Jinho's Glow-in-the-Water Swimming Trunks and Ann's 이효리 Bikini

[kellogg]

An Analysis on the Integration of Text and Talk

− teaching the communicative function through the integration −

Seonjeong has more than a good subtitle here. She’s got a good, new, original application of our main idea: integration not simply of “skill” (reading, writing, listening, speaking) but of “function”, (introducing, responding to introductions, getting information, giving it, etc.).

The usual way we think of integrating skills is by sharing KNOWLEDGE, that is, grammar and vocabulary. We integrate the skills of reading and writing by reading the same grammar that we write, and integrate the skills of listening/speaking and reading/writing by using a common vocabulary.

But that’s too easy. Or rather, it’s too hard NOT to do this. So we’ve interpreted integrating “기능” as an integration of FUNCTION, or rather “metafunction”, the function of responding to texts and the function of responding to talk.

But that’s too abstract, and it also leads in a fairly direct way back to just integrating skills. So Sonjeong has a good, new original application of our main idea right here: we teach the  COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS by integrating text and talk: we vary the grammar and vocabulary but repeat the same communicative functions, and in so doing we teach the most elusive part of both text and talk in the classroom—it’s pragmatic meaning.

A great beginning!

M20102502  Kim  Seonjeong

Ⅰ. Introduction

With the conclusion, this paper will have analyzed a body of data from the fifth graders doing Lesson 8, “Let’s go swimming”. There are three different sequences of this lesson: “Look and Listen”,  “Listen and Repeat” and “Listen and Answer”. The first episode was taught by a Korean teacher and a foreign teaching assistant and the others were taught by a single Korean teacher. Along with a detailed account of this data, I hope that this paper shows how picture and text (that is, the finished, recorded discourse in CD-ROM) are integrated with talk. To achieve the purpose of the analysis, I will examine the following questions: 

1.    How does the picture into turn to talk in the first sequence, “Look and Listen” by using open-typed questions in setting the scene and creating characters?

2.    How can the children develop the text as talk by saying the lines with the help of the teacher who creates an imaginary situation called “context” in the next sequence, “Listen and Repeat”?

Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same thing as number 1?

I don’t mean that the WHOLE of Question 2 is redundant. But isn’t “creating an imaginary situation called context” the same thing as “setting the scene and creating the characters”? Is it possible to set the scene and create characters WITHOUT creating context? Is it possible to create a context WITHOUT a scene and WITHOUT characters?

Now, a little bit of UPTAKE and OVERLAP between questions is not a bad thing. On the contrary. If we can show that the questions are not merely DISTINCT but also LINKED this will make Seonjeong’s paper MORE coherent and cohesive.

But the way overlap works is a little like the Korean game of  끝말잇기. You REPEAT first and THEN you vary. Like this:

3.    With the help of the teacher who creates an imaginary situation called “context” in the next sequence, “Listen and Repeat”, the children develop the text as talk by saying the lines. How does this happen? Do the children really become the characters? Can they develop the talk BEYOND the text?   

3.    How does dialogue in the form of role-play convert into talk by managing to create any item-based combinations or creative abstract constructions using fixed expressions in the last sequence, “Listen and Answer”?

See what I mean? By switching around that second question, we not only make the transition between Question 1 and Question 2 MUCH smoother, we also make the link between Question 2 and Question 3 clear. “Developing the talk beyond the text” is uptaken as “dialogue in the form of role play”.

Seonjeong’s got a very strong first paragraph here too. I’ve never really seen a first sentence in the PERFECT tense (“This paper will have….”) but it makes sense, it’s completely grammatical, and it also reflects the confidence and sense of purpose of the author. Sometimes, just by playing the game, we succeed in changing the rules.

In this unit “Let’s go swimming”, the communicative function is suggesting and responding. The target expressions for suggestion are “Let’s go swimming.” and “How about this afternoon?”. The target expression‎ for response is “Sorry, I can’t.” or “Sounds great.” In detail, the teacher tries to teach the students the pragmatic meaning of “Sorry”. That is, the kids are expected to understand that the communicative function of “Sorry” is “Regret” in the given context in this unit.

I think the best thing about this first section is the CONCRETE way in which it ends. This is an ESSENTIAL aspect of thesis writing. Remember that writing a thesis is not knowledge listing; if you have to fill the thesis with stuff the professor already knows (the way that undergraduates fill their reports and final exams) then you are going to lose.

Thesis writing is integration. It’s integration of what the professor knows (and you do not know) with what YOU know—and the professor does NOT know. That means that you have to “rise to the concrete”; you have to end your thesis with some detailed and specific piece of knowledge you have discovered which is applicable to teaching. And Seonjeong has made it very clear what that CONCRETE detail is going to be: the understanding of the PRAGMATIC meaning of “sorry” to express regret.

By the way, I think Seonjeong has, without really noticing, uncovered one of the big problems with our curriculum. In order to distinguish between a COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTION and a grammar structure, we have to show that the same communicative function can be realized by different grammar structures.

