Introduction

     The following is a curriculum statement for a pronunciation/oral communication course designed for high-intermediate ESL learners at a public technical college in the United States. It includes elements of five different course projects produced during my work as a graduate student in the Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL at Georgia State University. (These projects were produced for the followed courses: Approaches to Teaching Second/ Foreign Languages, Sound System of English, Pragmatics and Language Teaching, Intercultural Communication, and Classroom Practices in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.)

     The course is divided into two parts, the first with a heavy emphasis on pronunciation and the second with an emphasis on pragmatic issues in oral communication. This paper describes the teacher’s rationale for the choices made in designing the course, the setting for the course, the roles of the students and teacher, the syllabus, and the materials and techniques to be used.

Setting

     The students have received one to three years of free instruction in English at the technical college as part of the state of Georgia’s adult education program. The school offers seven levels of ESL classes. The students in this course have completed the Level 7 course, which focuses on reading and writing skills. Because of the lack of speaking/listening instruction in Level 7, this course is designed as an “add-on” or Part B to that level.

    The classroom has desks and tables that can be moved as needed for group or pair work and is equipped with two large white marker boards, an overhead projector and a TV-VCR combination. An audio cassette recorder also is available. Students attend three-hour sessions twice a week for 10 weeks, for a total of 60 hours. For this course, we will divide the 10 weeks into two sessions as mentioned above – one with a focus on pronunciation and one with a focus on pragmatic issues in oral communication.
The teacher has a fair amount of freedom to choose course materials and classroom activities, although there are strict budget limitations. The school will pay for a limited amount of materials for the teacher – about $100 total – and students are required to purchase their own books. Because of the potential liability involved, the school will not allow students to leave the campus during class hours for class-related activities. The school administration requires that, at the end of the 10-week course, the students be given a written test that assesses their mastery of the material covered during the term, although the nature and design of the test are left up to the teacher.

Conceptual Underpinnings

    The teacher also must be sensitive to the affective concerns of the learners, bearing in mind that pronunciation is often closely tied to identity. Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) point out that some learners may wish to keep their “foreign accent” as a way of maintaining ties to their native culture or gaining the approval of peers within their native-language group, while others may want to reduce their accent as much as possible in order to adapt to the target culture.

    At this proficiency level (high-intermediate), the students have a good deal of knowledge about language and language learning that can be valuable to them as they work to improve their oral communication skills. They also know their own weaknesses – the areas where they need the most help – and bring with them an adult’s knowledge of the world. But, as Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) suggest, ESL learners also may benefit from classroom activities aimed at increasing their background knowledge of U.S. culture and the sociocultural contexts in which new forms of language are used.

     Students also bring with them certain learning styles, some of which – such as risk-taking and tolerance of ambiguity – may be more useful in language learning than others (Brown, 1994). Although a formal assessment of the students’ learning styles will not be possible, the teacher needs to be observant of and sensitive to the learners’ style preferences and can help students develop the self-awareness necessary to move beyond their stylistic comfort zones when necessary to promote learning (Oxford, 1992-93). An important way of doing this is through learner strategy training, or the direct teaching of the language-learning strategies most often used by effective language learners. Oxford says such training is most successful when it is explicit and when it is woven into classroom activities on a regular basis.

     During the pronunciation segment of the course, the emphasis will be on suprasegmental features of American English, such as stress, rhythm, intonation, linking and reduction. There are two reasons for this emphasis: First, because the learners are of high-intermediate proficiency, they probably have already had some classroom work on  consonant and vowel inventories. Second, as Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (1996) point out, “the suprasegmentals carry more of the overall meaning load than do the segmentals” and therefore “a learner’s command of segmental features is less critical to communicative competence than a command of suprasegmental features” (p. 131). This does not mean that segmentals will be ignored, however. The teacher will spend some classroom time working on the production of individual sounds that she and the learners have identified as being issues for them. Also, the students will need to learn phonemic symbols for the consonant and vowel sounds so that they can understand some of the issues raised in our discussions of suprasegmentals.

     Following the principles of Firth (1992) and Morley (1994), we will keep a broad focus on overall communication but will narrow the focus to individual language features as needed. Firth’s “zoom principle” posits that the ESL teacher should be constantly “zooming in” and “zooming out,” working on specific issues that affect intelligibility and then shifting back to the big picture to show how these features function in context. Morley calls this a “dual-focus” philosophy, with one focus on the “micro” level of discrete elements like segmentals and the other focus on the “macro” level, or the global elements of communication.

     Classroom activities will include both discrimination exercises aimed at helping students to perceive the feature being taught and production exercise aimed at getting them to produce the feature. Activities also will be structured so as to integrate the skills of speaking and listening – the primary focal points of this course – with the skills of reading and writing. Also, there will be a sequencing of activities so that early activities form building blocks for later ones, giving students a chance to gain confidence with language forms before having to use them in open-ended interaction (Graves, 1996). As Murphy (1991) points out, “students need considerable practice with less tightly controlled opportunities to express themselves fluently and spontaneously via longer stretches of self-generated discourse” (p. 60).

     The second-language classroom should be a place full of interaction, where students are actively engaged in negotiating meaning and in creating and initiating communication (Kumaravadivelu, 1994). One way of accomplishing this is through group work and pair activities. Learning opportunities of this kind increase the amount of student speaking time and give each student more opportunities to practice such communicative skills as sustaining a conversation and turn-taking. On occasion, students also will be encouraged to demonstrate their skills in front of the whole class, since this could be valuable experience for them in occupational or academic settings later in life.

     The ESL classroom also should use authentic materials and authentic language, wherever possible, to help students learn how language is used in real-life contexts. Tasks should be as close as possible to the real-world tasks that the learners are likely to need to perform outside the classroom (Larsen-Freeman, 2000).

     With respect to the modification of errors, direct correction of learner errors in the classroom should be minimal, should be as private as possible and should be aimed at only those errors that directly interfere with communication. Murphy (1991) suggests that teachers be tactful about error correction because embarrassing students is “widely recognized as being counterproductive” (p. 58). He recommends making corrections indirectly, where possible, by paraphrasing, reformulating or expanding on nonstandard utterances produced by students. This type of indirect correction follows Ur’s (1991) principle that it is far better for students to practice accurate language than inaccurate language, while at the same time saving the students from embarrassment. Ur also suggests anticipating errors and trying to prevent them, rather than fix them later, so as to avoid numerous corrections during a communicative activity.

