AKITA – May 2015 – Teaching the spoken language; Reported speech – John Campbell-Larsen, Kyoto Women’s University. This presentation was divided into two parts. The first part introduced the central findings of Corpus Linguistics and Conversation Analysis concerning spoken English, focusing on such points as marking, reported speech and spoken narrative. The presenter described practical methods for teaching these items, illustrating his points with several videos of classroom interactions.
The second part outlined the background, implementation and results of a project designed to increase a learners’ ability to use reported speech in English. The presentator looked at reported speech in ESL textbooks and in the academic literature, and provided a detailed schema on how to teach students this vital skill. Video recordings of the students were used to illustrate the development of their ability to use reported speech to recount the contents of their various interactions. A short Q & A session ended the presentation.
Reported by Stephen Shucart
Akita JALT 