Comparing Simultaneous Talk in Hong Kong School Textbooks and Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English
Prof. Winnie Cheng
Director, Research Centre for Professional Communication in English Department of English
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Presented at PANEL F: CORPUS-BASED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN ASIA, in the 2nd International Education Conference (Redesigning Pedagogy: Culture, Knowledge and Understanding), 28-30 May 2007, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Abstract:
Simultaneous talk, meaning two or more speakers talk at the same time, is a prevalent phenomenon in conversation. This study seeks, through examining authentic spoken discourse in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), to determine the ways in which simultaneous talk is performed in real-life communication, compared to what is to be found in Hong Kong school textbooks. The presentation examines the ways in which studies in conversation analysis have defined and classified simultaneous talk. It then describes the important findings of an intercultural corpus-driven study on simultaneous talk based in Hong Kong (Cheng 2003). These findings are then used for comparison with simultaneous talk taught in the schools in Hong Kong. Simultaneous talk in interactions is explicitly taught to learners of English in Hong Kong; however, the ways in which the school textbooks define and teach how to perform simultaneous talk are fairly limited. The study suggests that textbook writers and teachers need to incorporate a more accurate and wider range of forms into their teaching materials in order to better reflect the realities of actual language use, and so enhance learners’ language awareness. The approaches of corpus-driven research and data-driven learning are useful, whereby the language learners can become researchers, engaging themselves in the examination and analysis of corpus data.
PPT is available at Laohong's corpus stuff folder.
Prof. Winnie Cheng
Director, Research Centre for Professional Communication in English Department of English
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Presented at PANEL F: CORPUS-BASED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH IN ASIA, in the 2nd International Education Conference (Redesigning Pedagogy: Culture, Knowledge and Understanding), 28-30 May 2007, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Abstract:
Simultaneous talk, meaning two or more speakers talk at the same time, is a prevalent phenomenon in conversation. This study seeks, through examining authentic spoken discourse in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), to determine the ways in which simultaneous talk is performed in real-life communication, compared to what is to be found in Hong Kong school textbooks. The presentation examines the ways in which studies in conversation analysis have defined and classified simultaneous talk. It then describes the important findings of an intercultural corpus-driven study on simultaneous talk based in Hong Kong (Cheng 2003). These findings are then used for comparison with simultaneous talk taught in the schools in Hong Kong. Simultaneous talk in interactions is explicitly taught to learners of English in Hong Kong; however, the ways in which the school textbooks define and teach how to perform simultaneous talk are fairly limited. The study suggests that textbook writers and teachers need to incorporate a more accurate and wider range of forms into their teaching materials in order to better reflect the realities of actual language use, and so enhance learners’ language awareness. The approaches of corpus-driven research and data-driven learning are useful, whereby the language learners can become researchers, engaging themselves in the examination and analysis of corpus data.
PPT is available at Laohong's corpus stuff folder.