Module 9: An introduction to Discourse Analysis

Google: drive, docs, pub 

For this assignment, I will talk about the program I am currently involved in delivering.

In this program, the course content is the textbook.  Teachers are given the textbook at the beginning of term, and are expected to cover as much of the textbook as possible during the term.  Teachers naturally have some freedom to adapt and supplement, but this is done at the level of individual teachers, and not at the program curriculum level.

Each unit of the textbook is divided into sections on reading, vocabulary, grammar and writing.  The textbook does not have any sections which explicitly focus on discourse analysis, but elements of discourse analysis are often present within these other skills.  For example, the lesson on articles, although packaged as a grammar lesson, contains some elements of discourse analysis--specifically the analysis of the use of the definitive article “the” to refer to something that has been mentioned previously in the text, which is an element of grammatical cohesion.  In a similar way, several of the other grammar or vocabulary lessons also contain elements of discourse analysis.  

However, it is very apparent to me that students would benefit from more discourse analysis.  I know this because I just got done grading their essays.  Most of these essays are filled with what Scott Thornbury referred to as “Spaghetti Writing”, meaning that the sentences within a paragraph did not connect to each other.  I frequently wrote comments like, “This sentence does not connect to the previous sentence, because it is on a different topic.  You need to transition to this new topic.”  I thought these comments were self-evident, but the students were actually confused by them, and several messaged me asking me to explain.  I had to spend a lot of time explaining to students why their sentences did not connect to each other.  I talked about things like my expectations as a reader, and how I expected the text to develop.

It was around this time that I realized I was assessing students on cohesion and coherence, but I had not adequately taught them about cohesion and coherence.  I believe this is also a problem at the program level, because one of the assessment criteria for student writing from the university is “cohesion and criteria.”

In his book, Beyond the Sentence, Scott Thornbury gives several teaching suggestions for how students can learn coherence.  I would like to see three of these activities adapted by my current program.

Firstly, at the noticing level, students can do activities where they work with a model paragraph to identify the theme and rheme of each sentence.  Students can then be encouraged to notice how the rheme of one sentence usually becomes the theme of the subsequent sentence.

Secondly, at the simple practice level, students can do  exercises in which they are given one sentence and must select the best way of continuing the text from a series of options.

Thirdly. at the more advanced level, students could be given a series of sentences on a given topic which they must turn into a coherent text.  Hopefully by the time the class gets to this exercise, the students will already have a good understanding of coherence, but teacher feedback and discussion of these student created texts will be essential.