     One final principle underlying the choice of activities for this course is the need to give students time for quiet reflection in the classroom. Tarvin and Al-Arishi (1991) point out that language learners need to learn how to think – or be offered the opportunity to practice what they already know about how to think – in order to improve their intrinsic motivation, their self-confidence as language learners and their ability to communicate abstract ideas. For this reason, what Tarvin and Al-Arishi call “spontaneous-response, conspicuous-action” exercises (p. 23) will be balanced with activities that encourage reflection.

Goals/Objectives

     A major objective of the pronunciation segment of the course will be to improve students’ communicative competence by working on troublesome sound segments and on the suprasegmental elements of pronunciation – stress, rhythm and intonation – that promote the ability to be understood in English discourse. The goal is not to help the students achieve native-like pronunciation, but rather to help them make their speech clearer and more comprehensible. A major goal of the second half of the course will be to help students achieve more pragmatic competence in oral communication. By pragmatic competence, I mean the ability to interpret and convey intended meaning (with verbal and non-verbal cues); to use politeness strategies; to know which language forms are appropriate for certain situations; and to use communication strategies for beginning, sustaining and ending conversations.

     To accomplish these objectives, the students will need to master specific skills and strategies. Upon successful completion of the course, the students will be able to:

· Recognize the roles of stress, rhythm and intonation in conveying meaning in English.
· Produce natural English stress patterns, using loudness, length and vowel quality to differentiate between stressed and unstressed words and syllables.
· Use pauses, stress and linking of words to produce natural English rhythmic structures.
· Use appropriate intonation to convey meaning.
· Produce and comprehend reduced forms of words and phrases.
· Understand speech containing pauses, corrections and other performance variables.
· Use facial expressions, body language and other nonverbal cues to help decipher a speaker’s intended meaning.
· Use nonverbal cues – including facial expressions and body language – to enhance their own ability to convey meaning.
· Monitor their own oral production and use strategies like pause fillers, stalling devices, self-correction and backtracking to enhance the clarity of the message.
· Use listening strategies like guessing at meanings and appealing for help.
· Use strategies for beginning, sustaining and ending a conversation.
· Handle with confidence (but not necessarily with ease) speech acts like complaining, requesting and apologizing.
· Use politeness strategies that are appropriate for the situation.

Syllabus Design

     The first part of the course will be structured primarily around certain suprasegmental and segmental features, although some of the specific features will not be decided until the learners have completed a “student profile” and goal-setting tape on the first day of class (see Activity Types section). The teacher will analyze these tapes to determine which linguistic features would benefit the largest number of students. However, I will begin with the assumption that stress, rhythm, intonation, reductions and other suprasegmentals will need more attention than the segmentals.

     The second part of the course will be organized primarily around various situations – such as job interviews, conversations or parties – and various speech acts – such as compliments, complaints or giving advice – where pragmatic skills are needed. The specific situations and speech acts will be decided upon after the students have helped identify their own needs. Although this portion of the course focuses on pragmatic issues, the teacher will return to pronunciation issues as the need arises.

     The organization of the course is what Graves (1996) calls a matrix approach, in which a set of possible activities is planned and the teacher decides which to use based on the students’ needs and the amount of available time. Each week’s activities will be sequenced so as to move students from perceiving linguistic features to producing them and from controlled to guided to communicative practice.

 Here is a proposed outline:

 Week 1

 · Needs assessment, including creation of “student profile” tapes.
· Introduction to learning strategies.
· Introduction to phonemic symbols.
· Introduction to language-learning journals.

 Week 2

· Word stress, including syllables, vowel reduction, affixes, varying levels of stress.
· Sentence stress, including content words and function words, pauses, effects of sentence stress on vowel quality.
· Rhythm, including rhythm patterns, chants.

Week 3

· Adjustments in connected speech, including reduced forms, resyllabification, deletion, epenthesis and palatalization.
· Prominence and intonation, including intonation for yes-no questions, wh-questions, tag questions, alternative choice questions, lists.

 Week 4

· Thought groups. Intonation for complex vs. compound sentences.
· Sound-spelling connections, especially common patterns for vowel pronunciation.
· First self-assessment (written).

 Week 5

· Introduction to listening and speaking strategies, including pauses, fillers, backtracking, asking for clarification, backchanneling.
· Conversation strategies, including holding and yielding the floor,  turn-taking, pauses, overlap, facial expressions.

 Week 6

· Job hunting skills, including resumes, answering classified ads, telephone etiquette, interview etiquette, cultural factors.
· Consumer skills, including requesting information, reading advertisements, asking about prices and features, looking for hidden costs, returning merchandise.

 Week 7

· Complaints, including direct complaints (those made to the person responsible) and indirect complaints (those made to a third party as solidarity-building or conversation-starting devices).
· Giving advice, including shades of meaning of the modals should, ought to, have to and must.
· Second self-assessment.

 Week 8

· Apologies, including apology vocabulary, determining when apologies are needed, politeness strategies, relation to direct complaints.
· Compliments, including appropriateness, responses, gender differences.

 Week 9

· Requests, including indirect versus direct requests, politeness strategies, request vocabulary, the modals could, can, would and will.
· Commands, including face issues, social power variables, imperative sentence structure, politeness strategies, responses to commands.
· Invitations, including written versus spoken, responses, invitation vocabulary, refusal strategies.

 Week 10

· Parties and social settings, including cocktail-party conversations, dating, cultural issues.
· Final self-assessment.
· Written test.

1.  Student Profiles: On the first day of the course, students will be asked to produce a profile of their own pronunciation and oral communication needs by tape-recording a short oral reading, an informal dialog, a brief narrative on their choice of topic and a “message to the teacher” outlining their individual goals for the course. Before recording the tape, the teacher will give them some specific questions to consider in defining their goals. In addition to being used by the teacher to help determine the direction of the course, these tapes will be used at the end of the course to help students see what progress they have made in their pronunciation and oral communication skills (see Assessment section.)

