...COMM 89 Theory Paper Purpose: Evaluate the utility of an academic theory by examining its applications to everyday life. Enhance your ability to understand academic theory as explained by an outside source and to apply theoretical concepts with organization and clarity. Demonstrate original thought in analysis of utility. Preparation: 1. Choose an episode from your life. Choose one of the two following types of brief (1-3 minutes) real life communicative episodes (any communication interaction between 2 or more individuals). Do NOT attempt to use a movie scene. a) First-hand experience: an incident in which you met and/or communicated with someone. b) Observed episode: an incident in which you witnessed 2 or more others communicating. 2. Select a theory from those on the schedule prior to the midterm. Choose one that will help you understand your communicative episode and that might also be beneficial for understanding your future communication interaction. 3. Find at least one main academic source (NOT your textbook or lecture notes) that explains the theory. This main source must be published and will most likely to be either a chapter in an edited book or a journal article that provides a thorough explanation of the theory. A journal article with an experimental study is unlikely to provide a thorough explanation of the theory, but is a very useful additional source for discussing the utility of the theory. (Use these in your utility section.) Your textbook and...
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...Crossing Boundaries – an interdisciplinary journal VOL 1, No 3 - Fall 2002 From Communicative Competence to Language Awareness: An Outline of Language Teaching Principles MANUEL SINOR Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta This essay offers a critical review of some key theoretical issues relevant to second language acquisition and considers the practical implications of these issues on language teaching. The discussion advocates a renewed communicative approach to language pedagogy, which entails the educators’ readiness to act as teacher-researchers, their cautious considerations of individual learner differences, their familiarity with some defining aspects of human learning, and their willingness to encourage the learners’ discovery of formal language properties in a reflective and autonomous manner. 1 Introduction This essay reviews some of the key theoretical notions associated with second language acquisition and considers the pedagogical relevance of these notions. In order to relate the discussion to the practicalities of language teaching, we refer to the hypothetical case of ten adult learners of English, freshly arrived from Japan for a six-month course at a Canadian language school. These learners have earned their title of “mature students” not only from their middle age range, but also because their country’s Foreign Office selected them for their motivation to study English in Canada. Despite this promising background, two burning questions...
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...A GENRE ANALYSIS OF SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STAFF MEETING MINUTES ABSTRACT Interest in genre analysis has increased over the years with studies done by several scholars such as Swales, Bhatia, Berkonkotter, Hyon, Bazerman, Miller, to mention just a few, on various genre ranging from the research article in general to letters. Studies on genre analysis into meeting minutes are however, very limited and so the aim of this study is to investigate the communicative purpose, schematic structure and lexico grammatical features which characterize this genre. Swales' (1990) rhetorical approach to genre analysis was used to investigate eighteen meeting minutes which revealed the occurrence of seven moves with each having its own communicative purpose and linguistic features which characterize the genre as a formal one. The study has implications for genre studies in the area of pedagogy and further research. Key words: genre, minutes, discourse, moves, steps, Ghana. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Minutes is a highly formal written genre situated in the domain of business discourse and is an official record and considered a legal document by auditors, IRS and the law courts. Oxford defines it as a written record of what is said and decided at a meeting. It is used by institutions, corporate bodies and varied organisations. Its main communicative purpose is to record and relay information to the members of that discourse community. It also gives members the platform to express their views and opinions...
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...features. The analysis seeks to identify the relationship between text and context and the way they are shaped by taking reciprocal effects from one another. This means that texts are not random choices of words rather an integration of one’s identity, social beliefs and relationships and many more factors that shape people being. The new rhetoric approach motivated by speech act theory emphasizes on the contextual framework of the society rather than the content and the structure of a text. This school of genre (Bazarman, 1988) and Freedman & Medway (1994), as cited in Naderi (2012) emphasizes on the socio-contextual aspects to provide students and novice writers with the social actions and functions and the ways they are manipulated within a context. 2.4.2 English for Specific Purposes...
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...Students Name Professors Name Course Date Discourse Community Ethnography The introduction of the notion of communicative competence has been positive in the sense that communication is now conceived as a result of the successful application of not only grammatical but also pragmatic knowledge and skills. Nevertheless, this has not changed the perspective many instructors had of language, because pragmatic information has usually been presented as an auxiliary component which is to be used only when grammatical explanations are difficult or impossible. The result is that for many language educators here is still a core clement about which they have to be especially careful grammatical competence. The communicative approach to language teaching...
