DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 1

GROUP 5
Nguyễn Bảo Toàn M1619039
Nguyễn Thị Thu Uyên M1619047
Trần Thị Thiên Trang M1619041
Nguyễn Thị Thanh Thùy M16190
Lê Quỳnh Như M1619028

LESSON PLAN AND JUSTIFICATION

*Date of preparing:……… UNIT 6: EXCURSION

*Date of teaching:……… ---------------oOo-------------
*Class: .......... Period No: ....... / Week ......
Lesson 2: SPEAKING
I. Objectives
By the end of the lesson, Ss will be able to talk about the seat plan on a boat trip on lake
or river.
II. Teaching aids
Pictures, textbook, etc.
III. Procedure
Teacher’s activities Students’ activities Rationale
1. Check the attendance (2minutes)
2. Warm up (5minutes)
 Answer the questions: - Whole class - To help
- What are their names? - Discuss in pairs and Ss think
Xuan Huong Lake give the answers. about
Ha Noi some
transportati
Ho Chi Minh City on which
they use to
- How can we go to………..? go.
- Stick 3 pictures on the board and asks Ss the names of each
place.
- Elicit the means to go to each of the places
Lead-in: Today, we are going to learn and practice how to
talk about the seats in a means of transport.
3. New lesson
A. Before you speak (11 minutes)
Pre-teaching vocabulary (7 minutes)
- sundeck (n) : boong tàu -Whole class
- sun burnt ['sʌnbə:nt] (v) : rám, chống nắng - Answer the questions - To provide
- travel sickness (n) : say tàu, xe - Repeat under the ss with
- air – conditioned >< non air – conditioned : được trang bị điều teacher’s instructions some new
hòa- không được trang bị điều hòa. words to
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 2

- refreshments (n): phòng ăn uống, giải khát trên tàu. help them
- occupied (adj): đang có người sử dụng. understand
- view (n) : tầm ngắm the text
- Elicit the meanings of these words through synonym, pictures, better
elicitation or explanation.
- Draw Ss’ attention to the pronunciation of these words.
- Get involved in guessing the meaning of these words.
- Have Ss repeat these words.
Checking: ROR (4 minutes) -Whole class
- Rub out the first word and asks Ss to read the whole list of - Follow the teacher’s
words again. instructions
- Continue with the next word and repeat until no word is left
on the board. - To check
- Ask Ss to write the words again on the board. whether Ss
remember
these words.
While you speak
Task 1 (5 minutes) Read the information about some of the - Pair work
participants - Read and complete the
- Run through task 1 and makes sure that Ss all understand tasks assigned by the
about the seat plan of the participants. teacher.
- Monitor what to get from the reading. - To help
- Go round and offer help if necessary. ss to
Task 2 (10 minutes) Work in group and make practice
conversation like the example in the book. speaking
 Teacher introduces some expressions: - Individual work in a
- What do you think? : Bạn nghĩ gì. - Answer the questions controlled
- What’s your idea? : Ý bạn là gì. and follow the way
- I don’t think so. Tôi không nghĩ vậy. instructions
- To be suitable for : thích hợp cho - Take notes.
- Why / why not? Tại sao/ tại sao không
- Had better + V-infinitive (without to) tốt hơn To help ss
- Run through the expressions and provide Vietnamese to enrich
meanings for ss (if needed). their
- Ask questions and give samples for the use of the expressions. language
- Give feedback and help for ss. and
 Work in group and make conversation like the example in increase
the book. their
A. I think Mary should sit in section B. appropriate
B. Yes. Put her in seat 16. - Pair work ness on
A. No, that’s not a good idea because Susan wants to sit near - Practice speaking with speaking
her. partners
B. Ok. Seat 37 would be better.
- Ask Ss to discuss in group and make conversation.
- Discuss and decide the best seat for each person.
- Go around the class and offer help.
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 3

- Call some groups present in front of the class.

