! hear it. "f the! are to do this the! should be given a double-spaced version of the rewritten te&t. This can be done as an individual e&ercise but works better with pairs or groups. This $uestion focuses on a number of useful points. "t highlights a ver! common use of the word various% "t relates the two determiners each and every* the two common fi&ed phrases all )as )ell and everything )as all right and later the phrases in spite of and despite% "t underlines the work done earlier on would and used to* and illustrates a narrative use of the -ing form. 0verall it gives students an opportunit! to process the te&t again, focusing firml! on the language. 8ctivit! I is a review e&ercise bringing together a number of e&amples of )ould and asking students to classif! them. "t takes a word as its starting point and works towards semantic categories. 6&amples are taken from te&ts which learners have e&perienced. With a word as common as )ould it is often possible to do this. <! own ;answer1 to this e&ercise is as follows: i ii. iii. )ould used as conditional: a* f, g* &* l* n* o )ould as the past tense of )ill: h* m would meaning `used to': c* i* $

The sentences left over are b* d and e% These are fi"ed phrases% #n b and e )ould is a mar&er of politeness% #n d )ould you li&e is a very common )ay of ma&ing an offer% "t is important to note that there is more than one possible answer. -entence m, for e&ample, could be read either as the past tense of will or as meaning used to% The two are, in fact, ver! close to one another. The phrase would li&e in f could be seen as a fi&ed phrase, although here " feel it certainl! has a h!pothetical or conditional ring to it. -entence c could be either conditional or used to% "n this particular case a check back to the te&t in which this occurs shows $uite clearl! that it means used to% The fact that these e&amples are somewhat open ended can be turned to advantage b! the teacher. What we are tr!ing to do is encourage learners to think about language and to formulate their own categories of description.

C-R acti#ities based on a spo"en text The following is the transcript of a recording made to support a task-based lesson, the aim of which was to e&plore how different people feel about rain storms. -everal pairs of native speakers were recorded doing the same task that the learners would be doing in class. This is how one conversation went.

$S( So, how do you feel a-out storms0 "1(2ell, they are fine as long as # don3t really li)e -eing caught in the middle of them+ mean, as long as you3re at home or even in a train+ li)e storms when you3re in a train+ $S( *hm+ "1( was ,ust, erm, going up north in a -us to 4urham last wee) and er, it was a-solutely pitch -lac) outside and really pelting down+ %nd that was 5uite fun+ 6ut if you3re actually out in it, find that # don3t li)e getting wet+ $S( $ight+ 7eah+ actually li)e storms+ love them except for the lightning, -ecause )now it can -e dangerous+ "1( $ight+ $S( 6ut erm, thin) particularly if you3ve had really hot steaming weather and then the storm -rea)s, it3s ,ust something8 "1( %nd you li)e -eing out in the middle of it0 $S( 1ovely, if t3s#as say#if there3s not much lightning or anything, that3d -e fine+ "1( *m+ $S( 6ut it3s a -it# tend to -e sort of sensi-le and stay indoors+ "1( $ight+ $S( "rm+ Thunder can -e 5uite scary sometimes -ut 3m not too worried+ "1( 4o you get headaches in thunder0 Some people get really -ad headaches+ $S( No, no +++

The lesson might begin with a brief introduction to the topic of storms - perhaps with pictures, andCor a personal anecdote from the teacher. The 5re-task phase could then continue with some initial C-R activities, like this: The learners each think of a storm the! remember (from real life or television, film or book , then write down five words and phrases that the! associate with storm! weather. The teacher collects these, talks about them, and writes them on the board, eg heavy rain* strong )ind* clouds* dust* lightning* scary* dangerous* raining* pouring )ith rain* dar&* get )et% The class, in pairs, finds wa!s to classif! them, for e&ample into words describing weather, feelings, verbs and so on. He&t, in the Task c!cle, learners first in pairs, and then as a class, share e&periences of storms and sa! how the! generall! feel about them. The purpose is to find out whether people have positive as well as negative reactions to storms. Before or after the task, depending on the

class, students can hear the recording of the task on tape. To make this easier, the! can listen in pairs, each person pa!ing particular attention to what one speaker sa!s. 0nce learners have managed to pick out each speaker1s main reactions to the storms and compared them to their own, the! are read! to continue to some C-R activities based mainl! on the written transcript. 6&amples follow. The first is an e&ample of one starting from a semantic concept2 the others start from a word or part of a word. 9 /hrases describing reactions to storms Listen to the tape once more and write down an! phrases !ou can catch about their feelings about storms, eg They're fine as long as %%% Compare with a partner. Then read the transcript and see if !ou can find eight phrases altogether. Which are positive and which negativeD What about the phrase #t's $ust something %%+ : 7ords ending in -ly ,ind and underline seven phrases with words ending in -l!. How listen to them on the tape to hear where the main stress falls in each phrase. Choose an! three of these phrases. Write them down without the word ending in -l!. Eo not leave a gap. Read them to !our group. Can the! remember (without looking which word fits whereD What does the word actually meanD Look it up in a dictionar! and see how it is t!picall! used ; <ind five phrases )ith be and being What verbs do be and being often followD