2.  Language Learning Journals: Students will be asked to keep a written journal of their language learning experiences during the 10 weeks of the course. For students with individual pronunciation issues that may not be addressed in the classroom, the teacher will suggest appropriate out-of-class activities and ask the student to chronicle these activities in the journal. For others, the journal will be a chance to give feedback to the teacher, reflect on their learning and raise issues or questions. The students will turn the journal in to the teacher at the end of Weeks 2-9 and will receive it back the following Monday. This activity serves these purposes: (a) to encourage the students to do some quiet reflection on their own learning; (b) to give the teacher some valuable information about the students, such as their learning styles; (c) to provide an opportunity for students to give written feedback on the course; (d) to provide a mechanism for ongoing self-assessment by the learners; (e) to integrate writing into a course that deals primarily with listening/speaking skills; and (f) to give individual attention to students whose needs cannot be met by classroom activities alone.

3.  Dictionary Day: Early in the course, we will spend part of a class session making sure the students are familiar with dictionaries and how they can be used in determining the correct pronunciation of a word, including word stress. We will review the various markings that dictionaries use to denote strongly and lightly stressed syllables, and we will practice looking up some unfamiliar words to determine how they should be pronounced. Dictionaries also will be used when we discuss sound-spelling connections.

4.  Games: These will include:

· Phonetic Scrabble, in which students improve their knowledge of phonemic symbols by using them to form words on a Scrabble-type grid (Taylor, 1993, cited in Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994).

· Rhythm Dominoes. Students are dealt a hand of domino-like cards, each of which has short sentences written at both ends. Students place the cards end-to-end on a table by matching sentences with identical rhythm patterns. The first student to use all of his or her cards is the winner. This provides practice in recognizing sentence stress patterns (Hancock, 1995.)

· 20 Questions, in which one student thinks of a famous man and the other students try to guess his identity by asking questions like, “Is he an entertainer?” and “Is his home in the United States?” This provides production practice with the reduced forms of “he” and “his” in connected speech (Lane, 1993.)

6.  Video clips: Short video clips of authentic conversations from TV sit-coms, talk shows, dramas or news programs will be used to demonstrate certain suprasegmental features, such as stress, intonation or reductions, and certain pragmatic features. Some will be accompanied by transcripts so that students can analyze the linguistic features.

7.  Tracking: When working on stress or intonation, students also can use video clips to learn the technique of “tracking,” or talking along with the speaker and attempting to follow his/her intonation contours and stress patterns. Students can be encouraged to repeat this process at home with segments of tape-recorded speech.

8.  Role-plays: These will be done in pairs or small groups and will progress from guided (with assigned roles and pre-written dialogs) to more communicative (with student-chosen roles and student-written dialogs). When time and circumstances allow, the teacher may provide a small collection of props (such as party hats, dishes and glasses for a party role-play) to make the role-play more fun. Role-plays are a way to “transport” the students out of the classroom and let them practice using language and pragmatic skills they will need in the real world (Ur, 1991).

9.  Cartoons: Comic strips and single-panel cartoons from newspapers will be used for a variety of purposes: to demonstrate sentence stress, since most comics used bold-face, large letters to denote stressed words; to teach listening skills related to the problem of faulty interpretations of word stress or homophones, which are often the basis of humor in cartoons; and to teach pragmatic skills such as complaints.

10. Interviews: Giving students an opportunity to interview each other and native speakers about cultural practices, personal experiences, etc., allows meaningful communication to take place. Interviews with classmates also foster a sense of community in the classroom and increase intrinsic motivation by allowing the students to talk about themselves.

11.  Information exchange: This activity requires students to share information in order to achieve a goal or complete a task. For example, to create a chart of rules for party etiquette, students might interview native-speaker cultural informants and then pool the information they have gathered.

12.  Group work: This can take many forms, from pair work on practicing intonation in telephone conversations to small-group discussions of cultural differences in giving and receiving compliments. Ideally, group members should be of different language and cultural backgrounds so as to minimize native-language use and provide a variety of perspectives.

13.  Ponder the problem: From time to time, students will be asked to reflect quietly for a few minutes on a problem that the class has discussed, making notes to themselves on solutions they might propose to the group. The purpose of this is to give students time to do some independent thinking and to improve their self-confidence as language learners and problem-solvers (Tarvin & Al-Arishi, 1991).

14.  Jokes: Because jokes sometimes use linguistic phenomena to create humor, they can be used as a tool for teaching those phenomena to L2 learners. This simple riddle creates humor with a homophone: “What’s black and white and red (read) all over?” (Answer: a newspaper.) Another form of childish humor, the “Knock! Knock!” joke, often involves reduced speech.

15.  Feedback sessions: At least once per class session, students will have an opportunity to give oral feedback to the teacher – to express opinions about the structure of the course, to ask questions about material and techniques or to make suggestions for future class sessions. Not only does this give the students an active role in the direction of the course, it also encourages meaningful communication between the students and the teacher. At the end of the course, the students will complete a written survey instrument to give more formal feedback to the teacher.

Learners’ Roles

     On a day-to-day basis, the learners will be encouraged to be involved in L2 interactions both inside and outside the classroom. Because interaction is such a vital part of language learning, the classroom activities will be designed to give each member of the class the maximum amount of practice with both comprehending and producing language. Outside the classroom, learners will be encouraged to identify and work with a native-speaker informant who will help them focus on specific pronunciation features (Acton, 1984). Also, homework assignments will encourage the students to seek out interactions with native speakers and to gather authentic samples of the language features practiced in the classroom. As noted earlier, the school does not allow students to leave the campus during school hours for class-related activities, so these homework assignments will take the place of class field trips.

     Students will be asked to become partners with their classmates in the learning process. We will strive for a cooperative atmosphere where students encourage and help each other, acting as teammates in the quest to improve the speaking and listening skills of all members of the class. In their role as directors of the course, the students will be asked frequently to clarify their needs and to give feedback on the effectiveness of classroom activities and  homework assignments. Activities can be adjusted as needed based on this feedback and on the teacher’s assessment of the students’ progress.

     In sum, the learners will be provided with the necessary support to become the managers of their own learning process. They will be responsible for determining the directions the course will take and for deciding how conscientiously they will carry out classroom and homework assignments. And they will be the final judges of how well they have accomplished the goals they set for themselves.

Teacher’s Roles

     As the course progresses, the teacher will move increasingly into the role of a facilitator of the learners’ efforts to improve their own pronunciation and oral communication skills. Morley (1994) compares the teacher in this role to the debate coach or sports coach who “supplies information; gives models from time to time; offers cues, suggestions, and constructive feedback about performance; sets high standards; provides a wide variety of practice opportunities; and supports and encourages the learner” (p. 89).

