THE IMPLICATIONS OF TEACHING CONVERSATION IN THE CLASSROOM WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO ADVANCED LEARNERS AND GENRE by Emma Metcalf
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APPENDIX A

Johnson (1982) and Brumfit (1979) both describe the technique: the 'deep end strategy.' It proposes the following cyclical outline:

1. Students communicate with available resources.
2. Teacher presents items shown to be necessary.
3. Drill if necessary.

The ideology behind this is to 'develop in the student a type of confidence essential to learning a foreign language: the confidence to attmept to say something which he knows that he does not really know how to say.' (Johnson, 1982) Therefore, because students see a gap in their proficiency, they then, after stage 2, feel they have learned. This, however, could be demotivating. If the students are constantly doing something wrong, only to be told how to do it right, then they may wonder why they are not told how to do it right in the first place!

APPENDIX B

Students, when faced with interaction can opt for two types of strategies: reduction and achievement.

Reduction strategies
· Topic avoidance
· Content reduction
· Message abandonment

Achievement strategies
· Approximation
· Circumlocution
· Word coinage
· Transfer - L1 word
literal transfer
foreignization
use another language
ask for help
mime

Obviously, the teacher needs to encourage achievement stategies rather than reduction strategies since this is really the student 'giving up.'

APPENDIX C

Corder in Error Analysis and Interlanguage (19 ) identifies three stages in making errors:
1. Pre-systematic - students ignore rule or make a random guess
2. Systematic - students apply the wrong rule
3. Post-systematic - student knows the rule but cannot use it.

Intralingual errors could be caused by:
· Overgeneralisation
· Early learning - students make do with what they have got
· Cross association: 'I´m boring.'
· Fluency nor accuracy is being aimed at
· Fatigue
· Hyper correction
· Distraction
· Communication strategies

Some errors are teacher induced:
· Verbal prompts
· Written prompts
· Overloading
· Failure to highlight rules

Indeed, fossilisation could be caused by feedback - often errors that are made in class are very context specific yet, if the teacher highlights the error, students could overgeneralise.

Possible ways of correcting are:

1. Immediate or delayed correction
2. Public or private
3. Written or spoken or taped
4. Highlighted or hidden
5. Self or other students or teacher

The teacher should try to incorporate all these types of correcting. I must admit that most of my correction feedback tends to be after the speaking activity on the whiteboard. For immediate correction students could be given 'hot cards,' the error written on a post-it note and given immediately to the student. These are particularly good for errors such as 'depends of' or missing the third person 's.' It is probably a good idea to keep a notebook for each class, where errors can be recorded. This gives the teacher something to refer to and can help identify certain problem areas, in the group and also for individual learners. Reformulation (the teacher re-words what a student says, or students can reformulate what their peers say) is also a quick and easy way to correct. Although it may be argued that native speakers do not necessarily speak correctly, I believe that a native speaker saying, He don´t know, sounds very different to a non-native saying it. Natives can get away with incorrect English whereas a non-native just sounds like s/he is getting it wrong.

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