This lesson doesn’t really do that very well. It’s not true that “How about this afternoon?” is the same communicative function as “Let’s go swimming”. Structurally, and functionally, they are different.

Structurally, “How about this afternoon?” is BOUND to another utterance; like “how many cows?” it has no verb and depends parasitically on more complete utterances for its predicate. That means that it’s not the same in form.

Functionally, “How about this afternoon?” is not a suggestion of an activity or even an invitation to form a group, unlike “Let’s go swimming”. It depends parasitically on a suggestion of an activity and an invitation to form a group in order to “rise to the concrete” and set a precise time. That means it’s not the same function.

So we see that there are two communicative functions and not one. That’s a little unfortunate, because it means that the grammar structure and the communicative function look like one and the same thing. But they are not the same. Look!

Hey! Let’s swim!

Hi, guys! Let’s go swimming!

Jinho! Wanna go swimming with me (us)?

Jinho, would you like to go swimming with me (us)?

Hi, Jinho. Joon and I are going swimming this afternoon. Would you care to join us?

Dear Jinho: We have formed a swimming party for this afternoon and we would like to invite you to join us. Please RSVP.

You can see that not only are there very different grammatical ways of realizing this same communicative function, but that they have a certain PRINCIPLE behind them. It’s actually the same principle we use in Korean—the longer something is, the more formal it is.

Ⅱ. Look and Listen

             - How to turn the picture into talk using open-typed questions

In the first sequence, I will explain how the teacher helps the students to turn pictures into talk using open-type questions which can get many answers. Before listening to the dialogue of CD-ROM, the teacher makes the students take guesses at text by talking about pictures. It is helpful to give them context.

Is it really helpful to make the kids guess? Why, yes, I think so. But it’s not obvious why it should be. And it does take a LOT of time. So is it time well spent? Perhaps it’s worth taking a little MORE time and discussing this question.

When we are in a classrooms, UNLIKE our everyday lives outside the classroom, we often give information (including textual information) by asking questions.

Now, one obvious reason to do this is to make sure that understanding is ACTIVE and not passive. We want the children to take part in the giving of information, and so we ask questions and use the children’s answer to SHARE information, both between T-S and S-S.

But there are other reasons. For example, we cannot really tell what the children understand when we give them commands or statements. But with questions, what we get really does tell us something about what the kids know.

Perhaps the best reason of all is that classrooms are not simply places to learn. They are places where children DEVELOP, that is, where they learn how to learn by themselves and for themselves. But how can they do this if they are constantly getting answers ready-made?

Every good parent knows that if you do everything except study for the child, the child never learns how to do anything except study (and of course if you study for the child too the child will not even learn how to do that). So parents ask their children to fold their bedding and tidy the house, and sometimes even shop and cook for themselves. (My wife had to look after her little brother and even go and get the coal to heat the house all winter when she was in primary school.)

So every good teacher uses multiple answer questions. These questions do not simply show children what the answer is, they can also show the children good answers and not-so-good answers, and how to distinguish between them. And this process, which is at first inter-mental, will eventually become an intra-mental one.

Students are on their way to understanding the situation in the pictures via the exchanges with teacher. The teacher tries to help students themselves to seek out the information instead of simply giving them all the information which needs to understand the text. First, the teacher asks the children to analyze the context such as characters, time and space. Then, she asks three different kinds of processes - doing, thinking and speaking - to children so as to synthesize. That is, the teacher succeeds in analysis and synthesis using open-typed questions which allow the kids to take guesses.  

Good. But you can see that the “analysis” part of it is a little clearer than the “synthesis”. We can easily imagine the kinds of questions that will lead to analyzing processes:

“What are they doing?” (Notice that “they” is usually too vague, and “doing” is too general!)

“Where are Ann, Joon, and Jinho going?” (Much better, because much more analytical!)

“How is Joon feeling? What about Ann? And Jinho? What is Ann thinking? What is Jinho saying?, etc.

It’s not nearly so easy to see how the teacher will SYNTHESIZE all this. The teacher can’t really say “Tell me the story!” until AFTER the listening. Or can she?

The teacher attempts to set the scene by using the command “Look at the picture in the book. Let us look at the picture in your book.” But this doesn’t really set the scene, because it is merely a command to attract students’ attention to the picture.

Exactly so! We can see there are good reasons for asking questions instead of just giving orders. A teacher is NOT an army officer or a bureaucrat or even a politician.

 First, the KT asks “What do you see?” However, no one answers, so the teacher asks a different question, ‘Who do you see?” That is, the teacher moves from the whole picture to the foreground in order to create the characters by using an “Open-Closed” pattern. It is also helpful for students to answer easily by limiting the range of the answers. She sets the scene with an open question, “What do you see?” and then guides the children’s answering with a more closed question (“Who do you see?”). Although “Who do you see?” is a closed and testing-type question which relies on remembered knowledge of names, it is useful to start setting the scene.

