It has long been recognized that the insufficiency of the audiolingual training in fostering functional communicators is partly due to unrealistic pseudo-communication prevalent in a classroom (Omaggio-Hadley, 1993). A huge number of such transactions as "Is that a pencil?"-"No, it isn't. It is a pen." (Ota, Ito & Kusakabe, 1980, p.7) are conducted solely for the purpose of structural pattern practices, without participants' intrinsic motivation to make such utterances: Answers are often so obvious that there is no reason to ask them (unless the inquirer is trying to confirm the meanning of the word, or s/he is perceptually/cognitively deficient.) Sometimes teachers under a strong curriculum constraint are forced to have their students practice such model dialogues which are presented in a textbook. This is regrettable because lack of a pragmatic motivation behind a question makes subsequent classroom communication less active (Long, Brock, Crookes, Deicke, Potter, & Zhang, 1984).Fortunately, techniques have been developed to contextualize such utterances so that they make pragmatic sense within the provided situation. This paper summerizes some of such techniques.
Show Pablo Picasso's abstract picture and ask such questions as "Is this a woman?". Variation: * Use ethnic arts, such as Japanese folding paper arts (Aoki, Ikeura, Ide, Kaneda, Sato, Sato, Shimaoka, Hayasaka, & Nitani, 1983) and African masks.
Show a picture of an actor on a female makeup (e.g., Japanese Kabuki play) and of real women, and have students guess their gender. Variations: * Ask the real function of goods of unusual shapes (e.g., a video-tape rewinder which looks like a car toy.) * Present tape-recorded voices of men and women; Some of the men have high-pitch voices, and some of the women have low-pitch voices. Have students guess their genders.
Initially show students only a small portion of an object/person (e.g., the chin portion of a picture of a well-known actor), and gradually expose the rest, until one of the students comes across a correct answer who/what it is. Variation: * Put a pen, a wrist watch and a pencil each in a brown bag, and shuffle them rapidly before students' eyes. After that, point a bag and ask students, "Is this a pen?"
Aoki, Ito, Endo, Ootomo, Kitaichi, Nakamura, Matsui, Morizumi, Morinaga, Wakabayashi, Hattori, and Dobbyn (1983) cleverly contextualize "This is an egg." and "That is a bird." as utterances of a conjurer who transforms an egg into a bird. Variation: * Use one of the growing number of digital movies in which an item seamlessly transforms into a different one.
In the absence of a speaker's solid knowledge about local American culture, asking such questions as "Is he an Amish?" makes sense with reference to a picture of a person in a folk costume. This type of activities can also lead to a fruitful cultural discussion.
Foreign language teachers sometimes come across pragmatically unmotivated model dialogues in a textbook. However, it is often possible to make those seemingly nonsense utterances a motivated one by providing an appropriate context, so that transactions in class provide a realistic communication.
Aoki, S., Ikeura, S., Ide, S., Kaneda, M., Sato, T., Sato, H., Shimaoka, T., Hayasaka, S., & Nitani, K. (1983). New Prince English Course 1. Tokyo: Kairyuudo.
Aoki, Y. Ito, K., Endo, H., Ootomo, K., Kitaichi, Y., Nakamura, T., Matsui, T., Morizumi, M., Morinaga, M., Wakabayashi, S., Hattori, K., & Dobbyn, K. (1983). The New Crown English Series 1. Revised Edition. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Long, M., Brock, C., Crookes, G., Deicke, C., Potter, L., & Zhang, S. (1984). The effect of teachers' questioning patterns and wait-time on pupil participation in public high school classes in Hawaii for students of limited English proficiency. Technical Report #1. Center for Second Language Classroom Research. Social Science Research Institute. University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Omaggio-Hadley, Alice. (1993). Teaching Language in Context. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Ota, A., Ito, K., & Kusakabe, T. (Eds.) (1983). New Horizon English Course 1. Revised Edition. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki.