Genres in the Classroom - Assignment Example

Genres in the Classroom The corpus provided for this task consists of 8 sentences taken from a children’s science textbook; six of the sentences are simple, one is complex and one is compound-complex. All six simple sentences include a prepositional phrase: ‘in zones of …’, ‘in the creation of…’, ‘behind earthquakes’, ‘from its rocky strata…’, ‘in the shallower layers’ and ‘in industry’. In terms of teaching these six simple sentences within a traditional EFL classroom there would be no problem with three of them because they represent a typical syntactic structure of [verb phrase + prepositional phrase] or [verb phrase + prepositional phrase + prepositional phrase], wherein the prepositional phrase provides additional information about the preceding verb phrase or prepositional phrase and introduces a noun phrase; for example, ‘These are driving forces + behind earthquakes and volcanoes’, ‘Volcanoes and earthquakes are common + in zones + of active plate movement’ and ‘They played a part + in the creation + of the Earth’s vast mountain ranges’. The sentence ‘From its rocky strata, we derive minerals, ores and fossil fuels’ however, would require further explanation because the prepositional phrase precedes the verb phrase. The fifth simple sentence ‘Heat underground can be harnessed and used to warm our homes and in industry.’ is problematic in that students may be confused with the verb ‘used’ and ‘used to’. In this instance therefore, they may consider that the sentence is not grammatically correct. Explanation would need to illustrate that ‘to’ in this instance does not connect with ‘used’ but forms the infinitive of ‘warm’ – ‘to warm’. The sixth and last simple sentence may also be problematic and explanation would need to focus on the way in which the clause ‘You would see the movements deeper down’ can be inverted to ‘Deeper down, you would see the movements’. Emphasis would also need to be placed on correct punctuation with the use of a comma when inverted. The complex sentence provided within this corpus presents the dependent clause preceding the independent clause ‘As the earth has evolved + the continents have drifted apart’. The focus of this sentence, in terms of teaching, would be on the dependent clause. Initially, the sentences would be best provided as ‘The continents have drifted apart + as the earth has evolved’ and explanation provided that the first clause is independent but the second is dependent. The dependent clause begins with a subordinator, which in this case is the adverb ‘as’ and used to explain time, meaning while or at the same time. Explanation on clause order and punctuation would then ensue. The compound-complex sentence ‘Imagine a journey to the centre of the Earth; you start at the crust, which is very thin, especially at the oceans.’ consists of two independent clauses and one dependent clause. The first independent clause includes an imperative verb phrase ‘Imagine a journey’ followed by two prepositional phrases ‘to the centre + of the earth’. This first clause would not be a problem to teach as it adheres to a typical simple sentence construction that would have been taught previously; the second clause however, is a little more problematic. It begins with a verb phrase ‘you start’ followed by a prepositional phrase ‘at the crust’, which is then followed by a dependent clause (relative or adjectival clause) ‘which is very thin’ that contains a prepositional phrase ‘at the oceans’ introduced by an adverb ‘especially’. In a typical EFL classroom students would already be aware of simple and compound sentences and their inclusion of adverbial and prepositional phrases before being introduced to complex sentences. The focus on teaching this sentence therefore, would again be on the use of independent clauses and their characteristics. Pattern grammar is “concerned with the relationship between meaning and form” (Hunston, 2009, p.1 )and is corpus driven; in other words there is no real difference between the grammar and the lexicon because the lexis is exemplified in terms of its allocation within grammar patterns. In order to discuss pattern grammar in relation to the corpus provided, the following three sentences could be discussed in terms of phrase and/or word patterns. For example: These are the driving force behind earthquakes and volcanoes. They played a part in the creation of the Earth’s vast mountain ranges Volcanoes and earthquakes are common in zones of active plate movement In terms of word patterns either the verbs, nouns or adjectives could be extracted and illustrated within a corpus pattern in relation to their form as well as their meaning. Task 5: Concordance analysis The patterns of a word are all the words and structures that are most often combined with that word and that play a part in its meaning (Hunston and Francis, 2000). The corpus for analysis here involves an extract containing 30 citations from a concordance of the lemma ‘neck’. There are multiple dictionary definitions of ‘neck’ but within this corpus only four are found as presented in the American Heritage Dictionary of Language (2005): the part of the body joining the neck to the shoulders both human and animal, a relatively narrow elongation, projection, or connecting part, in this case ‘a neck of a bottle’, the part of a garment around or near the neck, and a narrow