Right.

Interestingly, they DO go back to the “What” question later on in the data, because they have to talk about the sun in the sky and the school building in the background. But when they do this they do it as part of what Seri calls the “chronotope”, that is, the EXPERIENCE of the characters (they are going home from school and feeling very hot).

As Seonjeong says, this tells us something about how contexts are set. There is never context in general; it’s always a context in the experience of some character. So Seonjeong’s right: the names are important; the names are the starting point. Good!

After identifying the characters (Jinho, Joon and Ann) in the picture, the teacher talks about verbs. We can ascertain that doing questions are answerable by looking at the picture in the following teacher talk, “Then what are they doing? Look at the TV.”

KT: Then what are they doing? Look at the TV.

……(생략)

KT: They are…?

S: They are going to swimming pool.

S: Swimming pool.

KT: they are…?

S: Going to swimming pool.

KT: Do you think they are going to the swimming pool? Now?

Ss: No.

…… (생략)

S: They just WANT to go to swimming pool.

We notice that the teacher does finally elicit the meaning of “want” from the students by using material process. The characters in the picture don’t go to the swimming pool now. They just wish to go swimming soon. It’s a significant awareness in that it makes the kids understand what will happen in the story which includes a suggestion to go swimming. This perception also helps the kids to understand the pragmatic meaning of ‘Sorry’. The characters really want to go swimming, but Jinho can’t go. So he is disappointed. In this context, the learners can perceive that the communicative function of “Sorry” is “Regret”

NOW Seonjeong is showing us what she meant by SYNTHESIS. It turns out that verbal processes (like “want to go swimming”) make perfect sense when we SYNTHESIZE material processes and mental processes (like “going home from school” and “feeling hot”). Nice!

It’s interesting that there is NEVER any discussion of why Joon and Ann don’t go without him. Why not?

The real setting starts with the time and the place. The teacher deduces the time through the weather. Hot weather becomes the clue for the time. The teacher asks a closed question by varying the mood from statement to question, “It’s very hot. Is it morning or afternoon?” Although the teacher sets the time using a closed-question, she expands it to a open one, “Why do you think it’s afternoon?”, which is connected to the place through the answer by FT, “I think they are leaving school.” In this point, teacher and students move their attention to the background in the picture.

But KT has doubt about the place. So KT asks if the building is the school again and again. KT tries to set the scenery of the story by using the ‘proleptic’ strategy. However, the process of deduction seems to be an inefficient guessing game. Because it fills up a lot of space in the lesson and takes time.

Here’s what I wrote to Seri about this:

We saw in Munjeong's essay that there really are no magic questions; there are no "Open Sesame" utterances which will magically expand and extend children's responses into whole creative sentences.

But if we WERE going to find such an utterance, "Why (not)?" would be a good place to look. First of all, it normally DOES require a whole sentence reply. Secondly, it usually comes LATE in the exchange, AFTER we have some problem we need to explain. Thirdly, it deals with CAUSALITY which is something you can't really see; you have to theorize about it.

Here, though, we see why "Why not?" is not a magic sentence. The whole bound exchange leads nowhere, and "Why not?" simply leads us further astray.

However, we should notice that there is a distinct reason why the teacher does ask ‘why’. Guessing is a useful skill for the children to develop the situation and then to open up the whole story like this, “KT: Ok, that’s it. Do you understand what’s going on in the story? / S: Yes! / KT: Do you want to listen? / Ss: yes!”

I’m not sure there IS a good reason for “Why do you think it is afternoon?” here, Seonjeong. Actually, it IS afternoon, and in order to get to where we want to go (“Let’s go swimming”) it HAS to be afternoon.

But “Why do you think it is afternoon?” makes the children think it is NOT afternoon because very often teachers use metacognitive questions when children make incorrect guesses, to draw attention to the incorrect reasoning that led to the incorrect guess:

S: Jinho can’t swim.

T: Why do you think that? Why do you think Jinho can’t swim? Why would Ann ask him to go swimming if she knew that he couldn’t swim?

S: Jinho has no swimsuit.

T: Why do you think so? Why do you think Jinho has no bathing suit? Why wouldn’t Joon just lend him one? Maybe he could buy one? Etc.

After talking about time and place, teacher asks about the change of mental process by comparing two pictures. The characters in the first picture are feeling terrible. They are too hot. But in the next picture, they are smiling and happy. The students succeed in making a guess about what they are going to do by catching the change of their facial expressions. In addition, FT and KT utter naturally the target expression‎, “Let’s go swimming!”

Not what the data shows, Seonjeong! Look:

KT: They are…?

S: They are going to swimming pool.

S: Swimming pool.

KT: they are…?

S: Going to swimming pool.

KT: Do you think they are going to the swimming pool? Now?

Ss: No.

…… (생략)

S: They just WANT to go to swimming pool.

