27.3405, Review: Discourse; Gen Ling; Language Acq; Socioling: Fernández Gavela (2015)

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Subject: 27.3405, Review: Discourse; Gen Ling; Language Acq; Socioling: Fernández Gavela (2015)

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Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2016 13:29:47
From: Elizabeth Craig [betsy.craig at furman.edu]
Subject: The Grammar and Lexis of Conversational Informal English in Advanced Textbooks

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5662.html

AUTHOR: María Dolores  Fernández Gavela
TITLE: The Grammar and Lexis of Conversational Informal English in Advanced Textbooks
PUBLISHER: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Elizabeth (Betsy) Craig, Furman University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

María Fernández-Gavela’s explicitly stated purpose in “The grammar and lexis
of conversational informal English in advanced textbooks” is to examine
whether newer textbooks for teaching informal conversation at the
high-intermediate to low-advanced levels in English ultimately provide a more
realistic portrayal of the register as discerned from corpus findings than
such textbooks published during the 1990’s did, thereby demonstrating an
improvement in ESL teaching materials based on presentations of actual
native-speaker language usage. She sets out to determine whether the dialogues
in some of the newer, commonly used ESL textbooks in Europe reflect more of
the characteristics of speech as have been determined through contrastive
corpus linguistics studies of frequency, such as Biber, et al. (1999) and
Carter & McCarthy (2006). She contends that in a truly communicative approach
to language teaching, we want to help our students achieve not only accuracy
and fluency, but also pragmatic appropriateness, in that the prescriptions of
formal, written discourse should not be applied to the standards of spoken
discourse, especially in casual settings.

The first chapter begins with an introduction to the corpus-informed approach
to teaching English and sets the author’s expectation (hope) of finding that
more recent teaching materials will demonstrate a greater influence from
corpus findings. Chapter Two discusses language variation in spoken discourse.
The five-part outline of this chapter is adapted from the five factors of
social discourse presented in Quirk, et al. (1985, p. 4): “region, social
grouping, field of discourse, medium, and attitude.” The author limits her
attention to informal attitude in the medium of speech, as this is the
intended teaching focus. Fernández-Gavela cautions here that no clear
dichotomy between speech and writing can be drawn because, for instance,
lectures represent communication in the spoken mode while at the same time
invoke many features of formal, academic English. And the modern phenomenon of
emails represents a written form of communication incorporating many features
of the spoken mode (p. 19). Halliday is also cited for positing a primary
distinction between writing, as being more “lexically dense,” and speaking, as
being more “grammatically intricate” (1994, p. 350). In Chapter Three, the
author provides some historical background in the evolution of teaching
methods as her intent here is to provide a diachronic perspective on the
materials being used. Chapter Four then endorses the exploitation of corpus
study results for the benefit of English language teaching, thereby lessening
our former dependence on sometimes mistaken intuitions about what to include
in the language teaching syllabus.

Chapter Five describes certain high-frequency features in everyday
conversation as determined by corpus research, but it is not an exhaustive
list of such features; the author includes both clausal and non-clausal
(inserted) units (C-units in Biber et al., 1999) with a full explanation of
their various functions in conversation, which due to its essentially
interactive nature includes a great deal of ellipsis. Other features include
discourse markers, interjections, hesitators, polite forms,
greetings/farewells, etc. A discussion of multiple negation as a prominent
feature of non-standard dialogue, and hence suitable for teaching, closes this
chapter. Chapter Six highlights the primary lexical elements of the informal
register, such as slang and taboo words. Vague language is also noted as a key
feature because of the inherent lack of a need for explicitness in
conversation, given its situated, collaborative nature. Mentioned briefly is
the fact that “the use of possessive pronouns…seems to be preferred by
speakers” and “(v)erbs…have a higher frequency (in conversation) than in any
other register” (p. 129), but this is not elaborated on.

The bulk of the study is in Chapter Seven, where the author focuses on
comparing the conversational features of quotidian English as presented in
‘mainstream’ British publications. She compares 10 teaching texts from each of
two decades: the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. This
delineation is made because The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
was published in 1999 (Biber et al.), and the author wants to investigate
whether corpus-based studies have had an effect on the usage of corpus-based
data in such ESL textbooks. After a detailed analysis of the 20 texts to be
analyzed for inclusion of the features of informal conversation as outlined in
Chapters Five and Six, it is determined that the latter texts do not display a
significant increase in the presentation of these features, and further that
they should, if they are to be considered genuinely communicative.

EVALUATION

Fernández-Gavela begins by asserting that students find the productive skills
in language acquisition more difficult than the receptive skills of listening
and reading, and that they have a more difficult time with informal, spoken
registers than with more formal, written forms. But to support this claim, she
cites only one obscure report of final exam results from a public language
school in Spain, a non-English-speaking environment. Certainly, there are more
comprehensive results from peer-reviewed studies which could be cited to
justify calling for reform in the teaching of casual speech norms in an EFL
environment. The main concern here is pragmatic in that learners should not be
using the stilted forms of formal, written English in their casual speech, and
indeed they will want to communicate with native speakers both effectively and
appropriately. 