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...Communicative approaches in favour of second language acquisition INTRODUCTION For ages, researchers have been developing their own methods, techniques and approaches in the field of learning English as a Second Language. Due to the fact that in the last decades communicative competence has emerged as a main goal; several theories have appeared. They have communication as an aim and are mainly learner centered. AIM The aim of this essay is to look at the concepts of communicative language teaching and task based language teaching. How are these concepts discussed by pedagogical researchers? Furthermore, the dissertation will analyze how communicative approaches are used in the example given where a chart is presented for the students to complete it, and later to serve as a basis for lively questions and discussions according to their level. The first questions ask us to justify the method used in this activity, whereas the second one gives us the opportunity to compare and find similarities or evidence of any other method. Finally, a view on how this activity promotes learners` second language acquisition will be presented. The task states “The use of charts was introduced in Chapter Four as means of providing comprehensive imput …( ) The construction of tables of information about the students can serve as a basis for interesting discussions …” . Then, the teacher creates a chart on the board so as to be completed with the weekly routines of some of the...
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...English test on English teaching and to provide for some constructive suggestions in order to promote the oral English teaching. Keywords: Oral English testing, English teaching, washback effect 0. Introduction Language testing and teaching can be regarded as twins-they are so closely interrelated that it’s impossible to work in either field without the other one. Language testing can serve to check the achievements of language teaching and at the same time it can exert some washback effects on teaching, which may be conducive to language teaching or do harm to it. The relationship between oral English testing and teaching is also the same case. The aim of oral English teaching is to enable the students to obtain the flexible communicative abilities and to deal with all kinds of circumstances involved in using oral English. Oral English testing is a scientific measuring tool. On one hand, it can give the students an objective, accurate and justice judgment of their oral English abilities and on the other hand it can check the effect of oral English teaching and provide the teachers with feedback information, acting as a commanding baton for language teaching. 1. An Overview of Washback Effect As we all know, language testing influences teaching and learning, this is the very phenomenon what we call “washback” in applied linguistics. 1.1 What is Washback Effect Different scholars hold various opinions on this...
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...Section 1 Organizational Culture: set of artifacts, values and assumption that emerge from the interaction of organizational members Open social system operating a dynamic environment. CRITERIA to identify something as culture: 1. Deeply felt or held 2. Commonly intelligible 1. Accessible to a cultural group Organization = Ordered and purposeful interaction among people. Purposeful, because its members produce (supero-rdinative) goal-directed activities. Organizational communication is a continuous process through which organizational members create, maintain and change the organization. (it includes business communication) N.B. All organizational members take place in it; messages are produced to create a shared meaning of messages, but it is not always achieved. Those messages vary in form according to various factors (power distances, roles, goal, method, non-verbal), and to be fully understood have to be considered in their contexts Culture: "the collective programming if the mind that DISTINGUISHES the members of one group tor category of people from another" (Hofstede 2001) Is both a process and a product; is confining (imitates groups) and facilitating (gives us a way to better understand what is happening) Cultural Symbol = physical indicators of organizational life (Rafaeli & Worline 2000) ARTIFACTS: visible/tangible, are also part of them norms, standards, customs and social convention. Norms: pattern of behaviors or communication...
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...Society today encompasses a multitude of various human communicative processes in which individuals deduce meaning from. Contrary to previous belief, communication is now seen as a means of self-development and establishment of individual and group identity in the seemingly ephemeral nature of communication trends. Semiotics and visual representation mediates our social worlds as we accord them high authority in the transmission of information and creation of meaningful experience. Similarly, intercultural communication provides shared understandings of the world and is a significant influence on individual and cultural identity formation. Through cross-cultural communication analysis, one can learn of how cultural and social interaction can shape a person’s micro and macro worlds through communicative processes. The study of semiotics has shed light on the nature in which individuals deduce meanings from mass media texts or visual signs. ‘Social and cultural life is invested with meaning and value by regular symbolic representations’ (Coupland & Gwyn 2003, p. 1). In a world increasingly dominated by visual signs, we find ourselves looking to these to construct meanings (Hall 1997). Through the study of semiotics and the notion of sign systems, I gained an understanding of the authority that people accord to visual representations that enables them to shape the mediated world and influence patterns of socialisation. Looking at the world from my own experience as a communicator...
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...Communication Theory Nine: Two Robert T. Craig Communication Theory as a Field May 1999 Pages 119-161 This essay reconstructs communication theory as a dialogical-dialectical field according to two principles: the constitutive model of communication as a metamodel and theory as metadiscursive practice. The essay argues that all communication theories are mutually relevant when addressed to a practical lifeworld in which “communication” is already a richly meaningful term. Each tradition of communication theory derives from and appeals rhetorically to certain commonplace beliefs about communication while challenging other beliefs. The complementarities and tensions among traditions generate a theoretical metadiscourse that intersects with and potentially informs the ongoing practical metadiscourse in society. In a tentative scheme of the field, rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, sociocultural, and critical traditions of communication theory are distinguished by characteristic ways of defining communication and problems of communication, metadiscursive vocabularies, and metadiscursive commonplaces that they appeal to and challenge. Topoi for argumentation across traditions are suggested and implications for theoretical work and disciplinary practice in the field are considered. Communication theory is enormously rich in the range of ideas that fall within its nominal scope, and new theoretical work on communication ...