= 3ommon verbs ,ind all the verb phrases following the word #. (There are thirteen. Classif! them as follows: - e&pressing likeCdislike (I or F - beginning a stor! (' - e&pressing the idea of usually -9. - two ver! common short phrases. Eo !ou have parallel phrases in !our language for theseD (" mean%%%* as # say %%%. Which ones are left overD What would !ou sa! in !our language for theseD 6 Typical )ords in conversational !nglish ,ind these words in the conversation: >nd* (ut* So* 7ell% What do the! all have in commonD What might !ou sa! in !our language for each of themD What about the function of the words 5ight* ?eah* and ,hm and ,m+

Commentar&

8ctivit! ' shows how in addition to common verb phrases with li&e* love* etc we can use words like Lovely@ (instead of " do , phrases like that )as Auite fun* and phrases with ad>ectives such as fine* scary* to e&press how we feel. Thus learners have a wider range of e&pressions to draw on and generate from. Gou ma! want to stop and e&plore the meaning of as long as at this point. 8sk students where else in this conversation it could have been used. ("f the! search for the ifs the! will find one in R-1s turn: Lovely %%%. 8ctivit! 7 focuses on -l! adverbs commonl! used in conversation for emphasis, and their possible positions in the clause (grammar of structure . The word actually has a slightl! different function, signalling something contrar! to what might be e&pected. Learners can form their own h!potheses and then check them out b! looking in a dictionar! or usage book. 8ctivit! / focuses on ver! common collocations can be* )ouldl'd be* ie be after modals2 tend to be ma! be new for some learners and can be focused on in conte&t2 the form being after li&e can be picked up and e&tended to other verbs, eg don't li&e getting )et% 8ctivit! 4 uses the word " as a starting point to highlight a number of verb phrases that are highl! fre$uent in spontaneous talk. "t naturall! rec!cles some phrases alread! focused on. -ome learners ma! notice the use of the impersonal !ou in the same sentence as an L This might stimulate interesting comparisons with their own language. 8ctivit! I draws attention to the meanings and uses of single words that are t!picall! used in spontaneous interaction to begin an utterance -7ell* So* >nd* (ut. and those which acknowledge what the other speaker has said -5ight* ?eah* ,m.% These are vital words that are often overlooked. Without them, learners1 conversations often sound stilted and abrupt. "f learners wish to gain fluenc! in spoken 6nglish as well as written 6nglish, it is essential for them to have e&posure to features that are t!pical of spoken language and that the! have time to reflect on these features. #sing the transcripts allows learners time to notice features that ma! not be noticed for a long time if onl! heard in the flow of real-time conversation. 8t the end of a series of C-R activities, it is a good idea to let learners make their own personal record of the points the! have covered. The! ma! also want to practise the pronunciation of some of the common phrases2 the! ma! want to hear the recording again, or read a related te&t. The! ma! benefit-in a later lesson - from repeating the task with a different partner or writing their own version of a similar e&perience for others to read. "t is unlikel! that the! will immediatel! assimilate and put to use all the features the! have covered in the activities, but their consciousness will have been raised and the! will be more likel! to notice these linguistic features when the! occur in future input.

!ummar& We need to develop a s!stematic approach to C-R. "n the long run this entails s!llabus design procedures in line with C-R - almost certainl! a data-driven approach based on the anal!sis of a relevant language corpus. <eanwhile we have tried in this article to suggest a methodical approach to written and spoken te&t which will enable us to identif! and e&ploit useful learning opportunities. "n approaching a te&t we need to ask ourselves the following $uestions: What aspects of the language are e&emplified hereD Eo we need supplementar! data to illustrate these points and to link them to previous learningD What starting points will make these insights accessible to learnersD

The benefits of these procedures go far be!ond a single lesson. B! encouraging learners to observe and anal!se language for themselves we are reinforcing their natural tendenc! and abilit! to make sense of language and to s!stemati9e it. We are encouraging learners to learn for themselves.