     As a facilitator, the teacher also has a responsibility to create a positive learning environment – an atmosphere where students can maximize their learning. This involves encouraging the students to take charge of their own learning by giving them autonomy and letting them make their own choices. It also means encouraging the students to work as a team, making sure they stay on task and keeping the coursework relevant to their needs.

     Also in her role as a facilitator of learning, the teacher will introduce the students to learning strategies and techniques they can use in developing their oral communication  skills. She will serve as a target-language model for the students as they work on pronunciation and a cultural informant as they work to understand facets of American culture that affect oral communication and pragmatic competence. She also will be a cheerleader, offering encouragement to the students when needed.

     One final role for the teacher will be that of observer, looking for problem areas and stepping in when necessary to offer advice on a particular problem. In this role, she also will gauge the progress of the students and make adjustments in classroom activities, if necessary, to keep the students on track toward their goals.

Culture

    Hofstede (1997) defines power distance as the extent to which the less powerful members of a society expect and accept inequities in power. In large-power-distance cultures, classrooms tend to be very teacher-centered and students do not expect to have any power over what they learn and how they learn it. While attending ESL classes in the United States, students from such cultures may be reluctant to speak up when invited to ask questions, express opinions or discuss course topics. They also may be uncomfortable with the idea of giving feedback to the teacher, since it could be considered a criticism of the teacher.

     One way to avoid or minimize some of this discomfort is to call attention, in simple terms, to the differences between classrooms in the United States and those in other cultures. The teacher can help students understand the expectations of American teachers, encouraging them to speak up and ask questions in class. And she can explain that American classrooms and teacher-student interactions tend to be less formal than those in some cultures. In this way, the teacher acts as a cultural informant, helping the students understand the culture of U.S. classrooms as well as the culture of the larger society.

Instructional Materials

     Because radio and television programs – news programs, talk shows, dramas and situation comedies – provide rich, authentic samples of American English dialects, idioms, slang, stress, rhythm and intonation, I plan to supplement the textbooks with audio and videotapes of such programs. These materials, especially the recordings of talk shows, will also be used to help teach conversational strategies. For example, a short segment of “The Tonight Show” might be used to demonstrate how to hold the floor or turn over the floor to the other speaker in a conversation. This use of audio and visual recordings is acceptable under the fair use guidelines of U.S. copyright law for two reasons: the brevity of the excerpts and the fact that the recordings will be used shortly after they are made and then discarded (University of Maryland University College, 1996-2001).

     Finally, I plan to use excerpts from “Oral Lessons in Pragmatics” to teach the students about speech acts like complaints, requests and compliments and to help them develop the pragmatic competence needed in situations like job interviews and parties. This book is a collection of lessons written by graduate students in the Pragmatics and Language Teaching course at Georgia State in the summer of 2000, covering everything from classroom or dinner-party etiquette to cultural fables to speech acts to gender issues in oral communication (see Appendix I). I will use the book primarily as a resource from which I can draw lessons  to address the specific situations students choose to be covered in the course.

Assessment

     These self-assessments will be reviewed by the teacher for use in  making future refinements in the course, but they will then be returned to the students. Their main purpose is to build student awareness of their own successes and to teach them how to monitor their own progress, an important strategy they will need to use as they continue their learning after the 10 weeks of the course are finished.
Because the school requires a formal, written test at the end of the term, the teacher also will design a course-specific test to be given in the 10th week. One section of this test will assess the students’ ability to perceive and produce word stress and sentence stress, unstressed and reduced forms, connected speech phenomena, intonation patterns and other linguistic features covered in the course. Another section will ask students to demonstrate their knowledge of politeness strategies, conversation strategies and other pragmatic issues covered in the second half of the course. See Appendix B for samples of both types of questions.

Lesson Particulars

 5:55 p.m. – As the students filter into the classroom just before the 6 p.m. starting time, they greet each other and the teacher. The students engage in small talk, sign the attendance sheet and begin to find their seats. The teacher hands one student a bag of large rubber bands and asks him to pass them out to his classmates when they are seated. In the meantime, she writes two brief sentences on the board in capital letters: “MICE EAT CHEESE” and “CLASS STARTS NOW.”

6:00 p.m. – The last students take their seats, many of them playing with the large rubber bands, which they remember from the previous lesson on word stress. To review that lesson, the teacher hands out a sheet of multisyllabic words that are grouped according to some of the typical word-stress patterns in English. She asks for volunteers to pronounce some of the words on the sheet, and she has the rest of the class “stretch out” the rhythm with their rubber bands as each word is pronounced. Then she asks the students to turn their sheets over. On the back are more multisyllabic words from the previous lesson, this time in random order with no stress patterns marked. She asks the students to turn to a partner, choose a word and say it with the proper stress, letting the partner “stretch out” the rhythm with the rubber band. The partner chooses the next word, and the students continue to take turns pronouncing and “stretching out” the words as the teacher circulates to listen.

 6:15 p.m. – The teacher calls the students’ attention to the board and the two short sentences she has written there. To introduce the topic of sentence stress, she asks the students to join her in “stretching out” the stressed, or strong, syllables in the first sentence. Of course, since the sentence has only monosyllabic content words, each word carries full stress. Thus, “MICE EAT CHEESE” results in three long pulls on the rubber band. Then she displays on the overhead projector another sentence: “The MICE have EATen the CHEESE.” She says this sentence, then has the students repeat it with her while pulling on their rubber bands to mark the stressed syllables. The teacher points out that the sentence still has only three stresses, even though four syllables have been added. On the overhead, she now displays a third sentence: “The MICE have been EATing some of the CHEESE.” The students listen to and repeat the new sentence, stretching their rubber bands to demonstrate that it too has only three stressed syllables. Finally, they repeat all three sentences several times with their partners.

 For emphasis, the teacher repeats this exercise with the second three-word sentence, this time asking the students to stand and take a step each time they say a stressed syllable. They take three steps forward for “CLASS STARTS NOW,” three steps backward for “The CLASS is STARTing NOW” and three steps forward again for “The CLASSes should have STARTed by NOW.” Again, the teacher points out that each sentence has only three stressed syllables.