The teacher keeps going the video clip without sound and wishes the kids to make guesses about the picture. But the teacher allows students to listen to one line of Jinho, “I can’t.” in order to elicit next situation. Students make good and interesting guesses about why Jinho can’t swim such as these funny and various answers, “I didn’t have a swimming suit.”, “Or, there is so far.”, “아하, he has a academy.”, and “I don’t have money.” The real reason why Jinho can’t swim is that he has a piano lesson. It is similar to one of the guesses by the students, “아하, he has a academy.” In the end, the teacher and students find that Jinho can swim better than Joon. In addition, the kids know when cheering, we say, “go! go!” instead of fighting.

Seonjeong correctly refrains from criticizing the teacher. There are usually good reasons for doing the things teachers do, even though they are not always clear to professors.

Seonjeong is also correct to point out that the right answer is ALMOST present in the children’s guesses. The ability to decide which guesses are more likely and which are less so is a KEY part of listening ability, but it is also a KEY part of speaking ability, because it’s part of understanding the different ways in which communicative functions are grammatically realized and which ones are more or less likely in a given situation.

So let’s return to Seonjeong’s initial question: how are these communicative functions integrated? Well, we may imagine that one way is through uptake. Uptake is how listening becomes speaking, and it’s also how speaking becomes listening. But it’s more; it’s how intra-mental processes like guessing become inter-mental processes like problem solving. So let’s pay some careful attention to WHICH things get uptaken and which things do not:

KT: (replaying the video for a second and pause) What is Jinho saying now?

Ss: I can't swim.

KT: Oh, I can't ... Really? (partial uptake)

S: I can't.

S: Jinho is good.

KT: Maybe. Maybe. (NO uptake)

S: Jinho is very good 수영.

S: But ...

S: I didn't have a swimming suit. 하하

KT: I don't have a swimming suit? (recast)

S: So ... 어 ...

KT: Jinho says " I don't have a nice swimming suit". (recast)

Ss: 하하하

Now, of these THREE responses (Jinho can’t swim, Jinho is a good swimmer, Jinho doesn’t have a swimsuit), which one gets the MOST attention? Which one SHOULD get the most attention, in order to lead the children in the right direction here?

There’s the problem, Seonjeong! Very often children are NOT interested in the most plausible answer, but in the most IMPLAUSIBLE and funny and weird answer. And of course teachers are interested in their interest (because it’s really in our interests to be interested).

Two possible solutions:

a)    Teachers should NOT follow the children’s interests. They should fight them. Ms. Hong should IGNORE the whole issue of Jinho’s bathing suit the way she squelches the answer about Jinho’s inability to swim. She should encourage the kids to talk about Jinho as a very good and enthusiastic swimmer.

b)    Professors should write texts that DO follow the children’s interests. Not only does Jinho have an AMAZING swimming suit that lights up in different colors when Jinho dives in the water, but Ann has a new Yi Hyori khaki bikini (and Joon wants to see her wear it!).

Which solution is about turning talk into text? Which one is about turning text into talk? Are the two solutions complementary or mutually exclusive?

Now, Seonjeong points out that ONE answer is very close to the real answer. But the teacher doesn’t seem to know this. Look:

S: 아하, he has a academy.

KT: Ah, I have to go to academy. (recast—from secondary to primary intersubjectivity)

S: I don't have money.

KT: I have no money. I don't have any money. Wow, good guess. (recast and reinforcement)

KT: 시온, I like your guess. Good. (STRONG reinforcement)

S: ㅋ~, do you like money? (??)

S: 시온 is 개그맨. (???)

I am not really sure about the effect of the last two comments: they might represent a VERY strong reinforcement, though. And the answer is, of course, a McGuffin—a useless detour that takes the talk away from the text and not towards it. For reasons I do not understand very well, we often find that children talk obsessively about money but that it hardly exists at all in our text!

Now, suppose the teacher wants to develop the “academy” answer instead of the “money” answer. That is, suppose our teacher is more interested in the text than in the talk.

T: An academy? What kind of academy?

Or, if that is not obvious enough:

T: An academy? A piano academy?

Or, if that is TOO obvious:

T: An academy? An English academy? Hmmmm……

After finishing guesses about the pictures in the video clip, Ms. Hong asks the students if they want to listen to the dialogue. And students want to check whether their guesses are right or wrong. (KT: Ok, that’s it. Do you understand what’s going on in the story?” / S:Yes!/  KT: Do you want to listen?/ Ss: Yes!)

It produces a lot of wrong and funny answers and it takes long time to guess the weather, time and space and the situation of the text from the silent video clip. But in the end, the teacher has finally achieved the successful integration with picture and text. She makes the students figure out what will happen in the dialogue using open-type   questions as showing the serial picture of the video clip and catching the changes between them.

In addition, the important thing Ms. Hong is really trying is to teach the pragmatic meaning of “Sorry”. In this story, it is very hot. What an exciting thing to go swimming on such a hot day! But Jinho has a piano lesson, so he can’t go swimming. It is not difficult for the student to understand the disappointment of Jinho.

