Thanks for your reply. I enjoyed reading it and it clarified a great deal.

I agree with you 110% when you say:

I think (!) that the coursebooks’ extrapolation of a fairly limited number of functions means that some really important and useful language is ignored.

I would also agree that course books are mostly behind the times when it comes to a lot of technology and even idiomatic language. However, I can understand why they ignore the stuff- coursebooks mostly have long lifetimes of 3-5 years between changes.

I would think in this context that technology related vocabulary (and business buzzwords) would become fertile ground for your broadcasts.

I was coming from a bit different perspective when I questioned your basis for talking about the relative frequency of word use. I have seen statistical studies that try to compare lexical items between and among both Chinese and English textbooks. I find such studies quite interesting and very informative to someone like myself who likes to use such information to make informed decisions. I am perhaps unduly sensitive to these issues.

Thanks again for being so informative and continued good luck!

With regards to repeated opportunities to listen - the users on this platform can listen as many times as they would like to after they have paid only once, i.e. paying for a month of podcasts means unlimited access to all those podcasts.

There is a text guide in the form of a transcript on their handsets, with a glossary of useful phrases and, on some channels, main points highlighted. This, I believe, helps to highlight what they could ‘attend to’. I say ‘could’ for a reason.

I think there’s a danger in suggesting that ‘we’ should or need to tell the learners what to attend to - this is too much in line with the prescriptive nature of so much of the material out there. We can make suggestions, give guidelines, highlight certain things, but we should not underestimate the learner’s own awareness of what they need or want. In fact, I think the painful gaps in their communication abilities might show very clearly what they need (and want) to learn.

As for high frequency phrases in coursebooks - yes, there is, of course, lots of useful and high frequency language in the books. However, I think that certain areas are often overdone - for example, something like ‘expressing an opinion’ has a long list of possible ways to do this in most coursebook series when research (corpus linguistics) shows that most proficient speakers of English rarely go beyond the ‘I think…’ phrase. Learning all the other possible ways to do this means a very bad return on time investment.

I think (!) that the coursebooks’ extrapolation of a fairly limited number of functions means that some really important and useful language is ignored. Before learners embarck on expanding their list of ‘expressing an opinion’ phrases, there are other actual gaps in their language that would make a big difference to their communication skills. Things like ’scroll down the page’ when talking to a colleague about any site or document on a computer screen. This is the sort of language I haven’t seen addressed in the coursebooks, and the sort of language that provides fluency and sharpens the ability to communicate. In my experience, it’s exactly the sort of awareness of collocation that most learners lack, even those with great swathes of vocabulary.

Choosing which language to use involves listening to language in a variety of media related to the workplace, actual use of the language by proficient speakers in the workplace (and what the learners of English need), and - yes - intuition that comes from being a language teacher for very many years and seeing people struggle with communication in the real world. The experience of being a language learner whose communication needs were barely addressed by the coursebooks is also invaluable.

Things for responding and kudos on the podcast. I have a couple of comments on what you said. First, my guess is that the podcast that I heard runs at a clip much faster than a normal two-person conversational dialog and faster than what I usually record for intermediate students. I didn’t do a WPM count so I can’t be sure.

If so, given the volume of info (vocab, grammar) that you covered I’d be very skeptical that a student would pick up what you wanted/intended him to pick up given that nothing is highlighted during this recording. Students need “our” help to pick out the trees from the forest especially when they only get one or two shots at the material.

In other words there is no guarantee that they will attend to what you want them to attend to and, if what they are hearing is new, (the idea behind instruction in the first place) there is a good chance that what you are targeting will be ignored or mis-heard.

Note: All my comments are not nearly as valid when repeated listening takes place. However I’m under the impression that this medium is not particularly designed for repeated listenings nor is it priced to encourage repeated listening. In fact, just the opposite. It’s for students on the go in crowded, noisy, multi-tasking environments.

Next, I would question that you offer high-frequency phases that are not found in textbooks. I would think the opposite would be true. The very nature of high-frequency phrases makes me believe that they ARE the ones covered by textbooks.

Of course then we come to the issue of what constitutes a high-frequency phrase. Whose data are you using? I would be really impressed if you were doing this “research” on your own but if it is public data then I would be more inclined to believe that other material writers are using these same high-frequency phrases in their work.

In other words, this all doesn’t add up to me. Heck, I believe in the intuition and art of good teachers but I am a bit put off when art and intuition is clothed in academic language like 99% of this industry indulges in!

I don’t mean this to be critical, I’m just saying it as I see it.

I don’t believe anyone is under the illusion that anyone could learn to communicate in English entirely through this medium. At this stage, I see it as supplementary. For example, one of our “channels” focuses specifically (and in an insightful manner) on high-frequency phrases for the workplace that you would not normally find in a textbook. The point is that the learner can use the time spent commuting to work learning about (yes, about) a new chunk of language which, because it’s high-frequency, they will probably hear that day, or week, or month, in context. Which could mean they actually acquire that chunk. So yes, they can learn vocabulary this way, and this, I believe, is what we’re asking them to attend to.

Arguably, though, the only way to learn to communicate in a language is through first-hand experience of authentic communication in that language. And in the particular situation you wish, ultimately, to become communicatively proficient in. From a communication skills point of view, watching TV news would only benefit you if your goal were to learn to understand the news or become a newsreader; the discourse dynamics of this medium will not help in conversation, and I’m sure that in most (if not all) languages, many of the phrases and vocabulary are also not likely to be used in conversation. The discourse dynamics of every medium are different, and that includes the recreation of ‘authentic’ scenarios found in textbooks or on audio products for learners. I think that the discourse dynamics of ‘conversation’ in a textbook are also very specific to that medium.

If moreover the discourse dynamics of a pod-cast are unique to that medium what are students learning from a podcast and what should we be asking them to attend to?

Are we teaching students how to create good English podcasts (where the performance bar is quite high thanks to Ken’s artful acomplishments)? Or are we suggesting that they can learn grammar, or vocabulary or “conversation” by listening to these very informationally dense examples of somewhat staged discourse? Yikes, what is a 90-second podcast good for educationally speaking?

Michael,
Very pointed question. I don’t think we can say that there is only one ‘natural’ conversation format. We all engage in code switching and other discourse stategies throughout our day (from conversing with a child one minute, to answering the phone to talk to a colleague,the next, for example). Switching like this often requires abrupt changes in conversational strategy, but it’s all natural and all good.

Meanwhile the medium (partly) determines the message. If I want to connect with readers in book format, then I adopt the most effective discourse starategies for that medium. But those are not the same stategies I’d use for smoke signals or a slide show. And they’re certainly not the same as those I’d need for a 90 second mobile lesson, not least because it’s entirely ‘natural’ to address different constituencies in different ways.

So, ‘authentic’ language scenarios are great when the learner is in an authentic scenario, but they do not transpose wll into communications media. As designers I beleive we have to design for the medium, but also for the audience, and especially for the environment in which the content will be consumed. No user needs to hear small talk, grunting or ellipsis in this format, though these are all things that occur in face to face conversation.

Scripting is another huge question that you touched on. We do not script these lessons. It is essential that the exchange between Sheryl and I (in this case) happend spontaneously, so we prep it but we do not script it. (We write the transcripts and choose the vocabulary items after the actualy recording - if you want to know a trade secret, in order to make the conversation really happen.)

Ken Carroll

Attempting to create conversation without the face-to-face interaction is way-challenging. You may have done a good audience analysis up-front, but you’re still lacking a clear view of Tannen’s conversational structures.

Some writers/instructional designers do this exceptionally well — but is it just a matter of finding the right voice to draw in the learner?