Advanced Conversational English - David Crystal

1 Advanced Conversational English David Crystal and Derek Davy first published by Longman in 1976 this pdf version re-keyed in 2019, with some updating Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Conversational English Chapter 2 The Conversational Extracts 1 Talking about football 2 Bonfire night 3 News reporting 4 Pigs 5 A driving incident 6 Living in London 7 Channel crossing 8 Mice 9 Farm holiday 10 Sex education in schools 11 Christmas habits 12 Losing a tooth 13 Sex films 14 Country life 15 Family grouping Chapter 3

2 linguistic analysis Fluency Intelligibility Appropriateness Chapter 4 Teaching implications INTRODUCTION We first became aware of the need for information about informal Conversational English as a result of our experiences on English language teaching courses and summer schools abroad. There we met many teachers and Advanced students who had a good command of formal English , but who were aware that there existed a Conversational dimension to the language that they had little experience of, and who expressed dissatisfaction with the kind of English they were regularly encountering in their coursework. Despite all the available materials, the request to say some real English into my tape recorder was disconcertingly persistent.

3 It was more in evidence in those parts of the world which have little regular contact with English -speaking areas, such as South America, but we have come across a comparable demand in many parts of Europe too. In a way, the original motivation for the book was to present a compilation of material which would avoid the inconvenience and artificiality of the talk into the tape-recorder exercise. It is more than this now, as we have included, in addition to the basic data, commentaries, analyses, general discussion, and suggestions for extension. But the basic aim is the same - to help students who feel they have a grasp of the structural patterns and usage of their regular coursework, and who want to develop their abilities in comprehension and fluency by using informal conversation as a model.

4 We began in early 1971. The delay has been largely due to the difficulty of obtaining natural Conversational data in good recording conditions, dealing with ranges of subject-matter likely to be of interest to students of English . As one might expect, we had to record many hours of conversation before we could make a final selection which preserved this balance between spontaneity, recording quality, and interest. We attach particular importance to the naturalness of our data, which has not been edited in any way, We have not come across commercially available material that is so informal or realistic, and it is in this respect that we hope the main contribution of this book will lie. We see Advanced Conversational English as a source book of information about the standard educated colloquial language.

5 It is not designed as a teaching handbook. For one thing, we are ourselves unclear as to how data of this kind can best be used in a teaching situation. We are aware that colloquiality sparks off attitudes about when, how, and how much it should be taught - or whether it can be formally taught at all. We have had relatively little experience of these matters; consequently we have restricted the teaching section of this book to some general remarks and suggestions about how the data might be approached. To develop real productive and receptive fluency in this area is a task yet to be thoroughly investigated by teachers and applied linguists. But we are clear about one thing: no progress will be made towards an improved ELT pedagogy without a clear understanding of the realities of English conversation.

6 For too long, English language teachers have been operating with a stereotype of conversation: whether it proves best to stay working with this stereotype or not, it is time to develop a more accurate perspective about Conversational structures and usage, within which such matters can be properly evaluated. The collection of data of which our extracts form a part is now housed at University College London, in the files of the Survey of English Usage, which is financed by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Many people have helped us in the preparation of this book - not least our anonymous conversationalists, and the many teachers of English in this country and abroad on whom the extracts and the accompanying analyses were first tried out.

7 We are grateful to all of them, and particularly to Brian Abbs, Christopher Candlin, Peter Clifford and David Wilkins, for advice on specific issues while the book was being written. DC, DD July 1974 1 Conversational English The idea for this book arose out of an awareness that currently available English language teaching materials have not as yet bridged the gap between classroom English and English in use. It is clear that there are many excellent courses which help students to get through the introductory stages of learning the language; but there are few which have attempted to go beyond this point, and those which do so fall far short, in our opinion, of the goal of making students encounter and participate in the normal language of Conversational English .

8 Intermediate or Advanced learners, typically, are aware that their English differs from the norms adopted by native speakers, but they find little guidance as to how they can achieve a closer approximation to these norms. Often, indeed they find it extremely difficult to obtain any samples of Conversational English at all to study, and even if they do, they will be unlikely to have accompanying analyses, commentary, or drills. This state of affairs is not the learner s fault. The reasons for it are bound up with the stage which language study has reached at the present time, and are part of a more general neglect of Conversational norms in English language studies. There are, after all, two main difficulties over obtaining information about these norms.

9 The first of these is that accumulating usable and reliable samples of natural, everyday, informal conversation is by no means easy. The problems embrace the technical (ensuring satisfactory recordings), the linguistic -psychological (for instance, ensuring that the speech is natural), and the legal (avoiding the many problems involved in publishing such material). Secondly, once one has accumulated such samples, there arise the difficulties of analysing them. The kind of English found in these samples is in many respects quite different from the kind confidently analysed in the standard textbooks and manuals (as we shall see); consequently, a great deal of analysis has to be carried out before pedagogically useful generalizations can be made.

10 As a result, it takes many years of experience in collecting and analysing material of this kind before one can speak confidently about informal conversation; and it is for this reason that little has been done. In this book, we are relying very much on our experience of analysing English in connection with the Survey of English Usage at University College London, and related projects; and we hope that we have therefore been able to make some headway into these problems. But it is only a beginning. There are a number of general comments which have to be made by way of introduction to the data and approach of this book. The main aim, as already suggested, is to provide samples and analyses for natural, everyday, informal conversation , and to make suggestions as to how this material might be pedagogically used.