Content: introduction effective interactive technologies and their role in enhancing discourse competence of learners

The aim of the course work is to show the ways of using interactive technologies in developing B1 level pupils discourse competence.
There are the following tasks:

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  To show the notion of the importance of interactive technologies in education;
  
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  To reveal the role of discourse competence in pupils’ learning;
  
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  To demonstrate the significance of interactive technologies to develop pupils’ discourse competence.
  

There are a number of benefits in using interactive technologies to improve pupils’ knowledge about discourse competence. These benefits are of paramount importance in understanding, creating and developing forms of the language that are longer than sentences (stories, conversations, letters…)with the appropriate cohesion, coherence and rhetorical organization to combine ideas. And this proves that allowing students work with technologies help them a lot in learning discourse competence.¹


Effective interactive technologies and their role in enhancing discourse competence of learners
1. Discourse competence as an important part of academic language proficiency of B1 levels
Discourse competence is a plurilingual ability that implies being able to handle sociocultural, pragmatic, and textual pieces of knowledge (concepts and skills) effectively, appropriately, and with a critical attitude when producing and interpreting every particular discourse genre, in relation to the genre colony to which it belongs. Therefore, it is a multidimensional skill exhibiting three basic dimensions:

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  the sociocultural dimension, the most all-encompassing one, which involves being able to recognize critically a discourse's aims and interests as well as the social and cultural power it confers, and being able to react to them;
  
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  the pragmatic dimension, which involves being able to relate a discourse to the participants, their intentions, their place and time;
  
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  and the textual dimension, which involves knowing how a discourse is structured and how its characteristic linguistic exponents (grammar and vocabulary) are used to serve a particular social, cultural, and pragmatic function.
  

