Re: [xmca] Inside Outside

Dear David,

I'm not sure if missed the point on your research.

First of all, your juxtaposition of a 'native speaker' and an
'expert?' teacher, to me has very little validity. Your first example
of the teacher using a display question to elicit information is, in
my mind the wrong way round for education.
Of course the native speaker in front of a classroom will formulate
the questions for his own ideas not formulate them with the children,
simply because he's trying to get them to talk the way he thinks they
should talk. He's not talk with them, he's talking to them. I detest
this kind of teaching, it simply isn't teaching.
I've seen too many teachers sit with students around a table and tell
students to ask each other questions, in turn, making sure the grammar
is correct in both the question and the answer before going onto the
next student.

Display questions too, don't have a place in the classroom, much more
than open ended up intonation questions that leave the student
wondering what's coming next. Is this the way you try to avoid display
questions?

Recently doing my own study of the classroom and its discourse only
shows that education works with imperatives (going back to Wells'
paper and the ancillary discourse which is used to keep the classroom
in control) and questions that are only to support the traditional IRF
exchange. Students rarely if ever ask questions, despite the fact that
by creating a classroom where the students ask questions, the students
can formulate their own ideas about the language.

This intonation... is this really how we talk? The use of display
questions though to discuss gestures versus intonation, I just don't
understand.

Mark

On Mar 25, 2008, at 2:24 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> Dear Wolff-Michae:
>
> I enjoyed "Talking Science" a lot, and I agree that it is "real"
> cultural-historical research. But I think my research is real
> research too.
>
> A lot of your work uses gesture, and also stress and intonation, to
> include the way language serves to integrate human activities. My
> work also looks at this.
>
> Here, for example, is one of my graduate students starting a
> guessing game in English:
>
> T (showing a picture and pointing to the picture) Look! What's this?
> Ss: Munyeyo. (It's a door.) Door? Matna? (Is that right?)
> T: Right. This is a door. (pretends to open door) A door to...?
> Ss: Chilpan? (Blackboard?) Jibeuroyo (To a house.) Undongjangiyo.
> (To the playground.) Playground! Heaven! Cheonguk? (Heaven?)
> T: Maybe a door to heaven (upward intonation). Maybe a door to....?
>
> In each T turn there is only ONE new idea (marked by heavy stress).
> There is also some kind of open question marked by UPWARD intonation.
>
> In each S turn there is a large pool of answers, from which the
> teacher (and eventually the children too) select one that is
> appropriate to continue on to the next exchange.
>
> To do this, the teacher uses UP intonation to suggest an entry
> point for the children and DOWN intonation to suggest the one new
> idea that has been agreed on.
>
> We see a lot of this in expert teacher talk. Compare:
>
> T (pointing): This is JINHO. (DOWN intonation new information)
> Ss: ...
>
> T (pointing): This is Jinho. WHO'S this? (UP intonation--checking
> question)
> Ss: Jinho.
>
> T (not pointing): Who's THIS? (DOWN intonation--teacher and
> children foregrounding familiar information together)
> Ss: Jinho!!
>
> T (holding a picture of Jinho with his new girlfriend): This is
> Jinho. Now, who's THIS? (DOWN intonation, new character)
> Ss: Moreugessumnida (We don't know)!
>
> To me, it is important that in some cases the teacher gestures and
> in some cases the teacher relies on intonation, just as it is
> important that in some cases the teacher relies on intonation and in
> other cases the teacher relies on lexicogrammar ("Now") and intuition.
>
> I think that the difference between gesture and intonation is well
> described by saying that gesture is "internalized" as intonation. We
> use intonation (and stress) to point with our voices the same way
> that we sometimes use eye contact to point with our eyes. I don't
> see any problem with saying that one is more internal than the other.
>
> But I also think that the difference between UP intonation and DOWN
> intonation is well described by saying that UP intonation tends to
> refer backwards to OLD, SHARED information ("What did you say?") and
> the other refers to NEW, SHARING information ("What do you say?"). I
> don't see any problem with saying that one is more internal than the
> other.
>
> Merely because both questions are made of the same sonic material
> does not mean that one cannot be more internal than the other. My
> trouser pocket has an inside and an outside, and both are made of
> the same material and intimately connected.
>
> One reason that it's useful to talk this way is that we can then
> HEAR the dynamic change of new information into old. But we can also
> hear the REITERATION of old information as if it were new information.
>
> T: Good morning, everyone.
> Ss: Good morning, teacher.
> T: How are you...today?
> Ss: I'm fine. Thank you. And you?
> T: Me? I'm so happy today.
> Mingi: Why? (DOWN intonation)
> T: Why? (UP intonation)
> Ss (insisting) Why! Why! (DOWN intonation)
> T: Why? (UP intonation) because it's Saturday! Saturday today!
> Ss: Aha!
> Jinhaeng: Me too!
> T: You too? (UP intonation)
> Ss: Me too! Me too! (DOWN intonation)
>
> In contrast, here is a so-called "native" teacher (actually a
> "native speaker" teacher, that is, a foreigner) introducing a
> similar activity:
>
> NT : Nice to meet you. My name is... Actually not my name is. Okay.
> (points to two students sitting in front of him) Can you stand up?
> (UP intonation) You, two come here, come here. (pointing to two
> students) They don't know each other. Who is he? (DOWN intonation)
> Who is she? (DOWN intonation I'll introduce them, okay? (UP
> intonation) in English.
>
> This teacher ALSO uses open, unfinished sentences (My name is...),
> but he uses them to reformulate his own ideas and not to formulate
> them with the children. This teacher ALSO uses stress and up/down
> intonation, but it means something very different. "Can you stand
> up?" simply means a yes/no question, while "who is he?" simply means
> a Wh-question.
>
> In November, a right-wing Bush clone came to power in Korea, and he
> is currently using this type of teacher as a kind of wedge to take
> English teaching out of the hands of Korean teachers. The idea is
> that this kind of teacher provides more and better "comprehensible
> input" and this will lead to better subconscious acquisition.
>
> I am doing research to try to show that this is not necessarily
> happening. Foreign teachers tend to use sentences that are four or
> five times longer than the utterances used by children, with very
> little overlap and very little uptake.
>
> Where there is little uptake, there appears to be little take away.
> The teacher and the children not only speak different languages but
> they speak different kinds of ENGLISH, and there is very little
> evidence that one is turning into the other.
>
> I think this is real research not simply because it is consistent
> with your own work and consistent with that of Vygotsky and with
> that of Volosinov (both of whom, after all, do use terms like
> "inside" and "outside"). I think it is real research because there
> are real jobs at stake here for real people.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
>
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Received on Tue Mar 25 04:55 PDT 2008