margin: 'won by a neck.' Further uses of ‘neck’ found in the Oxford Dictionary are idiomatic, as in ‘neck and neck’: so close that the lead between competitors is virtually indeterminable, and ‘up to (one's) neck’: deeply involved or occupied fully: 'I'm up to my neck in paperwork, both of which are evidenced in this corpus. A further two idiomatic uses include ‘pain in the neck’: a bothersome annoying person, and ‘stick ones neck out’: to risk criticism, ridicule, failure by speaking one’s mind, and ‘on my neck’: to be shouted at or punished because of something you’ve done. In terms of patterns within the corpus, the first observation is that the noun ‘neck’ cannot be found in subject position. Word class patterns in terms of what precedes the noun are quite clear. Fourteen of the 30 lines indicate ‘neck’ is preceded by a pronoun, either ‘his’, ‘her’, ‘its’, ‘my’, ‘our’, ‘their’ or ‘your’; those remaining are preceded by the conjunction ‘and’ , an adjective or a definite article; one occurrence of a person’s name is found rather than a pronoun and four of these lines (9, 12, 14, 28) place the lemma ‘neck’ at the end of a sentence or The corpus indicates therefore that the lemma ‘neck’ can occur as: [ (pronoun) n N, adj N, and N, ]. Concordance patterns can be seen in relation the lemma ‘neck’ and the use of prepositions; the majority of concordance lines have a preposition either preceding the noun or adjective before the lemma or directly following. Lines 2,4,7,20,26 and 27 illustrate the noun ‘neck’ is followed by a preposition. In lines 7 and 26 ‘neck’ is followed by the preposition ‘in’, in line 2 it is followed by ‘before’ and in line 27 by ‘under’, and all four lines semantically relate to ‘neck’ as being a part of human anatomy joining the head to the shoulders. Line 20 provides evidence of ‘neck’ being followed by the preposition ‘of’ and refers semantically to a part of clothing that is worn around the neck. In line 4 however, ‘neck’ is followed by the preposition ‘on’ and is being idiomatically used to mean ‘even with’ or ‘tie’ and is part of the collocation ‘neck and neck’. In line 26 ‘neck’ is used within the idiomatic phrase ‘up to one’s neck’ meaning very busy or deeply involved, but in this instance the meaning is literal and is referring to somebody being literally ‘up to their neck’ in water, so is not being used idiomatically. This corpus therefore provides evidence that when followed by a preposition other than ‘on’ or ‘of’ the meaning is in reference to human anatomy but if followed by ‘of’ the meaning is related to clothing and if followed by ‘on’ the use is idiomatic. In terms of prepositions found prior to the lemma, the pattern that emerges, as mentioned above, is that a preposition precedes the noun or pronoun before the lemma; for example ‘on Auntie Lou’s neck’, ‘in the bottle neck’, ‘around her neck’, and ‘down his neck’, which are all in reference to a human neck or that of a bottle. Other examples are the idiomatic expressions ‘on my neck’, and ‘in the neck’. When the lemma ‘neck’ is preceded by the conjunction ‘and’ such as ‘face and neck’, forehead and neck’, we find that a preposition is not very far away; in fact we find it precedes the noun/pronoun possessing the lemma: ‘on her forehead and neck’ and ‘into our face and neck’. In this case it can be determined that the collocations ‘forehead and neck’ and ‘face and neck’ can be considered as one unit representing a noun. If the lemma ‘neck’ is preceded by a modifier as in ‘the scooped neck’, severe neck’, ‘scaly neck’ and ‘wrinkled neck’ we find no evidence of either a preceding or following preposition. After analyzing the concordance patterns of the lemma ‘neck’ and prepositions the corpus suggests it can occur in the following concordances: [ N prep, prep n( pronoun) N ]. While not every concordance line has been discussed in this analysis particular patterns have emerged; in order to determine all usages in terms of form and meaning more data would need to be added to the corpus. It should be realized that all concordances presented here are suggestions only and thus cannot be considered as definitive, especially as the corpus is very small. Task 6: Lexis Lexical relations are the connections or affiliations between the meaning of one word to other words (Bolinger, 1968), and include synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms and meronyms. Lexical relations found within the extract from The Kite Runner (Hosseini, 2004, pp.3-4) include synonyms and antonyms. Synonyms are words that sound different and have different phonetic shapes but have the same meaning in some contexts (Silzer, 2005); there are very few true synonyms however; most are similar or identical in terms of truth conditions, but can differ in terms of how they are used stylistically, or within a discourse structure (Krifka, 1998). Within the extract provided, evidence of synonyms include ‘giggling, laughing’, which are synonyms that are similar in meaning but could be considered as gradient synonyms because although they both refer to making “the spontaneous sounds and movements of the face and body that are the instinctive expressions of lively amusement and sometimes also of derision” (Oxford Dictionary, 2010), they differ in that giggle, a derivative of laugh (Oxford Dictionary, 2010) implies slightly different connotations. Antonyms are words that have opposite