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...Communicative Language Teaching The aim of this unit • To make you think about communicative approach to teaching languages • To analyse the concept of communicative competence • To reflect upon the communicative teaching techniques What do you have to do in this unit? • Warming up discussions • Input reading • Self-assessment questions (SAQS) • Exploratory tasks • Integrated task Warming up discussion 0 Warm up the concept of a “communicative situation” (situation, in which it is necessary to communicate orally and/or through writing in order to achieve a certain goal). Produce a “mind map” of the concept listing most typical communicative situations in your own real world Communicative situations Input reading 1 The way towards communicative teaching Warming-up discussion 1.1 Rate in order of importance the items that the students need in order to master the language communicatively (more than one item can get one rank) |Items |Rating | |Vocabulary | | |Grammar | | |Pronunciation | | |Knowledge...
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...University of Hawaii Background Language teaching came into its own as a profession in the last century. Central to this phenomenon was the emergence of the concept of "methods" of language teaching. The method concept in language teaching—the notion of a systematic set of teaching practices based on a particular theory of language and language learning—is a powerful one, and the quest for better methods was a preoccupation of teachers and applied linguists throughout the 20th century. Howatt's (1984) overview documents the history of changes of practice in language teaching throughout history, bringing the chronology up through the Direct Method in the 20th century. One of the most lasting legacies of the Direct Method has been the notion of "method" itself. Language Teaching Methodology Defined Methodology in language teaching has been characterized in a variety of ways. A more or less classical formulation suggests that methodology is that which links theory and practice. Theory statements would include theories of what language is and how language is learned or, more specifically, theories of second language acquisition (SLA). Such theories are linked to various design features of language instruction. These design features might include stated objectives, syllabus specifications, types of activities, roles of teachers, learners, materials, and so forth. Design features in turn are linked to actual teaching and learning practices as observed in the environments...
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...DEFINITIONS OF DISCOURSE 1.1. Introduction In this introductory unit we are going to look at a number of definitions of discourse and to try to define some key terms used in discourse analysis, with the aim of clarifying its scope in such a way that it can deal with a wide range of problems and phenomena, but in a more systematic and coherent way. Discourse analysis refers, in a very basic sense, to talk. What most people do most of the time is talk, because to do anything requires talk and, often, texts, both in private and public spheres. However, until recently, little attention has been given to what people actually say and do in particular everyday circumstances. People talk about the world, about their work, about others and their relations with them. And in talking, they do things. That was Austin’s (1962) revolutionary insight into an aspect of language that had not been fully recognized: the pragmatic function of language, what language does to make social life possible. This turn to language, or to discourse, has had the effect of breaking down barriers between different social sciences concerned with the analysis of everyday social life. 1.2. Definitions of discourse Discourse analysis is widely recongnised as one of the most vast and least defined areas of linguistics. One reason for this is that the understanding of discourse is based on scholarship from a number of academic disciplines that are quite different from one another, such as, the philosophy...
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...Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal Managing complexity: using ambivalence and contingency to support diversity in organizations Iris Koall Article information: Downloaded by Roehampton University At 03:40 24 January 2016 (PT) To cite this document: Iris Koall, (2011),"Managing complexity: using ambivalence and contingency to support diversity in organizations", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 30 Iss 7 pp. 572 - 588 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610151111167034 Downloaded on: 24 January 2016, At: 03:40 (PT) References: this document contains references to 76 other documents. To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 2271 times since 2011* Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: Christina Schwabenland, Frances Tomlinson, (2008),"Managing diversity or diversifying management?", Critical perspectives on international business, Vol. 4 Iss 2/3 pp. 320-333 http:// dx.doi.org/10.1108/17422040810870033 Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour, Fernanda Serotini Gordono, Jorge Henrique Caldeira de Oliveira, Jose Carlos Martinez, Rosane Aparecida Gomes Battistelle, (2011),"Diversity management: Challenges, benefits, and the role of human resource management in Brazilian organizations", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 30 Iss 1 pp. 58-74 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610151111110072 ...
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...situation. It is a wrong notion that the case studies are confined to management students. Cases may pertain lo any discipline, where skills for solving complex unstructured problems or preparing plans are required. The origin of case study methods itself can be traced to Harward Lawyers. Cases may describe problems facing individuals, groups, institutions or even Nations. Through a case study one learns a broad range of skills and has many alternatives. Case studies encourage the practice and attainment of analytical and communicative skills. Case studies allow a different kind of learning. It is close to the learn by doing' approach. Cases are intended to stimulate the reality of the manager's job. The material in the case provides data for analysis and decision-making. Cases require the student to make decisions about the situations presented and to defend those decisions. In real decision-making the student will have lo persuade superiors that his analysis and solutions are the best and hence the communication and interpersonal skills are vital to success in management. Cases provide the opportunity lo improve these skills. A case is defined by Reynold as, "a short description in words and numbers, of an actual management situation". It describes the present and past position of the situation and the problem that is posed. All the data are provided. A case consisting of the history...
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