One of the great pleasures of teaching in the graduate school is when I get analyses like this which are really rather better than the sort of thing I would write. I think I would end this section with some rather negative remarks on roads not taken, time wasted, and the tendency of the teacher to uptake the wrong answer.

But Seonjeong doesn’t do that. It’s not because she’s not aware of these problems. When we look at her analysis and especially her penultimate (next-to-the-last) paragraph we see that she is acutely aware, as a teacher herself, of what goes wrong in the lesson. She mentions it. She just doesn’t think it’s the most important thing.

Precisely because Seonjeong is a teacher herself, she can appreciate what went RIGHT with the lesson and she ends on that note. This is actually better than what I would have done in her place. But then, I am not a teacher!

Of course, we MIGHT say that since, at the very end, Seonjeong has to make some generalizations about the lesson and possibly some positive suggestions about how to improve it, it will be easier if she ends with criticisms than if she ends with critical appreciation.

On reflection, I think even this much is not true: Seonjeong has set herself the task of describing a SUCCESSFUL lesson, in which text and talk are SUCCESSFULLY integrated, and so ending this section on this positive note shows that even as a researcher (not just as a teacher) she has a perfect ear!

Bravo, Seonjeong!

Ⅲ.  Listen and Repeat

             - How to continue the text in talk by developing the situation

The teacher has turned the picture into talk during the first sequence, ‘Look and Listen’ and has checked understanding by retelling the story.

By retelling the story herself? Look at the data!

Now the teacher might feel the need to put the students in roles so as to practice the target expressions naturally. To achieve this, Ms. Hong develops the text as talk by the kids’ saying the lines and creating an imaginary situation in the second sequence. Let’s look into this attempt. 

The teacher doesn’t cast the roles or attempt to “put the children inside the story (Kellogg and Li, 2010; p.68) in any way. The prerequisite for putting the children into the story is “to make the story much more lyrical and descriptive, much more of a tableau than a coup de theatre (Kellogg and Li, 2010; p.69)”. But there isn’t any attempt to do so in this class, because this data is from a part of the first period followed by ‘Look and Listen’. That is, it is not the beginning of the story. So it is unnecessary to make the story more lyrical and descriptive deliberately.

That’s true—IF the teacher uses the same context. But does she?

The teacher starts a command, “Now listen and repeat. Let’s listen and repeat the important language, target language.” In the ‘Listen and Repeat’, CD-ROM covers the short dialogue including the target expression‎. It means that the lines to be built are short. Students listen and repeat CD-ROM without being cast the roles.

When the students repeat CD-ROM, they are inside the story and they become the characters. That’s another reason why Ms. Hong doesn’t cast the characters. We can see that one student, 혁준, becomes Joon and responds to Ann, “Yes, it is.”, when the teacher becomes Ann and says “It’s too hot.”

Seonjeong ASSUMES that implicit casting is at work here. But is it?

Yes, and no. It’s true that one of the “target language” sentences is “How about you, Joon?” This CERTAINLY suggests that the Look and Listen context is fully assumed. But look at this:

KT: Let's listen and repeat the important language, target language.

(Doesn’t this suggest PURE semantic meaning, context free meaning, not contextualized meaning?)

TV: It's too hot.

Ss: It's too hot.

KT: Yes, it's too hot.

(The KT varies the form, showing that a communicative function can be realized in different ways.)

KT: It's too hot.

S: Yes, it is.

KT: Wow, 혁준, (showing her thumb up to praise him)

Hyeonjun is, of course, not an imaginary role.

We can assure that the children become the characters without being cast the roles one more time in this exchange.

KT: Really? Can you swim very well, Joon?

Ss: No!

TV: Good. Let’s go this afternoon.

Ss: Good. Let’s go this afternoon.

KT: Can you go swimming this afternoon?

Ss: No!

The teacher can use pronoun like “you” because the children are inside the story. Therefore, although the children repeat the CD-ROM, we can say that they are repeating the characters, in other words, the meanings.

Can we say this? That’s the question!

We have to avoid things like this (from Teacher Yi Minkyeong’s thesis data.)

T: This is my head. What’s this?

Ss: This is my head (sic).

You can see that here the sentence has become a meaningless sound and has no communicative function. And you can also see that the death of meaning has a LOT to do with the death of the author (Roland Barthes), and in particular, the death of the word “my”!

Of course, characters can die too!

T: Julie says: “Hi, Zeeto!” What does Zeeto say?

Ss: Hi, Zeeto! (sic)

But characters are easy to bring back to life. Like this:

T: Now, Zeeto likes Julie. Zeeto LOVES Julie. What does Zeeto say? “Oh, hi, Julie!”  Or….”Hellooooooooooo, Julie!”

