Chapter 13

CW13.2 The left little finger

Can you guess what this ‘specialist’ passage is about? The answer is given below it.

Another feature to fall by the wayside is the ‘butterfly’ for left little finger. The left-hand E flat with its ungrateful pivoting is no one’s favourite key. So, with those passages in mind with E flat and A flat in close succession, the touches for these notes are mounted cheek by jowl and pivoted sympathetically (though on different joints, as is normal) … Finally, the lower tier of touches duplicates others for the right little finger …

The passage is taken from an article (Garnett 1992) describing how a player of a wind instrument – the oboe – made improvements to his instrument. In these sentences he is describing a problem with conventional oboes and what he did about it.

CW13.3 Catching a train

The scene is a crowded railway station in London at 10 o’clock one morning. The following message comes over the public announcement system: The train at Platform 5 is the 10.30 to Edinburgh. For many listening to this announcement, it will be of no importance and they will give it little attention; their travel plans do not involve Edinburgh, or Platform 5. Among those who attend more carefully are three individuals. Here is what they say to themselves when they hear the announcement:

We might say that each passenger takes different information out of the same message. For each, specify what you know about each passenger, including what you think they do and do not know just before the announcement is made. One thing you might surmise about Passenger A, for example, is that they are travelling on the Edinburgh train (or seeing off someone else who is travelling on it). Say what piece of information contained in the message is important for each passenger – what it is that they ‘hear’.

CW13.4 A word recognition exercise (from Yoko 2003, adapted from Paran 1996)

This exercise deals with the skill of word recognition. Notice how different type-weights (roman, italic, bold) and typefaces are used. Because word recognition is a skill that has to be done at speed, this exercise is timed. Learners select the word on the right which exactly matches the one on the left.

CW13.5 Complaining in speech and writing

In CW8.7 you read the comments of a subject complaining bitterly about the think-aloud technique for collecting data. That transcribed version was modified and slightly abridged. The transcription below is a more accurate representation of what she actually said. It does not contain punctuation, because there is no punctuation in speech.

the main problem erm was that I was so aware of the need to keep talking that I didn’t get a chance to think about erm anything through and I was I was desperate to be able to switch off sit back think about it in peace and quiet think something through and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to come up with anything not wonderful not even satisfactory really through this necessity to keep talking and it is drivel I found that if I mentioned an idea if I hadn’t had to talk about it I would have been rejecting it within within seconds probably as rubbish.

Imagine that this subject is asked to write a report on her problems with think-aloud techniques. How would she express what is said in the above extract? Either write a paragraph or compose one in your head. Then look at how the written and spoken versions differ.

Use what you have done as a spur to think in more general terms about the differences between speech and writing.

CW13.6 Two ‘passage assembly’ activities

1. This description of an exercise is taken from Waters and Waters’ (1995) book which focuses on academic study skills:

Maria is doing an essay for her Criminology class on drinking and driving. This is how she began one of the sections. ‘Why is driving when under the influence of alcohol so dangerous? Let us first of all look at how alcohol affects the body’. Complete this section of her essay by arranging the sentences below so that they form two clear consecutive paragraphs . . .

Waters and Waters then give 14 sentences. They ask students to think about cohesion and coherence with a further activity with the instruction: With two or three other students, discuss any problems that you had in [doing the task above]. How did you go about deciding the order? What kinds of language helped you arrange the sentences in the order you chose? (p. 110).

2. My ‘passage assembly’ activity (Johnson 1981: 103) has the teacher take a passage and write each sentence of it on a separate card. The cards are mixed up, and each learner is given one card. The learners must put the sentences in order.

You might like to create an exercise like this yourself. Try it out on a group of colleagues. You will notice that what they talk about as they assemble the passage is cohesion and coherence.

CW13.7 How to generate, focus and structure

Here are some techniques based on White and Arndt (1991).

A technique to facilitate generating – ‘getting the ideas flowing’

Brainstorming is thinking quickly and without inhibition to develop a few buzz words and ideas. It should be ‘free-wheeling, unstructured and non-judgmental’ (p. 18; a little like Virginia Woolf for language teaching). It can be a ‘snow-ball’ activity – learners work alone (writing ideas on cards) and then pool ideas in pairs and then in groups (developing and refining a list). The class comes together. Each group selects their three favourite ideas, which are written on the blackboard.

Techniques to facilitate focusing – deciding on the central idea(s) (answering the reader’s question: What are you trying to tell me?)

• Loopwriting. This is usually done using fastwriting, which is a written version of brainstorming (i.e. writing down ideas quickly and without inhibition). The learner does some fastwriting to produce a few lines of text. They then write a sentence summarizing what they have said. The summary acts as a stimulus to produce more text (a second ‘loop’), which is then summarized in turn. The technique helps learners to focus on what they want their main points to be.
• Conferencing. This often follows loopwriting. It involves the learner going through what they have written with the teacher or fellow students. It helps to bring ideas into the open.

A technique to facilitate structuring (organizing ideas into groups and deciding in what order to present them)

Once a set of ideas has been decided on, learners work together to think of several different ways of organizing them. They then decide on the best way, given an agreed purpose.