Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Research Proposal
by
Seto Wood Hung Andy (04720055g)
Assignment 2
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
MAELT Research Design and Methods
(ENGL 586)
Department of English
Faculty of Arts
July 16, 2005
Glossary of Acronyms
HKC Hong Kong Chinese
HKCE Hong Kong Certificate of Education
HKEAA Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority
HKCSE Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English
NSE native speakers of English
1. Project title:
‘I totally agree with you’: A Corpus-driven Study of Agreement in Naturally Occurring Spoken English and Textbook English
2. Introduction and Literature Review:
A review of previous HKCE English Language (Syllabus A) examination reports (HKEAA, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004) shows that candidates performed unsatisfactorily in group interaction. In group interaction, candidates are grouped together and presented with a situation and a task. Candidates need to express, to elicit, and to respond to ideas, opinions, and feelings through discussion. They may also need to seek and give clarification, to sum up points discussed, and to redirect the discussion. They are assessed on conversational strategies, overall fluency, and the contribution they make to the conversation. The emphasis is on communication effectiveness rather than on task completion (HKEAA, 2004). Accordingly, group interaction required more spontaneity and genuine communication, candidates could not simply reply on a few memorized formulaic expressions to carry out a meaningful discussion.
The most prevalent problems found in candidates’ performance in group interaction include the following: Most candidates simply took turns to give their opinions and strictly followed the guidelines given in the discussion topics without any real interaction. Ideas were rarely developed. There were often abrupt changes in subject matter. A lot of stock phrases like “I agree.” and “That’s a good idea.” were used out of context. Grammatical mistakes and lack of vocabulary were also prevalent The lack of communication skills and discussion techniques were regarded as the reasons for their poor performance (HKEAA, 2004). Despite HKEAA’s annual comments and recommendations, candidates did not seem to advance significantly in their ability in oral English.
As many of the problems mentioned in HKEAA (2004) were found in previous examination reports (HKEAA, 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003), they may have become ingrained. This is probably due to a lack of exposure to English in candidates’ daily life. They simply could not find the right ways to express themselves. Many did not understand what genuine communication in oral English is like in daily life, let alone the notions of various features of oral English, such as exchange structures, adjacency pairs, grammatical intricacy, minimal and non-minimal feedback tokens, and ellipsis. Another reason may be that teachers had not taught the basic skills and strategies for genuine communication.
The investigation focuses on the differences observed between agreements as it is used in naturally occurring spoken English and it is taught from the textbooks. The purpose of this project is to summarize the results of the investigation. Similar studies comparing naturally occurring spoken English and textbook English have been done (Klages & Römer, 2002; Römer, 2004a, 2004b, in press; Cheng & Warren, n.d.a, n.d.b); however, they did not focus on examining the forms of agreements and the language used to perform them.
Studies on agreement are related to the notion of preference organization in adjacency pairs in conversation analysis. Preference organization does not refer to individual preferences of listeners or speakers. Rather, it is a structural notion that relates to the notion of markedness. Preferred responses are unmarked, immediate, and contain simple components while dispreferred are marked, delayed, and contain complex components (Levinson, 1983; Mey, 2001; Cheng, 2003). Agreement is usually in preferred format and normally comes after a speaker’s assessment. However, there are exceptions. When the initial assessment is negative, like a self-deprecation, the usual preference for agreement is nonoperative. In other words, “an agreement with a prior self-deprecation is dispreferred” (Pomerantz, 1984, p.64). There are different types of agreements, including “upgraded or strong agreement”, “same evaluation”, and “downgraded or weak agreement” (Pomerantz, 1984). This study differs from those above in that it includes a comparison between agreements used in naturally occurring spoken English and taught from the textbooks.
3. Research Questions and Hypotheses:
The research questions are: (1) How are ‘agreements’ used in naturally occurring spoken English and taught in textbook English? (2) What are the differences between ‘agreements’ used in naturally occurring spoken English and that taught in textbook English? (3) In what way can corpus evidence help improve textbook English of agreements?
The hypotheses are: (1) Textbook English does not always reflect correctly the use of agreements in naturally occurring spoken English; (2) Corpus evidence helps improve the authenticity of textbook English of agreements.