A total review of the synchronic categories of sociolinguistic variation in
Chapter Two seems somewhat unnecessary, but the author wants to highlight the
dynamic nature of casual conversation and to report her dismay that this
particular register has been misrepresented in the lack of authenticity in
teaching materials. In Chapter Three, the main point is that more
communicative methods represent an improvement in the shortfalls of prior
approaches, such as the grammar-translation and audiolingual methods. The
author makes repeated endorsements of the current push to utilize more
communicative approaches in language teaching, and corpus-informed materials
do provide ready-made, meaningful input based on empirical descriptions of
language usage. However, there seems to be an underlying assumption that such
materials will lead to better acquisition, and, although I agree with this
supposition, there should be more reference made to contrastive longitudinal
studies of learner acquisition to support the notion. I find the first three
chapters to be somewhat redundant, as the topic of Chapter One is resumed in
the fourth, and there does not seem to be a need to cover the entire
phenomenon of language variation (Chapter 2) nor the history of language
teaching methodologies (Chapter 3) for this particular study.

Fernández-Gavela recognizes that there has been a disconnect between the
theoretical underpinnings of corpus linguistics and the practical application
of its findings to ESL teaching, but she seems inordinately concerned with
including in instruction some of the more dysfunctional features of
native-speaker conversation, such as hesitation/pausing, back-channeling, and
false starts, to the neglect of more useful features such as the preponderance
of lexical verbs and personal pronouns as identified in the corpus studies
cited. It remains to be seen whether we should be teaching such
characteristics of communication breakdown to learners who are ultimately
striving for success in their communicative endeavors. Do we really want to
teach such non-standard dialect features as multiple negatives to our
students?

In the end, Fernández-Gavela finds an insignificant number of the features she
is looking for in the newer textbooks, but I can think of several reasons why
this search for conversational features in textbooks as determined through
corpus study may not have been more fruitful: 1) it takes a very long time for
new research findings to disseminate among and permeate their readership and
thence to have an influence on practical teaching applications and
publications; 
2) this study looked only at high-intermediate to low-advanced level
textbooks; 3) the conversational features searched for were only part of an
exhaustive list of those found to be typical of the register; and 4) only one
of the later textbooks under review even claims to be based on corpus
findings. Many more corpus-informed materials with a pedagogical intent are
making their way into the market just now. Maybe high-intermediate to
low-advanced levels is not the stage at which these behaviors should be
taught; perhaps, such ‘dysfluency’ characteristics as pausing and
back-channeling should be taught earlier in the curriculum, when they are
quite possibly most needed.

What is most surprising here is the absence of sufficient coverage of two of
the most pervasive features of conversation (as opposed to academic writing):
the presence of more lexical verbs and personal pronouns. Fernández-Gavela
does make mention of the most common verbs in conversation, i.e. ‘say,’ ‘get,’
‘go,’ ‘know,’ ‘think,’ etc., in a footnote on (p. 54) but fails to exploit
this fact in her analysis. Also, phrasal chunks such as ‘you know,’ ‘I mean,’
‘kind of,’ and ‘a little bit’ are given short shrift here although the author
does note the most relevant reference to her study, Cullen and Kuo (2007), in
which these chunks are explicitly identified. If these particular features had
been included in the textbook searches, she may have found a greater affinity
with corpus findings in the later ESL textbooks. Chapter Five does provide
thorough and highly-detailed coverage of both the form and function of the
many features selected for her query. 

There is no doubt that the lexical grammar of spoken English should be taught
to students wanting to acquire it, particularly in EFL contexts where the
students are not exposed to interactive English on a daily basis outside the
classroom. However, I would recommend teachers/researchers see the more
comprehensive study already provided by Cullen and Kuo (2007) for a fuller
coverage of those particular features in a broader range of teaching materials
for any proficiency level. Indeed, we should all be looking for more
corpus-informed teaching materials in the future in this happy marriage of
theoretical approach and practical application.

REFERENCES

Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward
Finnegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow:
Longman.

Carter, Ronald A. & Michael McCarthy. 2006. Cambridge grammar of English: A
comprehensive guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cullen, Richard & I-Chun Kuo. 2007. Spoken grammar and ELT course materials: A
missing link? TESOL Quarterly, 41(2). 361-386.

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. London:
Edward Arnold.
 
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A
Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Elizabeth Craig is Writing & ESL Specialist at Furman University. For the
past 20 years, she has taught English for academic purposes in higher
education and has trained English language teachers in Paraguay, Romania,
Turkey, and Cambodia. Her research interests include corpus linguistics,
academic writing, and the lexical grammar of English.





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