meanings, such as ‘broad nose’ and ‘narrow eyes’ both of which are found in the text and are considered as opposites. There are different types of antonyms however, and words such as ‘children’ and ‘father’ are considered as antonyms as well, but in this case, as relational, or converse antonyms (Silzer, 2005). Hyponyms are words that are part of, or included in a bigger set of words (Silzer, 2005) such as ‘nose, eyes, ears, chin, lip’, which are all evident in this text, are hyponyms of the umbrella term, or inclusive word ‘face’. Metaphors are one type of figurative language and are “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable” (Oxford Dictionary, 2010). In the text extract under discussion we find a few uses of metaphor; for example, ‘a face like a Chinese doll” wherein this use of metaphor aims to compare Hussan’s face with that of a Chinese doll which is usually considered as pretty, round and white or pale. Another example of metaphor is “slanting, narrow eyes, like bamboo leaves”, wherein Hussen’s eyes are being compared with bamboo leaves, which are narrow and long. Later, his chin his is compared to a “stub, a meaty appendage”; thus evidence of extended metaphor. Metaphors have three components (Silzer, 2005), a topic, an image and a place of similarity; for instance in the metaphor “slanting, narrow eyes, like bamboo leaves’ the topic is ‘slanting, narrow eyes’ is the topic, bamboo leaves is the image, and lean or thin is the point of similarity. Collocations are pairs or groups of words that are often used together and sound unaffected and normal to a native speaker of English. They are an important part of the English vocabulary and necessary for a learner of the language if they want to sound and be fluent; they provide a means of knowing which words can be put together and which words cannot be combined; for example ‘sit up straight’ is acceptable but ‘sit up erect’, ‘sit up vertical’, or ‘sit up upright’ are not. Collocations make consist of any combination of word types, such as adjectives and nouns, verbs and prepositions and verbs and nouns. Collocations within the extract provided are numerous, so only a small sample will be discussed here. Collocations of adjectives and nouns include ‘high branches’, ‘tiny low-set ears’, ‘one-eyed German shepherd’ and ‘naked feet’; all of which are open collocations (McCarthy and O’Dell, 2005) in that different adjectives can be used to collocate with the same nouns, such as ‘low branches’ or ‘large high-set ears’, and different nouns can collocate with the same adjectives. Examples of collocations comprised of a preposition are particularly prevalent as in ‘up in those tree’, in the driveway’, ‘on a pair of’, ‘on the light’, ‘into their homes’, and ‘on his almost perfectly round face’; some of which are strong or fixed collocations (McCarthy andO’Dell, 2005) in that no other word can collocate within the phrase; for example ‘up … tree’, no other preposition other than ‘up’ can collocate with tree – you cannot use ‘down’ for example. Among the noun collocations are ‘Hassan and I’, ‘a shard of mirror’, ‘trouser pockets’, ‘the poplar trees’, ‘a pair of high branches’ and ‘the cleft lip’, some of which are compound units although not hyphenated, such as ‘trouser pocket’ and ‘cleft lip’. Verb collocations include ‘get mad’, ‘used to catch’, ‘used to climb’, ‘sit across from’, ‘that looked like’ and ‘filled with’. Task 7: Register and genre Although students may have exposure to a variety of texts that are non-narrative, such as explanative or descriptive texts, it cannot be taken for granted that they will be able to effectively construct the different genres without instruction on structure, linguistic forms and organizational characteristics of a particular genre. Genres include the purpose of the text such as texts that complain, request, and inform, but they “can be categorised into genres still further by what they are trying to do” (Green and Green, 2000, p.4), such as reports that are based on facts and describe how things are, re-telling a story relays past events that may entertain or inform, and procedural texts describe a series of actions that are necessary to attain a goal, and are factual. What is important to realize however, is that genre, in terms of its purpose, is not a person’s exclusive reason for communicating; its purpose or objective is socially distinguished and identified by a particular community in a typical situation (Yashioka and Herman, 2000). The genre of a text therefore influences everything its “large-scale layout” (Green and Green, 2000, p.20) of the page to the “small-scale vocabulary” (Green and Green, 2000, p.20)being used. A description of genre then, refers to the text type in terms of its “structure, style, content and intended audience” (Swales, 1990, p.58). A description of register entails three specific components of a text that include the linguistic qualities, the situational milieu and the functional connection between the two (Biber and Conrad, 2009). Littlefair (1992) described the association between register and genre as register influencing the language variety and genre establishing the form of the communication in accordance with its objective or purpose. The two texts under discussion here are procedural texts and thus factual; they provide a series of actions or instructions necessary to attain a goal. The first text is intended for a young audience and chronologically relays how to make a ghost costume for Halloween, thus the style is informal and the content appropriate for young children. Although the instructions are written and not spoken the communicative purpose, in other words the situational context, is to interact with the children, thus linguistically the lexis and syntactic structures are more appropriate to a spoken genre. For example, second person pronouns are used as a means of bringing the young reader closer to the writer, and therefore invoke a feeling of inclusion with the instructions. A little aside ‘ask your mum first!’ also adds to the intent of a spoken register, as to does the instruction ‘then practice your ghost noises’, which again can be considered as an aside because it does not really pertain to making the costume. Each instruction starts with an infinitive verb rather than the usual imperative form; more specifically, the infinitive verb ‘to make’ introduces the first clause of each instruction, leading into the imperative form in the second. The linguistic features of the text are therefore functional and suited to the purpose and situational perspective of the text’s register. The second text is written for a mature audience and firstly provides instructions for turning a mobile phone on and off, and secondly explaining various options for using the phone; the tone is relatively informal and again its communicative aim is to imitate a one-on-one dialogue with its readers, invoking a sense of interaction between the writer and audience. Linguistically, the text does not adhere to the more formal genre of written instructions that is mostly parallel in terms of syntactic structures with all instructions commencing with an imperative verb. In this text the syntactic structures are mixed, with some directions commencing with an imperative and others not. The text also intermittently uses the second person pronouns as a means of promoting familiarity with its audience. The second half of the text does include a larger sentence variety and clause types, such as more complex sentences containing independent relative, noun and adverbial clauses. The lexis is quite simple although written for an adult audience and the jargon specific to the context, is that which is used and understood by a general lay reader; it also contains a number of collocations, both fixed ‘on the top of’ and free ‘press and hold’ (Lewis, 1993), as well as expressions that are pragmatically reliant on the situational context such as ‘social networking’ and ‘media sharing. The fact that the text is written in a less formal manner than in a typical written procedural genre it achieves its purpose of implying a more spoken interface, thus more appropriate to its function, context and audience. References American Heritage Dictionary of Language. No date. ‘Neck’.Available from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/neck. [Accessed 21 November, 2010]. Biber, D. and Conrad, S. 2009. Register, Genre and Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bolinger, D.L. (1968). Entailment and the meaning of structures. Glossa, 2, 119-127. Green, C. and Green, S. (2000). Assessment of Literacy in the Text Level Strand of the National Literacy Framework at Key Stage Two: Issues surrounding Genre and Gender. Conference Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Edinburgh. Available from www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/.../113773_Assessment_of_Literacy_in_ the_Test_Level_Strand_of_the_Natio.pdf [Accessed 19 November, 2010]. Hunston, S. 2009. FrameNet and Pattern Grammar. Conference Paper. The Eighth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories. Italy. Available from http://tlt8.unicatt.it/Programme_framenet.htm. [Accessed 21 November, 2010]. Hunston, S. and Francis, G. 2000. Pattern Grammar: a corpus driven approach to the lexical grammar of English. Netherlands: John Benjamins. Krifka, M. 1998. Lexical Relations. Handout: LIN3935 Lexical Semantics. Available from https://webspace.utexas.edu/.../Krifka02LexicalRelations.pdf?uniq. [Accessed 23 November, 2010]. Lewis, M. 1993. The Lexical Approach. Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications. Littlefair, A. 1992. Genres in the Classroom. England: UKRA McCarthy, M. and O’Dell, F. 2005. English Collocations in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oxford Advanced learner’s Dictionary. No date. ‘Neck’. Available from http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/neck_1. [Accessed 22 November, 2010]. Oxford Dictionary, 2010. Available from http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0514520#m_en_gb0514520. [Accessed 23 November, 2010]. Silzer, P.J. 2005. Working with Language. Supplementary Course Materials for ISLAL 520/Eng1 351/INAL 300/INCS 310. Department of TESOL and Applied Linguistics School of Intercultural Studies Biola University. Available from http://www.scribd.com/doc/23736421/Working-With-Language-2005. [Accessed 23 November, 2010]. Swales, J. 1990. Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yoshioka, T. and Herman, S. (2000). Coordinating Information Using Genres. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Center for Coordination Science. Available from http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp214.pdf. [Accessed 23 November, 2010]. Read More