 6:30 p.m. – The students take their seats again, and the teacher poses a question: “Why do you think we stress mice, eat and cheese in the first sentence and class, start and now in the second? What is significant about those words?” One student comes very close to the answer when she says, “Those are the important words in the sentence.” The teacher explains that these are content words, or words that carry the significant information in the sentence – usually nouns,  main verbs, adjectives, demonstratives, negatives and wh- question words – and that listeners pay the most attention to those words. The unstressed words are called function words because they usually perform a grammatical function in the sentence. She explains that making a sharp contrast between stressed and unstressed words is an important part of being understood in English. She also notes that function words are sometimes stressed for special emphasis; for example, if someone else disputes that the cheese is gone, the speaker might say, “The mice HAVE eaten the cheese,” stressing the “have” in an environment where it would not normally be stressed.

6:40 p.m. _ On the overhead, the teacher displays a simple chart showing the categories of words that are usually stressed in English sentences, with examples of each word type. She tells the students this chart is also in their textbooks. Keeping the chart displayed on the screen, she hands out a written transcript of a 20-second dialog from the film “The American President,” in which a widowed U.S. president is getting advice from his pre-teen daughter as he prepares for his first date since his wife’s death. (See Appendix C for copies of the chart and transcript.) She asks the students to work in pairs and try to identify the content words in the dialog, underlining the words they think will be stressed. As they work, she circulates to listen to their discussions and to answer questions.

6:50 p.m. _ The teacher shows a videotape of the dialog and asks the students to listen for the stressed words without looking at the transcript. Then she plays it again, this time asking the students to read the transcript as they listen and make any changes in the stress markings they had made on their sheets.  She plays it two more times and asks the students to speak along with the father and daughter, mimicking the sentence stress they use. Finally, she asks the students to discuss what they heard: Which words were stressed? What parts of speech were they? Which words were unstressed? Did the speakers use physical gestures or facial expressions to emphasize the stressed words? One student noticed that the daughter frequently moved her hands and head for emphasis when uttering a content word.

7:05 p.m. – The teacher plays the videotape again, this time asking the students to pay attention to how the unstressed words are pronounced. When she asks what they heard, one student notes that the president pronounced “the” as /D«/ instead of /Diy/ and another notes that the daughter said /d« y«/ instead of /duw yuw/ for “do you.” The teacher uses these two examples to give a brief explanation of reduced vowels. Then she calls the students’ attention to another phenomenon of reduced speech that can be seen in this sample: the dropping of initial consonants in unstressed pronouns, such as
/«r/ for “her.”

7:10 p.m. – The teacher asks the students to open their textbook to an exercise demonstrating that certain stress/rhythm patterns are often repeated in English sentences (see Appendix D). For instance, “I’d like to cash a check” matches the pattern of “I’ll have her call you back” and “Don’t forget the bread and milk” matches the pattern of “Tell me why you don’t agree.” She has the students repeat the sentences together, noticing how the unstressed words and syllables get shortened in order to keep the rhythm pattern intact (“to” becomes /t«/ and “her” becomes /«r/).

7:15 p.m. – The teacher asks the 20 students to “count off” by the numbers one through five. Then she asks all the “ones” to form a group, all the “twos” to form a group, etc., so that there are five groups of four students each. She asks each group to gather their chairs around a table. Then she gives one “dealer” in each group a pack of cards for the game Rhythm Dominoes. Each of the 24 cards has two short sentences on it, one at each end (see Appendix E).

The teacher explains the rules of the game: The dealer distributes the cards evenly to those in his or her group, and the player to the left of the dealer begins the game by placing any card face up on the playing surface. The next player must find a card in his or her hand that matches the stress pattern of one of the sentences on the original card. He or she then places that card next to the first card, with the matching sentences touching (as in dominoes). The turn then passes to the next player, who must match either of the two unmatched stress patterns on the board. A player who is unable to match the stress patterns misses a turn, and a player who places a card incorrectly must take the card back and miss that turn. The first player to play all the cards in his or her hand is the winner. The teacher instructs the students to say the sentences out loud as they place their cards, in order to demonstrate that the stress patterns match. The teacher offers to be the “referee” if any disputes arise about whether two stress patterns match.
Before they begin play, the teacher asks if everyone understands the instructions. She asks a volunteer to repeat the rules briefly to make sure they were understood. Then, as the students play the game, she circulates around the room,  answering questions and refereeing a few disputes. The room is noisy with laughter and chatter as the students say the sentences out loud while placing their cards.

7:35 p.m. – The teacher calls for a 15-minute break, asking the dealers to collect the game cards and rubber bands and return them to her on their way out of the room.

7:50 p.m. – When the break is over, the teacher asks if anyone has questions or comments about what has taken place in the class so far this evening. One student asks if it is important for ESL learners to be able to produce sentence stress accurately. He says that, even knowing how to identify content words, he doesn’t believe he will ever be able to produce native-like sentences. The teacher reassures him that, given enough time and practice, he will improve in this area. She suggests that the students work on noticing and mimicking the sentence stress used by native speakers, both in person and on television. She also assures the class that there will be more opportunities to practice this skill in class.

7:55 p.m. – Since there are no more questions, the teacher displays two sentences on the overhead: “I can trust him” and “I can’t trust him.” She explains that English speakers usually rely on stress and vowel quality – not on the presence or absence of the /t/ sound – to make a distinction between “can” and “can’t.” To demonstrate, she reads the two sentences aloud. In the first, “can” is reduced to /kIn/ or /k«n/. In the second, the low-front vowel is prominent in “can’t,” but the final /t/ isn’t heard because it becomes blended with the initial consonant in “trust.”

To give the students practice with hearing this distinction, the teacher plays a tape of a speaker saying 10 sentences, some of which contain “can” and some of which contain “can’t.” She asks the students to listen silently and try to hear which word is being said in each sentence. They she instructs them to turn to a worksheet in their textbook, where these sentences are shown with the “can” or “can’t” missing. As she plays the tape again, she asks them to fill in the correct word in the blank. Then she asks for volunteers to give the correct word for each.

For the third verse, where the response changes to a negative (Can you do me a favor?/No, I’m sorry, I can’t), the teacher first demonstrates by clapping and saying the first two lines. Then she has the class say the third verse in unison before dividing again into two groups to chant verses three and four.

