Spoken Discourse

Spoken Discourse 
In linguistics, discourse has several branches of study, but they all work to study the connected text (units of language beyond a sentence) and their use. Discourse studies how conversations form and are understood. 

Language is our tool of communication. Spoken discourse is one of the most practical and common ways that language is used. You use spoken discourse every day to communicate information to your students, answer their questions, guide their discussions, or give directions. 


Why You Need It and What To Do 

1.Understand the relationship between the speaker and listener
         
         
       Many things can affect these acts and work to create meaningful conversations:
                      the context of the conversation
                      understanding between the speaker and listener
        Some factors might also interrupt these acts and work to create confusion, 
                     speakers from different cultures not knowing how to politely address each other
                     the listener not receiving the meaning as intended (Curzan & Adams 2012, Lee 2005). 

         Knowing the way communication works helps you better understand how to create meaningful conversation, why
         conversations can fall into confusion, and how to repair confusion to meaning. 


          -Have students practice dialogue together to improve your understanding of their natural discourse, as well as to
           improve their grasp of English discourse. 
                         They can talk about any subject. One student could "teach" another. Work together to identify barriers in 
                     communication.     
                               Was there a problem with locutionary acts, where a student couldn't pronounce words correctly? 
                               Or with Illocutionary acts where a student struggled to convey the right thing? 
                               Or Perlocutionary acts where a student struggled to understand what his partner meant? 

           -This activity would be helpful for practicing conversations and identifying speech acts. It uses the premise of calling and
                leaving a voicemail following certain guidelines:  http://www.indiana.edu/~dsls/publications/Demo.pdf