Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Jill Lewis, Vicky Harris, Noel and Jasmine Azirar for the generous donation of their free time which allowed him to collect the data for the Spoken Grammar part of this article. Also the students Araceli Arenas, Patricia Castan, Claudia Jiménez, Rosa María Narváez, Carmen Reyes for their invaluable help and feedback which helped him refine his Process Teaching.

Excerpts from Modern Spoken Discourse

Simon Marshall, UK

Simon Marshall is a teacher/teacher trainer at Pilgrims, Canterbury. He has worked as an ELT teacher, trainer and academic manager for more than 25 years both within the UK and overseas. He is particularly interested in the principled application of Humanistic Approaches to language teaching and teacher training. He is a keen etymologist and reader of philosophy and psychology. E-amil: sambeck0@hotmail.com

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Situation

Interlocutors: 5 IT professionals in their late twenties from the London area. They gave the strong impression that they were highly qualified in the field of IT. One white female, one white male, two Indians/Pakistanis males and one Afro- Caribbean male. All native speakers of English.

Setting: Busy Inter city train from Birmingham to London.

Topic: Work.

Dialogue

Female: I asked my boss a question this morning and I so didn’t get an answer.

Male 1: Did you tell him.

Female: No. I just couldn’t. I need some more bold courage before I can do that! (They all laugh)

Male 1: He just talks a load of pants, don’t he?

Female: Yeah. He’s so not the person to be running the project.

Male 2: (Pleading for understanding through intonation and gesture) I know. It’s just like. You know he’s like….he’s like….you know….

Female: Yeah. I know.

(They move on to discuss further a joint project they are about to work on (or not) mentioned above)

Male 3: I reckon we should just go for it. (“it” refers to the new project.)

Male 4: Yeah. It’s a no brainer.

Female: You’re looking at loads of work but you’re looking at loads of profit and all.

Male 5: Yeah. Yeah. Right. He (the aforementioned boss) keeps piling the pressure on me and I’m thinking. “You can’t do all that!”

Female: Yeah, I know. He’s always blowing hot and cold, like. He’s like one minute right on top of things and then, like, he’s like a big girl’s blouse!” (They all laugh again.)

Male 5: He like blanked my emails so I’m thinking, “Whatever! Just get a fucking life!” (More laughter)

Male 1: Yeah. He’s a by the book manager.

Male 3: Yeah, but he ain’t done nothing to me, like. No, hold up. He went into one at me the other day ‘cos I didn’t go up to the meeting in Sheffield”

Possible ways of exploiting the above

1. Ask the students if there is an area of their country that has a low prestige accent/dialect. Have them work in pairs. If you have a multi lingual class, mix up the nationalities appropriately. Get them to be specific as to why the accent is frowned upon. Is it mainly due to phonology, lexis, grammar or all of these aspects of language?
2. Hold some feedback
3. Tell them that you are going to give them a transcript of the dialogue above. Do not give them the identity of the interlocutors provided above the dialogue above.
4. Ask them to read the dialogue for general understanding after pre setting the following questions:
1. How old do you think the speakers are?
2. They all work in the same field. Which field do you think this might be?
3. Do you think that they are educated native speakers?” ***
5. Hold some grouped feedback on their answers before holding plenary feedback.
6. Reveal the identity of the speakers.
7. Ask them to “translate” the italicized sections into English that is more recognizable for them.
8. Hold some feedback on their answers. (There are some alternatives provided below if they need help)
9. Ask them if there is anything else in the dialogue that they would like to ask about. Deal with their enquiries.
10. You may wish to highlight the following elements from the script.
• “Yeah” is always preferred to “yes.” “Yeah is the 8^th most common word in the spoken corpus.
• The ubiquity of “like.” Often used as filler or when the speaker cannot find the words they want as in “You know he’s like….you know…he’s like…”
• “You know” as a discourse marker, one “which projects the assumption that knowledge is shared and that assertions are uncontroversial” (Carter and McCarthy)
• non-concordant question tag “don’t he?” instead of “doesn’t he?”
• double negation as in “he ain’t done nothing to me.”
11. Alternatives to italicized sections
• “so didn’t get an answer” = he completely avoided answering my question.
• “I just couldn’t” = “simply”
• “just talks a load of pants” = just talks a load of rubbish/crap etc.”
• “so not the person” = completely the wrong sort of person.
• “I reckon” A very common spoken alternative to “I think.”
• “It’s a no brainer.” = “It’s a simple choice.”
• “you’re looking at = This is an interesting emergent chunk of spoken discourse which is becoming more and more common. Its first use here means “we’ll have to work hard” while the second one means something like “we’ll make a big profit.”
• “I’m thinking” = “I thought.” Spoken, colloquial use of the present continuous to denote past time.
• “You can’t do all that!” = “I can’t do all that!” (The pronoun “you” somehow expresses how “one part of us speaks to another!”)
• “He’s always blowing hot and cold.” = “His behaviour is very inconsistent.”
• “right on top of things” = “He’s in complete control.”
• “He’s like a big girl’s blouse.” = “Makes a huge fuss/gets hysterical.” A common idiom which many consider to be a sexist metaphor. Interestingly, here it is used by a female speaker.
• “blanked” = “ignored.”
• “Whatever! Just get a fucking life!” = Here “whatever” indicates complete indifference. “Get a life” is a common for colloquialism for “stop being so stupid/get yourself together.” “Just” here acts as an intensifier.
• “by the book manger” = “He manages exactly according to the rules.”
• “hold up” = “just a minute (I’ve just remembered x)
• “He went into one” = “He lost his temper.”

Some notes

One definition of an “educated native speaker” is “a native speaker of the language who uses standard speech free of dialect and slang.” It is worth telling the students that the speakers above contravene nearly every aspect of this definition, especially as they all spoke with low prestige London accents. However, they were undoubtedly highly qualified (a result of education), very enthusiastic and concerned about their work and came across to this listener as dedicated professionals. However, language use (especially phonology) is a massive English class indicator that would encourage many people to judge these speakers as “uneducated.” To me, this conclusion would be very difficult to defend. After all, how many English speakers (or indeed speakers of other languages) are “free of dialect and slang?” (A witheringly rhetorical question!) In the pub recently someone I didn’t know very well was doing “The Times” quiz and was struggling. I was able to answer most of the questions. The man said, “Blimey, you’re clever!” The barmaid (who I know well) interjected, “Yes, he is. But you’d never guess it from the way he speaks, would you!” (I have a low prestige south east of England accent.) Some years ago a woman with a strong East London accent was talking to a Pilgrims colleague. When my colleague found she owned a beautiful Elizabethan house, they said, “How can a woman with her accent live in a house like that?!?”
Received Pronunciation speakers (a tiny minority) often declare that regional accents are “wrong” despite the fact that RP is a relatively modern accent in itself. These people often prefer to use the condemnatory term “wrong” rather than take responsibility for their opinions by saying “I don’t like that accent.” I think it is worth saying that you are not presenting the spoken text as a model of what should be taught or learnt but simply exemplifying a living example of a particular, and very common, variety of current English.

Please check the Methodology for Teaching Spoken Grammar and English course at Pilgrims website.