Teaching Response Tokens
Through Story Telling Tasks
Silvana Dushku
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
s-dushk@illinois.edu
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)
Overview
•
•
•
•
Goals
Data Collection and Methodology
Findings
Pedagogical Implications
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
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.
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
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.
Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation
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)
Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation
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
Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Survey Component
Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Survey Component
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
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
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
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?
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)
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
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
Pedagogical Implications
– Textbook-Supplementary Task Examples:
–
Task I – Observation
•
•
–
Task II – Noticing Lack of RTs in Responses
•
•
•
–
Students tell their holiday stories (that would elicit expressions
of affect) to NSs,
record the NSs’ responses, and discuss them in class
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)
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
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-Whquestions’ 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
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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