The Making of Authentic Materials From Conversation Analysis-

A new direction for authentic materials

Jhu Cin Jhang

Graduate Instructor, Texas Tech University

The influence of authentic materials in language classrooms has been growing since its onset in 1980s, which was related to the development of the communicative teaching approach. Practitioners and researchers in language pedagogy have since then argued that authentic materials, which are abundant in valuable cultural, pragmatic and linguistic knowledge, can promote learner’s communicative competence.

Despite the recognition, we still observe an insufficient use of authentic materials in the relatively new field of Chinese as a Second/ Foreign Language (CSL/CFL); there is still a strong preference to use the less ideal pedagogically designed materials, and thus this paper proposes a new method of authentic materials creation for CSL/CFL.

The other issue this paper deals with is what authentic materials are used, how and for what they are used. Authentic materials are often mistaken as authentic “written texts” by many, thus limiting the use to mainly reading activities. Even with the trend of using visual material (e.g. YouTube video), there is a lack of thorough study on how materials should be analyzed, incorporated and presented. This problem roots in the misconception that authentic materials guarantee the learning of communication, and learners learn communication with the exposure to large bulks to authentic materials.

However, for second language learners, learning to engage in ordinary conversation is actually one of the most difficult tasks. Only when properly studied and analyzed could authentic materials yield the valuable communicative knowledge. This paper looks into the authentic materials with Conversation Analysis (CA), the study of talk-in- interaction to investigate conversationalists’ intentions and how they manage to maintain their relationship through various techniques. When applied to language pedagogy, CA can help us look very closely into the structures of interaction and thus draw findings about conversation techniques to teach to the learners.

The paper transcribes and analyzes a recorded naturally-occurring conversation between two female Chinese native speakers. The conversation contains various everyday topics, such as student life and weather. The analysis focuses on how the conversationalists manage topics change, the various types of techniques utilized, and their timings and the functions. For example, details are given about how gaps and pauses are treated in the conversation, how phatic functions are applied, how disagreements contributes to the change topic change, how conversationalists the repair their talk, etc.

The paper will then provide implications for making classroom materials with these findings of conversation techniques, the original recording, and the transcription. Here is one example. First, students discuss and list how they think topic-change is accomplished in daily conversation. Second, they read the transcription of the topic changes and write down how they are accomplished, and then compare it with their own list. The teacher will guide the discussion of the comparison, and make sure students notice and understand those techniques. Last, students act out the transcription.

In conclusion, authentic materials should be more widely used in CSL/CFL, and a better method should be adopted to analyze and utilize the materials. Moreover, we should focus on a long-neglected aspect of the teaching of conversation in order to make authentic materials account for the promoting of communicative competence.