In the next extract, the teacher gets the children to continue the text in talk by developing the situation. That is, she succeeds in developing the text as talk by destroying the boundary between inside and outside the story. When the students are repeating the lines after TV or a teacher, it’s just text, not talk. Especially, when a teacher says “Listen!”, “Repeat!”, students simply repeat and do not actually say the lines. Here, ‘destroy’ means ‘expand’ or ‘invite’. Ms. Hong invites the kids to the imaginary situation as characters by nominating their names.   

Good. Notice we can make it even better by reordering a little, like this:

When the students are repeating the lines after TV or a teacher, it’s just text, not talk. Especially, when a teacher says “Listen!”, “Repeat!”, students simply repeat and do not actually say the lines. In the next extract, the teacher gets the children to continue the text in talk by developing the situation. That is, she succeeds in developing the text as talk by destroying the boundary between inside and outside the story. Here, ‘destroy’ means ‘expand’ or ‘invite’. Ms. Hong invites the kids to the imaginary situation as characters by nominating their names.  

When we reorder it this way, each sentence uptakes from the last one. The problem (“Listen and Repeat”) forms the context for the solution (“developing” the situation by “destroying” the boundary), and the problem with the word “destroy” forms the context for the definition. Finally, the definition is the context for the specific concrete action that Ms. Hong takes.

KT: 혁준, let’s go swimming this afternoon.

Ss: hahaha~~

S: …

KT: 주이, let’s go swimming this afternoon.

S: Sorry, I can’t.

Ss: Hahaha~~

KT: 유라, let’s go swimming this afternoon.

S: Sounds good.

Teachers sometimes ask students what they heard from the dialogue like “What did you hear?” or “What did Ann say?” to check whether they have understood it. But such questions make a teacher and students stand outside the story. However, Ms. Hong doesn’t ask the kids what they heard. Instead, she suggests each student and the students choose their own answer. That gives the children the opportunity to use the language. In other words, the teacher succeeds in integrating the text with talk, but without the loss of the imaginary situation which enables the kids to learn the communicative function of “Sorry, I can’t”

Good! And now we can see that Seonjeong’s strategy of looking at what works in the lesson is starting to pay off. She is in a good position to GENERALIZE about what she said at the end of the last section, about the children’s ability to understand the whole situation and then SITUATE the communicative function within it.

The teacher keeps on developing the situation through varying the expression‎ at a single point. Like this.

KT: 승건, let’s go swimming.

S: Sounds good.

KT: 보형, let’s go shopping.

S: Sorry, I can’t.

……………

KT: 주현, let’s go fishing this Saturday.

S: Sorry, I can’t.

KT: Why not?

When the kids are nominated and received the offer by the teacher, they just become imaginary characters with their real names, not themselves. As a character in the imaginary situation, the kids can choose their own answer which they have already listened from CD-ROM dialogue. And then the kids improvise beyond the dialogue. (KT: 재영, let’s go hiking this Sunday. / S: Sorry, I can’t. / KT: Why not? / S: I don’t like hiking. / KT: Oh, you don’t like hiking?)

Notice that this will match the last section a little bit better if we switch it around a little. That is, Seonjeong presents the PROBLEMS first and then the POSITIVE elements of the lesson.

There are some REAL problems with using REAL names!

Ⅳ.  Listen and Answer

             - How to continue dialogue in text as talk using three kinds of expression‎; the fixed expression‎, the item-based combination and the creative abstract constructions

The goal of this unit is that students can use the expressions for suggesting and responding in their real life.

Wait a minute. Aren’t we thinking like ADULTS here?

For adults, classroom life is NOT real life. The only reason for using English in a classroom is to be able to use English in “real life” (work, study, travel) some day.

For children, classroom life is REAL life. In fact, it’s the only real life where there are real reasons to use English. Children don’t work, and while they do study and travel they normally don’t need English to do so.

So the goal of this unit is that children can use the expressions for suggesting and responding in their real lives. But is that the children’s goals? What are the children’s goals?

 And this unit sets “Let’s go swimming.”, “How about this afternoon?”, “Sorry, I can’t.” and “Sounds great.” as the target expressions. These target expressions are the fixed expressions, because they act like “single words” in the children’s mind. However, if children can make new sentences using the grammatical structure, 『 Let’s + a bare infinitive ~ 』, then it belongs to item-based combinations.

Very true. However, there’s a distinction. Take a look at the following sentences.

a) Let’s swim.

b) Let’s go swimming.

 In one case, Joon, Jinho and Ann are walking home from school. Ann remarks that it is hot and Jinho agrees. Ann looks at Jinho and says…(a or b?)

In the other, Jinho has just put on his AMAZING new bathing suit (which lights up in different colors when he jumps in the water!) and he is sitting on the edge of the pool with his legs in the water talking to Joon, Suddenly Ann comes out of the locker room wearing an 이효리 bikini (in army colors). Joon is dumbstruck, and to cover his confusion he turns to Jinho and says… (a or b?)

Are they the same communicative function?

