Teaching Response Tokens Through Story Telling Tasks

1. Teaching Response Tokens Through Story Telling Tasks Silvana Dushku University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign s-dushk@illinois.edu

2. Definition & Classification • Response tokens (RT) are high-frequency turn-initial lexical items which occur in responses in everyday spoken genres, and which reveal various levels of the listener’s interactional engagement (McCarthy, 2003, p. 4) • Minimal RT • Non-Minimal RT: • Non-minimal RT without expanded content (NM-EC) • Non-minimal RT plus expanded responses (NM+ER) • RT with pre-modification • Negated RT • Clusters (Ibid. pp. 21-35)

3. Overview • Goals • Data Collection and Methodology • Findings • Pedagogical Implications

4. Goals • Develop a better understanding of students’ current level of interactional competence and their needs through the investigation of their use of engagement tokens (assessment and surprise tokens) (Schegloff, 1982) • On the basis of needs analysis, develop task-based materials that can lead to awareness raising and gradual appropriate production of these engagement tokens in conversation

5. Data Collection and Methodology • Video and digital recordings of free 25-minute conversations over the Thanksgiving Break: • Four triads of 2 NNSs and their NS Conversation Partner • Four triads of 3 NS graduate students and new graduates • Written survey of both groups’ participants: responding to 8 Thanksgiving Break-related situations designed to elicit surprise (4) and evaluation (4) • NNS students’ survey results rated on appropriateness/inappropriateness by 4 NS ESL teachers.

6. Data Collection and Methodology • Data transcription (first 10 minutes) and analysis (transcription coding key, O’Keeffe, McCarthy, Carter, 2007) • Identification and classification of surprise and assessment tokens used by both NNSs and NSs according to FORM (McCarthy 2003 classification) and descriptive statistical analysis • NNSs’ use of surprise and assessment tokens (6 video excerpts) rated on appropriateness/inappropriateness by 18 trained NS university students • Inter-rater reliability measured for both groups of raters: • 4 NS raters : Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.913 • 18 NS raters: Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.870 • Analysis of CONTEXTS and FUNCTIONS: kinds of inappropriateness in the use of surprise and assessment tokens by NNSs

7. Findings • Analysis of assessment tokens in 10-minute conversations: • Significant differences (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: • All assessment tokens • Non-minimal assessment tokens without expanded content • Non- minimal assessment tokens with expanded response • Less complex assessment tokens used by NNSs.

8. Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation

9. Findings • Analysis of surprise tokens in 10-minute conversations: • Significant difference (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: • Minimal surprise tokens (extended foreign vocalizations)

10. Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation

11. Findings • Analysis of assessment and response tokens in surveys: • Significant difference (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: • Pre-modified assessment tokens: • Too + adjective • So + adjective • No significant difference found in the use of surprise tokens

12. Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Survey Component

13. Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Survey Component

14. Findings – Inappropriate Uses • Prosodic: • Extended foreign vocalizations (E.g.: Ahh!) • Non-native fall-rise (instead of the typical exclamatory fall in English – Wells, 2006) in vocalized exclamations of surprise

15. Findings – Inappropriate Uses • Pragmatic: • Factual recount of events with little or no engagement from the listener: • Dry, depersonalized responses • Use of extended foreign vocalizations to express convergence, acknowledgement, or information receipt • Pragmatic competence deficiency to demonstrate surprise, sympathy/ empathy, and interest/excitement • ‘Cultural’ verbal and gestural responses • Inappropriate question responses

16. Findings – Inappropriate Uses • When listening, students often failed to anticipate clues – Listening-response relevance moments (LRRM) (Erickson & Schultz, 1982; McCarthy, 2003) - in the native speakers’ conversation • While-listening strategy deficiency – how to ‘tune in’ to the clues • Insufficient ability to make a pragmatic inference and plan the response

17. Findings – Inappropriate Uses • Lexico-Grammatical: • Use of “it” instead of “that” referring to past events in assessment tokens by the listener • E.g.: It’ s terrible! • Use of present tense instead of the past in assessment tokens • E.g.: It’ s nice! • Failure to give a yes/no response to a speaker’s question before using a response token or a statement • E.g.: A: Did you have a good time? B: I have enjoyed skiing. • Ungrammatical questions attempted to show engagement • E.g.: A: I lost my passport at the airport! B: How did you do?

18. Pedagogical Implications Teaching approach: • The three ‘Is’ (Illustration-Interaction-Induction) approach (McCarthy and Carter, 1995 (also 2005, 2007): • Illustration – through authentic data samples • Interaction – discussion of language features observed in the samples • Induction – discovering rules through observation and analysis • the ‘explicit’ approach (Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006) • ‘Language awareness-based’ approach (Fung and Carter, 2007)

19. Pedagogical Implications Suggested teaching goals (intermediate level): • Identify and practice the tenses of narration (past/past progressive in statements and questions) • Identify and practice high-frequency (minimal and non-minimal) response tokens to show surprise and assessment • Recognize the exclamatory fall in exclamations • Practice ‘It”- and “That”- initiated responses showing assessment or surprise • Analyze conversation clues that trigger possible listener responses/reactions: • Identify facts in a news story - the 5 Wh-s • Identify opinion discourse markers • Review how to maintain conversation in narrative discourse: • Explain how to formulate appropriate Wh- questions • Explain how to use continuers • Analyze cultural differences in expressing assessment and surprise in conversation narratives

20. Pedagogical Implications Needs Analysis • Teacher recounts her holiday/Break travel experience, students digitally record their reactions to the story • Students tell holiday/Break stories to one another, record them and their reactions • Students complete a questionnaire with holiday/Break situations requiring them to continue the conversation by verbally reacting to the situation

21. Pedagogical Implications • Textbook-Supplementary Task Examples: • Task I – Observation • Students tell their holiday stories (that would elicit expressions of affect) to NSs, • record the NSs’ responses, and discuss them in class • Task II – Noticing Lack of RTs in Responses • Students look at a bookish and dry conversation, • discuss what is missing, • suggest other ways to respond (use the language they noticed in NSs’ conversation?) • Task III – Noticing Appropriate Responses • Students analyze teacher-selected clips from video/MP3 recording and authentic transcripts of NS’s use of engagement tokens and other engagement strategies in conversation (according to teaching goals selected)

22. Pedagogical Implications • Task IV -Noticing Inappropriate Responses & Controlled Practice of Appropriate Responses • Students analyze excessive vocalizations in a funny movie clip, • Replace them with response tokens from a given list, • explain their choice, • role-play the situation • Task V – Analysis and Discussion of Students’ Own Responses • Students in pairs analyze their own, previously recorded narratives using an evaluation rubric

23. Pedagogical Implications • Task VI – Analysis and Controlled Practice • Students in pairs watch a movie clip of an unusual event, • record the story elements according to a 5-Wh- questions’ list, • identify conversation clues that trigger possible listener responses/reactions, • plan appropriate responses/reactions to them, • tell and react to the movie story following a role play scenario

24. Acknowledgements • Many thanks to • The UIUC IEI administration, students, teachers, and Conversation Partners – for making this research possible • Dr. Irene Koshik, Dr. Numa Markee, Dr. Andrea Golato, Dr. Fred Davidson– for their invaluable guidance and input • Professor Michael McCarthy and Professor Ronald Carter – for the tremendous inspiration in this undertaking

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