4. Methodology:
The data to be used in the study come from the section of meetings of a sub-corpus, which is 260,000-word business discourses of about 29 hours, of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), a two-million word corpus of naturally occurring spoken discourses primarily between Hong Kong Chinese (HKC) and native speakers of English (NSE), and from a list of EFL textbooks (Drave, Gillies, & Simpson-Giles, 2005; Esser, 2005; Nancarrow, Leung, & Choi, 2005; Potter, 2005; Speaking Made Simple, 2005) recently published for the new syllabus for 2007 HKCE English Language Examination (HKEAA, 2005). The reason for selecting data from meetings to study is that the context for meetings is similar to that for group interaction in HKCE English Language (Syllabus A) oral examination, in which participants may be required to make suggestions, to give advice, to make and explain a choice, to argue for and/or against a position, or to discuss the pros and cons of a proposal.
The analytic approach is corpus-driven. It works from bottom-up, starting from the data. It tries not to be influenced by existing theories or traditional categories. The analysis emphasizes on observing and describing the corpus evidence before interpreting the findings and making theoretical statements. The agreements to be examined are instances of one of the speakers agreeing with one of the other speakers in the discourse. The data were investigated to identify agreements between speakers, so as to examine the forms of agreements and the language used to perform them.
In this study, critically reviewing English language textbooks in Hong Kong on the forms of expressing agreement in spoken discourse is the first step. Examples of agreement from recently published textbooks to be used in Hong Kong secondary schools will be listed and discussed. These examples will be used as key words to be searched in the business discourses sub-corpus.
The second step is a close analysis of agreements in the section of meetings in the business discourses sub-corpus of HKCSE. Though the corpus is electronically available, it is expected that a purely quantitative analysis of the occurrence of agreements in the data through word frequency lists or concordance lines may be inadequate as it cannot identify agreements automatically. Accordingly, a qualitative study of the sub-corpus will be carried out to reveal the strategies for expressing agreement; the examples found in the sub-corpus will be manually filtered.
The third step is to compare the findings of the forms of agreements in the section of meetings in the sub-corpus with those are found in the English language textbooks that teach students how to express agreement in group interaction in HKCE English Language oral examination.
5. Significance and Outcomes:
It is expected that there were differences in the forms of agreements and the language used to perform them between the corpus-driven findings and the textbooks; textbook English does not accurately reflect authentic language use. It is argued that corpus evidence needs to be taken more seriously if teachers aim at teaching authentic and natural spoken English of agreements, and corpus evidence can help improve the authenticity of textbook English of agreements in particular. Further comparative analysis likes the study needs to be carried out in future.
6. Estimated Time Table for the Research (see Appendix A):
2. Revision of Chapters 1 & 2 and draft Chapter 3 (Methodology) / Oct 1, 2005
3. Revision of Chapters 1 to 3 and draft Chapter 4 (Data Collection) / Nov 1, 2005
4. Report on data collection & initial analysis / Dec 1, 2005
5. Revision and extension on data collection and analysis / Jan 1, 2006
6. Chapter 5: More detailed analysis and outcomes / Feb 1, 2006
7. Draft Chapter 6 and develop conclusions / Mar 1, 2006
8. Revision of all Project chapters. Submitted to supervisor for final comments / Apr 1, 2006
9. Submission of the Project / May 1, 2006
7. References:
Cheng, W. (2003). Intercultural Conversation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
I
Cheng, W., & Warren, M. (n.d.a). // à well have a DIFferent // æ THINking you know //: A Corpus-driven Study of Disagreement in Hong Kong Business Discourse. Unpublished manuscript, English Department, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR.
Cheng, W., & Warren, M. (n.d.b). I would say be very careful of …: Opine Markers in an Intercultural Business Corpus of Spoken English. Unpublished manuscript, English Department, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR.
Drave, N., Gillies, R., & Simpson-Giles, F. (2005). Focus on Skills: Paper 3 Speaking. Hong Kong: Longman.
Esser, D. (2005). Teach & Practice 4: Paper 3 Speaking. Hong Kong: Pilot.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2000). English Language (Syllabus A). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2001). English Language (Syllabus A). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2002). English Language (Syllabus A). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2003). English Language (Syllabus A). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2004). English Language (Syllabus A). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (2005). Proposal Syllabus for 2007 HKCE English Language Examination). HKSAR: Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.
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