Below, we can see how the kids go on dialogue in text as talk using fixed expressions, item-based combinations and creative abstract constructions. More importantly, we need to focus on how the teacher uses the fixed expressions to help for the students to yield some productive responses such as item-based combinations and creative expressions.

It’s not clear to me that the two sentences in the previous paragraph are different. It’s certainly not clear to me that the second one is more important than the first.

It often happens when we write (certainly when I write) that we find out what we mean while we are still in the process of meaning it.

This is why the PROCESS of writing is like talk and only the PRODUCT of writing is really text. In talk we find out what we really want to say by saying it, not by thinking it, and in writing we find out what we really want to write by writing it, and not by thinking it (or even saying it).

So it looks a little like Seonjeong wrote the first sentence a little too generally. She discovered while she was writing it that she wanted to be a little more precise and focus on the teacher, in order to fit what she is saying in this section to her general topic.

So she wrote the second sentence. But the relationship of the second sentence to the first is not really that one is important and the other one is not. It’s that the one is more precise and focused than the other.

This class starts with a puppet play by the teacher, who uses it to review the fixed expressions represented in this unit.

KT: (with a puppet1 talking to her) Let's go swimming. Let's go swimming.

KT: (talking to the puppet1) Sorry, I can't. I have a piano lesson. Sorry, I can't.

KT: (with the puppet1 talking to her) Let's go shopping this Saturday.

KT: (talking to the puppet1) Sounds great. I like shopping.

This segment comes from chant, “Let’s go swimming”. So, even though some students complete the teacher’s sentences with some word (KT: (with the puppet2 talking to her) Let’s go…? / Ss: Hiking!), it is not new. The review of fixed expressions is made in the T-T exchange.

Right. In order to really be able to use the distinction between fixed expressions, item-based combinations and abstract constructions, we have to know the lesson pretty well.

Fortunately, Ms. Hong made life easy for us. She recorded and transcribed EVERY utterance in the lesson. There were 3,540 of them, spread out over four days!

In the next part, the teacher makes two students (S16 and S17) join the puppet play so as to change T-T exchange to S-T-S exchange. S16 starts the dialogue after the teacher’s cue.

KT: Ready? (to S16) You go first. Let's go swimming. Ready ...

KT: One, two, ready, ..., go!

S16: (putting on the puppet and acting very funny)

Ss: Hahahaha~

S16: Let's ... let's go ... to the shopping.

KT: Shopping?

S4: To the?

KT: Let's go shopping?

S16: 아하, Let's go shopping.

The first line by S16 brings about two uptakes from the teacher (“Shopping?” and “Let’s go shopping?”) and two uptakes form the kids (“to the” and “아아, Let’s go shopping.”) Between two uptakes from the teacher, the first one is uptake which means repeating what S16 says. And the latter is a recast. Ms. Hong deals with the grammatical mistake by recasting “Let’s go shopping?” after S4 points out the error. Then, S16 recasts “아하, Let’s go shopping.”.

I think S4 is not pointing out the error. I think S4 is really asking a question (to the teacher). I think S4 means something like “Don’t I need to say ‘Let’s go to the shopping?”.

Now, Ms. Hong likes to ask “Why?” Here, she doesn’t. But here it might be useful to explain.

Can you explain? What is the difference?

a)    Let’s go shopping.

b)    OK. Let’s go to the Wow Shopping Mall.

In the first S-T-S exchange, the teacher plays the main role to move the role play ahead. However, the first try with S16 and S17 ends in failure (“KT: Stop! One more time! Stop! 엔지 (stop the action!)! 엔지! One more time!”), because S17 responds, “Yes! (giggling)” to teacher’s uptake, “Today?”. Ms. Hong expects S17 to answer “this Saturday” so as to play the rock-paper-scissors game between S16 and S17. In the next try with the same students, they succeed. It is interesting that the teacher changes the puppet play into a game by giving two points to the winner and one point to the loser. This switch can attract the students’ interest and make it far easier to get volunteers.

True! Of course, it’s not really fair!

In the exchange with S16 and S17, Ms. Hong declares that “(to S16) You want to go shopping with me.” By doing this, she may intend to help the student make the item-based construction, “S16: Let’s… let’s go … to the shopping.”

In next segment, the teacher chooses three volunteers but the teacher stands by the students to help them. The teacher tries students to make more item-based combination through giving them examples (KT: You go first. Ok? How about camping? Camping? / KT: What do you want to do? Computer game? (sic.)). But how about giving students a time to use their own words? The students come up with ‘fishing’, but the new utterances used in their puppet play are ‘camping’ and ‘play computer game’.

We can see a creative abstract construction as well as the item-based combination in the exchange among S6, S8 and S9. 

S8: Let's go camping.

S6: Sounds great. 아아, Sorry, I can't. I have piano lesson.

KT: Huh? Do you have a piano lesson today?

S6: Yes.

KT: Really?

S6: No!

Ss+S6: Hahaha~

KT: One more time! Let's go ...

S8: Let's go camping.

