An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

participants are named – cars, hotel, snow, people, sun, mark, first floor – as well as 
the location circumstances – around the hotel, in front of the hotel, on the wall of the 
first floor of the hotel. The main verb choice, reflecting the existence of the things 
or people in the picture is the verb ‘to be’ and the tense used is present simple. In 
some instances present continuous – are going to skiing – is used, reflecting the still 
ongoing nature of the actions portrayed.
Other choices, outside the stage of Description reflect the fact that the speakers 
are involved in a joint ‘here and now’ task. Personal pronouns I, you are used to 
refer to each other, whilst major verb choices refer to the conduct of the task – see, 
know, understand, mean, understood.
Question 3
B1 is a fluent speaker; in her initial turns (B1, B2), she uses a series of independent 
clauses linked by the conjunction and. There are some examples of backtracking 
(‘the cars, some cars are f-’) and false starts (‘And it’s quite shi-mm it’s very sh-sun 
the sun’) as she searches for an appropriate structure. The laughter that ends 
B2 may be to relieve the ongoing pressure to speak, to signal a turn to A, or to 
allow her time to think further about what she can say. There are no examples 
of ellipsis in the text, but A uses ‘substitution’ in ‘I know which one it is’, where 
one refers out into the shared context of the task and the materials (pictures) 
they are using.
Question 4
A uses clarification checks (A1), backchannels (‘Ah, yeah’ ... A2), the turn type of 
question (A2) (a question usually ‘obliges’ the person questioned to respond), and 
repetition (A4, A5, A6) to negotiate the topic and achieve his purpose.

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Suggested Solutions
Question 5
Unlike the three-part exchange we noted in the spider text, this interaction 
has an example of a more extended series of follow-ups (B5, A5, B6) where the 
two speakers go on checking each other’s utterances (by echoing) until they are 
sure they have reached a common understanding. The last turn (A6) is a final 
confirmation that this understanding has been reached.
Question 6
Segmental: the Japanese student pronounces /red/ as /led/. This is because /l/ and /r/ 
are not distinct phonemes in Japanese, but are perceived as allophones. It is only from 
her interlocutor’s reaction that B knows she needs to correct the initial consonant 
in red. Interestingly, also, A does not hear led but let (another minimal pair) – which 
may be due to a tendency in German speakers to pronounce the final consonant with 
more force (for example, /t/ rather than /d/). This problem illustrates very clearly 
that generally speaking, in pronunciation learning the perception of significant 
differences needs to be in place before students can successfully work on production.
An understanding of phonology is extremely helpful to teachers as it enables 
them to analyse and describe the systematic sound pattern of the language they 
teach, and, ideally, to contrast it with the phoneme inventories of their students’ 
first language(s). Such an understanding is also useful for the setting up of teaching 
tasks, for example, work on contextualized minimal pairs which are relevant given 
the students’ L1.
Chapter 13, 
Reading
An Example of a Response by the Authors
Reading strategy: previewing and predicting.
• What: the reader examines the title, headings, sub-headings and any graphics, 
and makes predictions about what the text (as a whole) or the next section, will 
be about.
• How: the reader guesses (sometimes in the form of questions, sometimes in the 
form of statements) what the text will be about. For example: ‘I see from the title 
that this chapter is about the “other economy” and the subtitle says something 
about the “unofficial untaxed sector”.’ So I think that the next section is going 
to talk about parts of a country’s economy that do not get reported officially.
• Why: the goal is to prepare the reader for the upcoming text information and to 
enhance comprehension. It also allows the reader to form a mental picture, or 
model, of the text’s development and overall meaning.