8:15 p.m. – The teacher distributes copies of another chant, “It’s Got to Be Somewhere” (see Appendix F) for further practice with “can’t.”  She reads the chant aloud, tapping on her desk this time to show the rhythm. In case it is unfamiliar, she explains that the last line (“Whew!”) is an expression of relief. Then she has the class read the chant with her in unison, tapping out the rhythm themselves with a pen or pencil. For the third reading, she divides the class into two groups, with one group saying the lines that are printed flush left and the other group saying the lines that are indented. The whole class joins on the final “Whew!”

8:20 p.m. – For guided practice with the can/can’t distinction, the teacher passes out copies of a dialog between two business associates who are trying to schedule an appointment at a mutually agreeable time (see Appendix G). She asks the students to practice the dialog with a partner, paying particular attention to the unstressed “can” and the stressed “can’t.” As they practice, she circulates to listen  for any learners who may be having problems with this distinction. She works with a few of the pairs on how to produce the unstressed “can,” but she doesn’t correct any other errors. After a few minutes, she asks one pair of students who did particularly well with this exercise to perform the dialog for the class.

8:30 p.m. – The teacher gives an index card to each pair of students, showing three different role-play situations they may work on with their partners. She asks them to choose one of the three situations and devise a dialog similar to the one they just practiced, making sure to use “can” and “can’t” as part of the dialog. They are to write the dialog out and practice it at least twice. (The choices are: dental patient and receptionist making a dentist’s appointment; professor and student making an appointment for an advising session; parent and teacher making an appointment to talk about a child’s school work.)  Again, the teacher circulates to observe and help as the students work on their dialogs. Some of the students pattern their dialogs very closely after the earlier one involving two business associates, while others are more creative. The teacher asks two of the latter  pairs to come to the front of the class to perform their role plays as the exercise concludes.

8:50 p.m. – In preparation for assigning homework, the teacher asks if any of the students have ever heard of “Knock! Knock!” jokes. They have not, so she demonstrates, asking the students to give the proper responses (“Who’s there?” and “_____ who?”) as she tells this joke:

“Knock! Knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Oliver.”
“Oliver who?”
“Oliver friends are coming over.”

Then she tells another one:

“Knock! Knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Letter.”
“Letter who?”
“Letter in. It’s cold out here.”

8:58 p.m. – Before dismissing the students, the teacher asks again for questions or comments about the evening’s lesson. This time there are none, and the students gather their books and papers to leave.

Final Thoughts

Acton, W. (1984). Changing fossilized pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 18, (1) 71-86.

Brown, H.D. (1994). Teaching by principles. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
      Regents.

Carlisi, K., & Christie, S. (1994). Authentic and aware: Advanced conversation strategies.
      Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Carrell, P., & Eisterhold, J. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL
      Quarterly, 17,(4), 553-573.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A
      reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge:
      Cambridge University Press.

Dalton, C., & Seidlhofer, B. (1994). Pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Firth, S. (1992). Pronunciation syllabus design: A question of focus. In P. Avery & S.
      Ehrlich (Eds.), Teaching American English pronunciation (pp. 173-181). New York:
      Oxford University Press.

Graham, C. (1978). Jazz chants. New York: Oxford University Press.

Grant, L. (2001). Well said: Pronunciation for clear communication. Boston: Heinle &
      Heinle.

Graves, K. (1996). A framework for the course development process. In K. Graves (Ed.),
      Teachers as course developers (pp. 12-38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hancock, M. (1995). Pronunciation games. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hofstede, G. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York:
      McGraw-Hill.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (1994). The postmethod condition: (E)merging strategies for
      second/foreign language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1), 27-48.

Lane, L. (1993). Focus on pronunciation. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles in language teaching. New York:
      Oxford University Press.

Long, M., & Crookes, G. (1992). Three approaches to task-based syllabus design.
      TESOL Quarterly, 26,(1), 27-56.

Morley, J. (1994). Multidimensional curriculum design for speech-pronunciation
      instruction. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory: New views, new
      directions (pp.64-91). Alexandria, Va.: TESOL.

Murphy, J. (1991). Oral communication in TESOL: Integrating speaking, listening &
      pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 25, (1), 51-75.

Nelson, G. (1984). Reading: A student-centered approach. English Teaching Forum,
      October, 2-5, 8.

Oxford, R. (1992-93). Language learning strategies in a nutshell: Update and ESL
      suggestions. TESOL Journal, 2(2), 18-22.

Prabhu, N.S. (1990). There is no best method – why? TESOL Quarterly, 24 (2), 161-176.

Prator, C., & Robinette, B. (1985). American English pronunciation. New York: Harcourt
      Brace & Co.

Tarvin, W.L., & Al-arishi, A.Y. (1991). Rethinking communicative language teaching:
      Reflection and the EFL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 25, (1), 9-27.

University of Maryland University College (1996-2001). Copyright and fair use in the
      classroom, on the Internet, and the World Wide Web [On-line]. Available:
      http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.html

Ur, P. (1991). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
________________________________________________________________

Name __________________________________          Date ______________________
Directions: Listen to the audio tape you made during the first week of class and the tape you made in the final week of class. Then answer the questions in Section I. Listen to the second tape again before answering the questions in Section II.

Section I:

1.  List five English sounds (vowels or consonants) you believe you pronounced more clearly in the second tape than in the first:

 _________       _________      _________      _________      _________

2.  List some sounds you need to continue working on after the course is complete:

       _________________________________________________________________

3.  What is one way you plan to do that? ____________________________________

       __________________________________________________________________

4.  Write one sentence in which you believe your intonation was more appropriate in the second tape than in the first:
      ____________________________________________________________________

5.  Write one sentence where you were able to reduce unstressed function words in the second tape more effectively than in the first:
      ____________________________________________________________________

6.  What are two ways you plan to continue working on intonation and stress after the course is complete?
      ____________________________________________________________________

      ____________________________________________________________________
 
 

Section II:
(Be sure to listen to the second tape again before answering these questions.)

