Welcome Back: Classroom Discourse Analysis

#CLASS REVIEW 7

Welcome Back: Classroom Discourse Analysis

‘Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit, tapi selama ia tak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah’

-Pramoedya Ananta Toer-

What can we learn from writing...

            Writing is a practice based on expectations: the readers chances of interpreting the writer’s purpose are increased if the writer takes the trouble to ancipate what the reader’s might be expecting based on previous text, he or she has read of the same kind (Ken Hyland, 2004:4).  As we know that writing is the most popular method ofcreating connection among people, it means that building links between indivduals and within communities.  Writing connect people across time, space, and culture.  Because writing, people can learn from the past, gain knowledge about today and prepare for tomorrow.  In writing process include

writer (as produce text) and reader (the person who read a text).  The reader’s and writer’s to dancer following each other step, each assembling sense from a text by anticipating what the other is likely to do by making connection to prior text (Hoey as cited in Hyland, 2004).  When we talk about writing, it is automatically we learn about the language.  Miko Lehtonen said in his book that language is centrally an area of interaction between people.  It fiction in all areas and levels of communal life from the simplest to the most complex ones.  An emphasis on language structure as a basis for writing is typically a four-stage process:

Þ    Familiarization: learners are though certain grammar and vocabulary, usually through a text

Þ    Controlled Writing: learners manipulate fixed patterns, often from subtitution tables

Þ    Guided Writing: learners immitate the model text

Þ    Free Writing: learners use the patterns that they have developed to write an essay, letter and so forth.

The interaction both of reader’s and writer’s by using language could produce a meaning.  It is called semogenesis (meaning-making).  There are three dimension or time frames to such a process, namely:

a)      A phylogenetic dimension to encompass evolution within language and within particular language

b)      An ontogenetic dimension to encompass linguistic development within individual

c)      A logogenetic dimension to encompass the unfolding of meaning in actual discourse

Meaning are continually created, transmitted, recreated and changed by processes that operate in each dimension (Halliday and Matthiessen as cited in Paul Tench, 2003:3).  Writing, together with reading, is an act of literacy: how we actually use language in our everyday lives.  Literacy is moething we do (Hyland, 2006).  Traditional school-based views regard literacy as a learnt ability which facilitates logical thinking, access to information and participation in the roles of modern society.  This view sees literacy as a psycological and textual, something which can be measured and assessed.  Literacy is seen as a set of discreate, value-free technical skill which include decoding and encoding meaning, manipulating writing tools, perceiving shape-sound correspondences.

            How texts are produced and used in different way is a key aspect of studying literacy.  Baynham as cited in Hyland (2006: 50) said that investigating literacy as ‘concrete human activity,’ not just what people do with literacy, but also what they  make of what they do, the values they place on it and the ideological that surround it.  Fowler (1996) said the ideology is omnipresent in every single text (spoken, written, aoudio or the combination of all them).  It is because, there is no text produce without context, and text production never neutral.  A set of opinions or beliefs group or an individual is called ideology.

What is missing in my class review before..

Classroom Discourse Analysis

            The simplest definition of discourse is language-in-use (Rymes, 2008).  Some linguist have argued that the defining feature of language is its ability to be de-contextualized.  The classroom is the primary and most obvious context for the discourse we will be examining.  However, the context for classroom discourse analysis also extends beyond the classroom and within different components of classroom talk, to include any context that affects what is said and how it is interpreted in the classroom.

            Discourse analysis involves investigating how discourse (language-in-use) and context affect each other.  Sometimes, understanding why become said something a particular way involves looking at previous context of use.  Previous context can range from the quetions that came before that utterance, to a question from a previous conversation, to the influence of a television show, to lifelong patterns of language socialization.

            Classroom discourse analysis could be paraphrased as looking at language-in-use in a classroom context (with the understanding that this context is influenced also by multiple social context beyond and within the classroom) to understand how context and talk are influencing each other.  Building in our preliminary definito of the classroom discourse analysis as an investigation into how discourse (language-in-use) and context affect each other, other frameworks comprises three-ever-present dimension of language in use:

This multidimensionality are a features of every classroom interaction. Each dimension is inseparable from other and at times, one or the other features more prominently.  However, affords greater understanding and control over words in Classroom.  The explanation of the each dimension of classroom discourse are:

Þ    Social Context

The social factors outside the immediate interaction that influence how words function in that interaction (e.g how does social context influence whether you or your students use the word ‘dude?’ what the effect would it have)

Þ    Interactional Context

The sequental or other patterns of talk within an interaction that influence what we can and connot say, and how others interprete it within classroom discourse (e.g in what sequence of interaction would your use the word ‘dude?’ a greeting? A compliment? What effects would it have on the rest of interaction?)

Þ    Individual Agency

The influence an individual can have on how words are used and interpreted in an interaction (e.g when and why would an individual choose to use ‘dude’ and for what purposes? How much can an individual control it’s effect?)