S6+KT: Sorry, I can't. I ... have ...

S: 어 ...

KT: ... a lot of homework.

The teacher makes the student get out of the puppet play by asking his real schedule. This kind of an attempt is for helping students use new sentences. However, unfortunately this creative expression‎ isn’t the student’s own.

Even though there is too much teacher talk and the students tend to repeat after the teacher, it is a process to reach active S-S exchanges. If S-S exchanges keep going, we can see many item-based combination and creative abstract expressions.

Good. Again, Seonjeong follows the pattern of admitting some problems and mistakes but ending on a positive note.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

The purpose of this paper is to look at the English lesson which consists of three sequences in the same unit and to examine how pictures and text are integrated with talk. This analysis shows that the integration of text and talk is accomplished through some processes

(Too general! EVERYTHING is accomplished through SOME processes. We need to say what KIND of processes!

“The analysis shows that they are integrated through processes of T-S interaction, or through processes of uptake, or through processes of forming context and then using it to situate text!”

: turning the pictures to talk in the “Look and Listen”, developing the text as talk in the “Listen and Repeat” and converting the dialogue in the form of role-play into talk in the “Listen and Answer”. It also shows that the teacher succeeds in teaching the students the pragmatic meaning of “Sorry”. That is, she can teach the kids the communicative function, “Regret” through the integration of picture and text into talk.

In the first sequence, the teacher uses open-type questions so as to set the scene and create characters. Especially, before listening to the dialogue, the teacher has the students make guesses what will happen in the pictures. Even though guessing activity takes time, it is helpful to turn picture to talk and to teach the pragmatic meaning of “Sorry”

In the second sequence, the teacher develops the text as talk by building the lines and creating an imaginary situation. First, the teacher expands the boundary of the story and invites the kids into the imaginary situation as characters. Then, the students can practice the target expression‎ in the context by saying not speaking. It enables the kids to acquire English naturally.

In the third sequence, the teacher tries to convert the text (the dialogue in the form of role-play) into talk using the game activity. At this stage, the teacher uses the fixed expressions for the kids to produce item-based combinations and some creative abstract constructions. Even though we can’t see enough productive responses in the given data, it seems to get many item-based combinations and creative expressions when S-S exchanges keep going.

Now, you can see that Seonjeong’s summary doesn’t really ADD anything to the final paragraphs of each section.

She doesn’t even add very much to what she said she was going to do in the introduction. Remember:

1.    How does the picture into turn to talk in the first sequence, “Look and Listen” by using open-typed questions in setting the scene and creating characters?

2.    How can the children develop the text as talk by saying the lines with the help of the teacher who creates an imaginary situation called “context” in the next sequence, “Listen and Repeat”?

3.    How does dialogue in the form of role-play convert into talk by managing to create any item-based combinations or creative abstract constructions using fixed expressions in the last sequence, “Listen and Answer”?

However, her analysis was very thorough. So this time when she goes over the things she was going to do, they do have a great deal more meaning.

From the analysis results in this paper, I do realize the importance of the context in the language acquisition. “Language needs to be firmly context embedded. Story lines, familiar situations and characters, real-life conversations, meaningful purposes in using language – these will establish a context within which language can be received and sent and thereby improve attention and retention.(H. Douglas Brown, 2007:104)”

Seonjeong brings in outside sources. When you do this, you make your argument MUCH stronger—and make it much easier to sell your thesis to the other professors too.

However, professors all have very strong prejudices of one kind or another. This professor really loathes H. Douglas Brown. I find myself disagreeing with almost everything he says.

If we really look at what H. Douglas Brown says, we see that he is advocating the kind of contexts in English teaching that my wife used to enjoy in North Korean movies:  everything has to be socialized, everything has to be realist, and above all endings have to be dull and predictable. This is not a good way of continuing the story, much less producing creative abstract constructionsl.  

Here’s what I would say:

. “Language does NOT need to firmly context embedded because language does not exist at all, until we create a context. Once we have established some kind of context, though, it becomes possible to develop unusual and surprising story lines and other speech genres, familiar and unfamiliar situations and characters, real-life and imaginary conversations. We do NOT need meaningful purposes in using language – there is no such thing as a meaningless purpose. We do NOT receive and send language any more than we receive and send air when we breathe. Language does not have to be contextualized or “socialized”; it is already contextualized and social. All we have to do is to know this and realize it when we teach (D.J. Kellogg’s version of H. Douglas Brown, 2010)”

But of course the thing to do when you have a quotation like this is not to rewrite it but to CUT it a little. For example, look at that last bit of Brown. It suggests that the whole point of learning is “attention and retention”. Actually, the whole point of attention and retention is learning. Just cut off the tail a little, and it will be…well, boring. But usable.

 When text and talk are linked and integrated, they are devoted to creating a context. Teachers should try to integrate text and talk using various strategies and show the students how they can link texts and talk for themselves. 

I sure like Seonjeong better than Brown!