1.  Listen for one yes/no question you asked in the second tape. Write the sentence down and mark your intonation. Was it appropriate? Why/why not?
      ____________________________________________________________________

      ____________________________________________________________________

2.  Do the same for one wh-question:
      ____________________________________________________________________
      ____________________________________________________________________
3.  Give five examples of multisyllabic words where you stressed the proper syllable(s) in the second tape. Mark the syllables you stressed:

      _________       _________      _________      _________      _________

4.  Give two examples of sentences where you stressed the words that are important or show new information. Mark the words you stressed:
      ___________________________________________________________________

      ___________________________________________________________________

5.  Give one example of a sentence where you reduced the unstressed function words. Circle the words you reduced:
      ___________________________________________________________________
 
 

(Adapted from Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996)
 

___________________________________________________________________________

 Sample questions for end-of-course test:

A.  1. Listen to your teacher pronounce the following words, then draw a line under the syllable with the most stress (the strongest syllable) in each:
 education   geography   economy
 political   Canadian   photograph

2.  Listen to your teacher say the following. You will hear sentence (a) or sentence (b). Answer the question that follows the sentence.
a.  John said, “My father is here.”
b.  “John,” said my father, “is here.”
Question: Who was speaking? ___________________________

3.   In each of the following groups of words, circle the two words that          share the same stress pattern.
a.  decision  determine  dedicate
b.  furniture  horrible  guarantee

4.   Underline the content words in the following dialog.
      Edward: I’m afraid to ask, but how much does this ring cost?
      Salesman: That one? Oh, it’s a steal. I can let you have it for five.
      Edward: Five hundred? Hey, that’s a good price.
      Salesman: Not five hundred. Five thousand.

      ____
 B.  1.  In the following dialog, underline the politeness strategies that make the complaint softer or less direct. Circle the strategies that justify the complaint or make its force more intense:
A professor has promised to write a job reference for a former student. When the student comes to pick up the reference, it has not been written. The job interview is to take place in an hour.

Student: Well, um, you promised to have a reference ready for me today.
Professor: A reference?
Student: Yes, I’m going for a job interview. I know you’re busy. But you did promise, didn’t you?
Professor: Yes, of course.
Student:  Can I have it, then? I’m going for the job interview in an hour. It’s really important. I can’t go without it.
Professor: Yes, sit down. I’ll write it for you now.

1.  Hints      a. “I don’t want to complaint, but…”
2.  Avoiding direct reference to the offender  b. “You promised to do it.”
3.  Downgraders     c. “Someone left the door open.”
4.  Preparatory remarks    d. “Everybody thinks you should go.”
5.  Justifying      e. “The car was clean yesterday.”
6.  Avoiding direct reference to self   f. “In my opinion, it’s too loud.”

Appendix C

NEGATIVES  WH-QUESTION WORDS  DEMONSTRATIVES
can’t   what     this
not    how     those

Examples: The LUNCH was CHEAP.
       He WON’T GIVE me an ANswer.
Note: In content words of more than one syllable, like answer, stress the appropriate syllable.
 

Reduce or weaken function words like these:

ARTICLES  CONJUNCTIONS  PREPOSITIONS
a    and     to
the   or    of

PRONOUNS  AUXILIARY VERBS
her   can
you   have

Example: LET ‘em GO.

(Grant, 2001)
_____

Dialog from the film “The American President”:

President Shepherd: How do I look?
Lucy (his daughter): You look great. How do you feel?
Shepherd: To tell you the truth, I’m a little nervous.
Lucy: You’ll be fine. Just be yourself.
Shepherd: Just be myself.
Lucy: Yeah. And compliment her shoes.
Shepherd: Compliment her shoes?
Lucy: Yeah. Girls like that.

Sentence Rhythm Patterns

In each group below, the rhythm pattern of the first sentence is repeated in the sentences that follow it. Say these with your teacher:

Please sit down.
Come back soon.
Don’t drive fast.

Don’t use my name.
John lost the disk.
That book is good.

I’d like to cash a check.
She’d rather take the bus.
I’ll have her call you back.

Let me help you find your keys.
Don’t forget the bread and milk.
Tell me why you don’t agree.

Find a space and park your car.
Thanks a lot for all your help.
Don’t forget to leave a tip.

(Grant, 2001)
 

Appendix E

Not available in Internet version

Appendix F

Chants
 

Can You Do Me a Favor?

Can you do me a favor?
I can do you a favor.
Can you open the door?
I can open the door.
Can you turn out the light?
I can turn out the light.
Can you make it all right?
I can make it all right.

Can you take me to work?
I can take you to work.
Can you fly me to France?
I can fly you to France.
Can you press my pants?
I can press your pants.
Can you teach me to dance?
I can teach you to dance.

Can you do me a favor?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you open the door?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you turn out the light?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you make it all right?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.

Can you take me to work?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you fly me to France?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you press my pants?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.
Can you teach me to dance?
No, I’m sorry, I can’t.

(Adapted from Grant, 2001)

It’s Got to Be Somewhere
 

Where is it? Where is it?
Where is it? Where is it?
I can’t find it!
She can’t find it!
It’s got to be here, it’s got to be here!
  It has to be here! It must be here!
It’s gone! It’s gone!
It’s gone! It’s gone!
  Take it easy! Take it easy!
It has to be here.
It must be here.
  It can’t be lost.
  It can’t be lost.
It’s got to be here.
It’s got to be here.
  Try to remember.
  Try to remember.
I can’t remember.
  Try to remember.
I can’t remember.
  Think back!
I can’t think.
  Think back!
I can’t think.
  Where did you put it?
  Where did you put it?
I can’t remember.
I can’t remember.
Oh, here it is, here it is!
Thank heavens!
  Thank heavens!
I found it.
  She found it!
Here it is! Here it is!
Whew!
 

(Graham, 1978)

Appendix G
 

Dialog for scheduling an appointment:

Jim: I can meet on Monday at ten.
Joe: I can meet from two to three.
Jim: I can’t meet you then. I’m going to the dentist.
Joe: Can you meet at twelve?
Jim: I’m busy from one to two.
Joe: How about Friday at ten?

Intermediate-Low
          Able to understand sentence-length utterances which consist of recombinations of learned elements in a limited number of content areas, particularly if strongly supported by the situational context. Content refers to basic personal background and needs, social conventions and routine tasks, such as getting meals and receiving simple instructions and
directions. Listening tasks pertain primarily to spontaneous face-to-face conversations. Understanding is often uneven; repetition and rewording may be necessary. Misunderstandings in both main ideas and details arise frequently.

 Intermediate-Mid
          Able to understand sentence-length utterances which consist of recombinations of learned utterances on a variety of topics. Content continues to refer primarily to basic personal background and needs, social conventions and somewhat more complex tasks, such as lodging, transportation, and shopping. Additional content areas include some personal interests and activities, and a greater diversity of instructions and directions. Listening tasks not only pertain to spontaneous face-to-face conversations but also to short routine telephone conversations and some deliberate speech, such as simple announcements and reports over the media. Understanding continues to be uneven.