Discursive competence has traditionally been considered a subcompetence² within communicative competence, along with linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, intercultural, plurilingual or strategic competences. So discursive competence is defined as the knowledge and skills required to produce and interpret texts considering their structural scheme and the linguistic standards of the different discourse genres that we use.
A particular individual may exhibit gaps in their degrees of receptive and productive discursive competences. Depending on the type of communicative activity required in each situation and social frame, such gaps in discursive competence have clear consequences didactically: depending on the text type, interaction will require a learner to practice the «receptive» competence, the «productive» competence, or both. In that sense, discursive competence is intrinsically plurilingual, since the student already knows how to use some discourse genres thanks to their previous experiences in their additional (already mastered) languages. Therefore, discursive competence implies the development of both plurilingual and pluricultural competences. So, why discourse? Discourse and discourse competence in language teaching are important issues for several reasons. First and foremost, it is the notion that language is much more than isolated to the sentence itself. The traditional grammatical and linguistic devices and rules are not sufficient as guidelines to produce a language in context intended for communication. Second, students should learn how to produce written and oral texts that are coherent in thoughts and ideas, and how to use cohesive devices to link these ideas together. The use of such techniques and strategies is one characteristic of the “good” language learner. Students meet challenges both during their studies and professional life which require a good command of the language. The ability to develop a good discourse competence is therefore important.
Teachers of English as a foreign language must focus on many aspects of communicative language learning. Among these aspects is discourse competence that has been included in recent curricula. Discourse in ELT, and in all modern language teaching, comprises different devices which may be visualized contextually both in spoken and written texts.
Short definitions of discourse define it, on one hand, as communication of thoughts in words and in conversation, and on the other hand as a formal discussion or debate of an issue presented orally or textually, for example a lecture or a letter to the editor. However, discourse and the ability to obtain discourse competence through ELT include more than these short definitions. In the 1960s and 1970s a new dimension of language competence was introduced, namely communicative competence, which was presented above. Hymes (1972:278) defines communicative competence as: ‘when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner.’ It is out of this concept we have to 10 understand discourse competence even though this definition, first and foremost, characterises the competent native speaker, as Simensen argues. Further, Canale & Swain introduced discourse competence as one out of four partial competences defining communicative competence4 : grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Canale explains grammatical competence as to the formal rules of the language comprising vocabulary, word formation syntax, pronunciation, spelling and linguistic semantics. Sociolinguistic competence refers to ‘the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such a status of participants, purposes of the interaction and norms or conventions of interaction. Discourse competence is understood, by Canale, as the ‘mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres . In addition to this explanation, Canale extends the definition of discourse competence to involving both processing and production of spoken and written texts in so far as he includes listening and reading. Last, strategic competence involves strategies that interlocutors use to initiate, direct and maintain or repair communication³. As mentioned, these notions of communicative competence have later been adopted in the European Council’s Scope (1986) and Threshold Level (1990) which served as guidelines for the development of national syllabi also in Norway. Scope (van Ek 1986), was a work ‘in progress’ for the later Threshold Level 1990 (van Ek & Trim 1991) and a revision of the former Threshold Level 1975. The work that culminated in these documents was used to ‘specify how a learner should be able to use a language in order to act independently in a country in which that language was the vehicle of communication in everyday life’ (van Ek & Trim 1991:iii). Thus, the work of the European Council has constituted a major impact on the work of ‘syllabus designers, for curricular reforms, for examination development, for textbook writing and course design. Scope defines discourse competence as ‘the ability to use appropriate strategies in the construction and interpretation of texts’⁴ . Here, a text is understood the way 4 See also Simensen. Halliday & Hasan define it: ‘any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that forms a unified whole. Even though this definition covers both texts created by several sentences and texts consisting of a single sentence, Scope applies to the strategies that string sentences together. The discourse competence is further specified through text-types and strategies.
Simensen explains that the notion of discourse competence in language teaching originates from the shift of paradigm in linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s . This shift broke with the tradition of analysing and describing language primarily limited to the sentence. The new paradigm took interest in analysing and describing coherent texts, oral “texts,” conversations as well as speeches/lectures, and written texts, tales as well as formal 13 texts. In this shift discourse analysis became important. Thus, discourse analysis generally has two main goals:
1) to analyse the language beyond the sentence
2) to analyse the language in use
In discourse analysis utterances (words/phrases uttered and understood in a given context without the requirements of a sentence) as well as sentences in connected text, are equally important.
Further, Simensen explains discourse competence as:
[…]the ability to combine utterances into coherent discourse i.e. the ability to combine ideas so that there is coherence in form by for example using pronouns and grammatical connectors, and the ability to create a “read thread” in thought and consequently continuity in the text. Discourse competence also comprises, among other things, the ability, both receptively and productively, to distinguish between different text- and conversation forms, to structure texts, to master different types of conversations, e.g. how to open and close a conversation, to combine different utterances in meaningful communicative patterns and to master different strategies of conversation, e.g. to make oneself heard or give the floor to the next etc.
Guy Cook has contributed extensively to the development of discourse as an element in language teaching. His definition of discourse is: ‘stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive. He explains in theories of discourse that there are two different kinds of language that are potential study objects:
[…]one abstracted in order to teach a language or literacy, or to study how the rules of language work, and another which has been used to communicate something and is felt to be coherent (and may, or may not happen to correspond to a correct sentence or a series of correct sentences). This latter kind of language - language in use, for communication - is called discourse; and the search for what gives discourse coherence is discourse analysis
Cook further emphasises that grammatically well-structured sentences do not necessarily convey coherence. Grammar must be seen as a resource in discourse when needed, but can be 14 left out when not. The importance is not the conformity to rules but the fact that the language used communicates and is recognised as coherent by its receivers. In this, he concludes that identifying stretches of language as discourse may be perceived differently by individuals, and is hence a subjective matter. Cook, then, emphasises the interdependence of grammar and vocabulary: ‘Discourse and formal skills are interdependent and must be developed together.
Michael McCarthy (2001) defines the study of discourse as the study of language independently of the notion of the sentence. Such study involves the examining of the relationship between a text and the situation in which it occurs. McCarty explains that the terms text and discourse have been used interchangeably in the study of utterances, or set of utterances as part of a context. However, he points out the distinction between texts as products of language use and discourse as the process of meaning creation and interaction, either written or spoken (referred to as transactional and interactional). In this light, Nunan (1993) has argued the difference between the terms text and discourse, referring to text as any written record of a communicative event (spoken or written), and discourse as the interpretation of the communicative event in context. Others draw little distinctions between the two terms.
Jennifer Jarvis and Mark Robinson have developed the ‘I:R:F’ structure further. They were interested to see whether, in the interaction of the classroom, the teacher’s feedback (F) moves as a discoursal means of formulating and aligning meaning. This work is seen through a Vygotskian perspective (Vygotsky 1962) in which learning is seen as facilitated in the socalled “zone of proximal development”. In this zone a learner is able to enhance his or her stage of conceptual development through instruction as well as imitation, and also interaction with more knowledgeable others. Through this research, which was conducted in primary schools, the elaboration of the Focus, Build, Summarize pattern of discourse was presented. Through a clear focus a topic may be clearly articulated. Next the build sequence will help the pupil to create meaning and give the teacher the opportunities to appropriate what the children say in the target language and concepts. Summarize is of great importance in articulating clearly what the segment of the lesson has been. However, a successful achievement of such an approach may not always be evident in classes where discourse skills are difficult to accomplish. But it may prove important in the identification of an interactive discourse where the teacher supports the pupils in their learning. Here, the role of the teacher in the process of developing discourse is illuminated.