Stage 3 guidelines for speaking: Discourse

Here are some discourse objectives for Stage 3 for speaking:

• To use narratives in any time frame

• To give speeches, reports, or debates to persuade someone of a course of action or to express complex relations between ideas
• To structure your discourse so hearers can easily follow the sequence of your narration or the points of your argument

Here are some discourse strategies for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

• Analysis

  Analyze various genres of oral texts and practice giving these sorts of texts. If you have to give a talk, speech, or formal presentation, ask a language associate (LA) for a summary of your main points to see if you got your important points across. If there was confusion on some point, ask the LA to make it clear, then try again.

• Practice

  Practice telling stories or other information in a variety of time frames then do something almost like intelligibility testing to see what was understood. ("What did I say?")

• Selective attention

  Work specifically on the structure of one kind of discourse at a time and practice making it clear and cohesive.

Here are some discourse techniques for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

• The Role-Play technique
• The Tense Practice technique
• The Script Analysis technique
• The Text Analysis technique

Here are some discourse activities for Stage 3 guidelines for speaking:

• Use the language as much as possible in daily life.

  Deliberately expose yourself to a wide variety of communication situations, and being aware of new vocabulary you hear.

  Incorporate new words into your active vocabulary by finding ways to bring them up in conversations.

• The Telephone Procedures activity
• The Telling Jokes activity

• Generic module: Stage 3 guidelines for speaking: Discourse
• In overview module: Stage 3: Speaking modules
• In modular book: Guidelines for a Language and Culture Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In document collection: Other Resources
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 8 December 1998

© 1999 SIL International