 Intermediate-High
          Able to sustain understanding over longer stretches of connected discourse on a number of topics pertaining to different times and places; however, understanding is inconsistent due to failure to grasp main ideas and/or details. Thus, while topics do not differ significantly from those of an Advanced level listener, comprehension is less in quantity and poorer in quality.

Speaking: Intermediate

General Description
The Intermediate level is characterized by the speaker's ability to:
· create with the language by combining and recombining learned elements, though primarily in a reactive mode
· initiate, minimally sustain, and close in a simple way basic communicative tasks
· ask and answer questions.

  Intermediate-Low
 Able to handle successfully a limited number of interactive, task-oriented, and social situations. Can ask and answer questions, initiate and respond to simple statements, and maintain face-to-face conversation, although in a highly restricted manner and with much linguistic inaccuracy. Within these limitations, can perform such tasks as introducing         self, ordering a meal, asking directions, and making purchases. Vocabulary is adequate to express only the most elementary needs. Strong interference from native language may occur. Misunderstandings frequently arise, but with repetition, the Intermediate-Low speaker can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors.

  Intermediate-Mid
 Able to handle successfully a variety of uncomplicated, basic, and communicative tasks and social situations. Can talk simply about self and family members. Can ask and answer questions and participate in simple conversations on topics beyond the most immediate needs; e.g., personal history and leisure time activities. Utterance length increases slightly, but speech may continue to be characterized by frequent long pauses, since the smooth incorporation of even basic conversational strategies is often hindered as the speaker struggles to create appropriate language forms. Pronunciation may continue to be strongly influenced by first language and fluency may still be strained. Although misunderstandings still arise, the Intermediate-Mid speaker can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors.

  Intermediate-High
 Able to handle successfully most uncomplicated communicative tasks and social situations. Can initiate, sustain, and close a general conversation with a number of strategies appropriate to a range of circumstances and topics, but errors are evident. Limited vocabulary still necessitates hesitation and may bring about slightly unexpected circumlocution. There is emerging evidence of connected discourse, particularly for simple narration and/or description. The Intermediate-High speaker can generally be understood even by interlocutors not accustomed to dealing with speakers at this level, but repetition may still be required.

 Listening: Advanced

 Advanced

  Able to understand main ideas and most details of connected discourse on a variety of topics beyond the immediacy of the situation. Comprehension may be uneven due to a variety of linguistic and extralinguistic factors, among which topic familiarity is very prominent. These texts frequently involve description and narration in different time frames or aspects, such as present, nonpast, habitual, or imperfective. Texts may include interviews, short lectures on familiar topics, and news items and reports primarily dealing with factual information. Listener is aware of cohesive devices but may not be able to use them to follow the sequence of thought in an oral text.

 Advanced Plus

 Able to understand the main ideas of most speech in a standard dialect; however, the listener may not be able to sustain comprehension in extended discourse which is propositionally and linguistically complex. Listener shows an emerging awareness of culturally implied meanings beyond the surface meanings of the text but may fail to grasp sociocultural nuances of the message.

  Speaking: Advanced

 General Description

 The Advanced level is characterized by the speaker's ability to:
·  converse in a clearly participatory fashion
·  initiate, sustain, and bring to closure a wide variety of communicative tasks, including those that require an increased ability to convey meaning with diverse language strategies due to a complication or an unforeseen turn of events
·  satisfy the requirements of school and work situations, and
·  narrate and describe with paragraph-length connected discourse.

 Advanced

Able to satisfy the requirements of everyday situations and routine school and work requirements. Can handle with confidence but not with facility complicated tasks and social situations, such as elaborating, complaining, and apologizing. Can narrate and describe with some details, linking sentences together smoothly. Can communicate facts and talk casually about topics of current public and personal interest, using general vocabulary. Shortcomings can often be smoothed over by communicative strategies, such as pause fillers, stalling devices, and different rates of speech. Circumlocution which arises from vocabulary or syntactic limitations very often is quite successful, though some groping for words may still be evident. The Advanced-level speaker can be understood without difficulty by native interlocutors.

 Advanced Plus

Able to satisfy the requirements of a broad variety of everyday, school, and work situations. Can discuss concrete topics relating to particular interests and special fields of competence. There is emerging evidence of ability to support opinions, explain in detail, and hypothesize. The Advanced-Plus speaker often shows a well-developed ability to        compensate for an imperfect grasp of some forms with confident use of communicative strategies, such as paraphrasing and circumlocution. Differentiated vocabulary and intonation are effectively used to communicate fine shades of meaning. The Advanced-Plus speaker often shows remarkable fluency and ease of speech, but under the demands of  Superior-level complex tasks, language may break down or prove inadequate.

 (ACTFL, 1983)

Appendix I

Working with a partner, role-play the use of indirect complaints in the following situations. Then present your role-plays to the class:
1.  A wife complains to her husband about a male co-worker who talks too much on the job.
2.  Two female colleagues are sharing a hotel room at a conference. One complains to the other about the breakfast she had on the airplane that morning.
3.  A female receptionist at the dentist’s office complains to a male patient about the historic building that is being torn down next door.
4.  Two male friends are trying to listen to a music CD on the new CD player one of them just bought. The machine isn’t working properly, and its owner complains to his friend about it.
5.  On the first day of class as a college freshman, a female student complains to a female classmate about the amount of reading the professor has given them.

Decide how the indirect complaints and responses you used above would be different if the situations were changed to these:
1.  A wife complains to her female friend about a male co-worker who talks too much on the job.
2.  A female college professor runs into her boss, the male department chairman, at a conference. She complains to him about the breakfast she had on the airplane that morning.
3.  A female receptionist at the dentist’s office complains to a female patient about the historic building that is being torn down next door.
4.  A father and son are trying to listen to a music CD on the new CD player the son just bought. The machine isn’t working properly, and the son complains to his father about it.
5.  On the first day of class as a college freshman, a male student complains to a female classmate about the amount of reading the professor has given them.

(From “Oral Lessons in Pragmatics,” a collection of lessons written by graduate students in the Pragmatics and Language Teaching course at Georgia State University, Summer 2000)