After you speak
Task 4 (10 minutes) Talking about the seat
Which seat do you think the most suitable for you? Why? Work in groups of four to - To
- Ask Ss to use the information in the tasks above. talk about the given topic. practice
- Call on some Ss to report the result to the class. -Discuss with the teachers speaking
- Give feedback & comments. and classmates in a
- Report the information controlled
in front of class way with
- Receive comments from the support
classmates and teacher of model
4. Wrapping (2 minutes) Whole class conversati
- Summarize the main points of the lesson Listen and take notes on
- Ask Ss to learn by heart the new words
- Write a paragraph about 100 words about the importance of
information technology in our life
- Have students prepare the next period: Listening - To provide
some
practice in a
less
controlled
(using the
main points
they have
learned)

- To
provide
practice in
writing by
summarizi
ng the
main
points
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 4

JUSTIFICATION

It has been commonly recognized that teaching communication is not simple as transferring
information from the speakers to their receiver as well as it is not enough for students to
master grammar, lexis and phonology of a foreign language. In fact, they have to acquire
the ability to use the language culturally and socially inappropriate ways. Teaching and
learning discourse plays a significant role for both teachers and students because through
discourse competence, students have a deeper understanding of what people use language
by interfering with the meaning in each act of speech. It is undoubted that developing
learners’ discourse competence has long been among the major goals of L2 instructional
programs. Crucial to that development is an understanding of discourse as the key
competence with the rest of the competencies (i.e. linguistic, pragmatic, intercultural and
strategic) shaping it. Lack of knowledge of discourse and social-cultural patterns may lead
them to communication difficulties and misunderstandings. One problem for English
language learners is limited experience with a variety of interactive practices in the target
language. Therefore, one of the goals of language teaching is to expose learners to different
kinds of discourse patterns in different interactions. Canale and Swain (1980) initially
viewed discourse competence as part of sociolinguistic competence, which was believed
to be composed of both socio-cultural rules of use and rules of discourse while Canale’s
(1983) revised definition of discourse competence views it as an element entirely
independent from sociolinguistic competence, comprising “mastery of how to combine
grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in 14 different
genres”. Discourse competence can be defined as the ability to use (produce and recognize)
coherent and cohesive texts in an oral or written form (Bachman, 1990). Cohesive devices
are devices which hold different parts of a thing together. In terms of communication
cohesive devices are typical single words or phrases that hold and hang different parts of
the text. Cohesive devices tell the reader what we are doing in a sentence and help to guide
them through our writing. They signal to the reader what the relationships are between the
different clauses, sentences and paragraphs. Cohesive devices affect comprehension
because they help readers integrate information between sentences in a text. Cohesive
devices include reference; substitution; ellipsis; conjunction and lexical cohesion.
As an English teacher I currently work at a highschool in Can Tho city. Therefore; this
paper aims to analyze how to teach discourse, especially cohesive devices employed in the
speaking section of this unit. “An Excursion, English 10. By the end of this lesson,
students are able to express agreements and disagreements as well as give their opinions
about plans for the trip. In order to develop their conversations about arranging a boat trip,
students should be provided with vocabulary related to the trip such as sundeck,
refreshments, etc. alongside with lexical terms to indicate reasons (because/ so that) and
modifications (besides, moreover). In other words, the students should deploy conjunctions
so as to combine utterances in their conversation in a cohesive and coherent order. In this
section, it can be seen obviously that it is oral discourse because the students use oral
sentence patterns such as “Put her in seat 16”, “That’s not a good idea because…”...in order
to discuss and state ideas about participants’ seats in a boat. The lesson plan consists of 3
 DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 5

stages: presentation, practice and production. The teacher will provide conjunctions in the
presentation stage to inform students that these are the useful lexical terms which they need
to use to combine their ideas. After that, they will have an opportunity to reinforce and
apply these conjunctions in the practice stage (making conversation with partners). Finally,
in the production stage, they will create a speech to share about their favorite seat on the
boat when travelling by trip. This part requires them to use and connect conjunctions
properly and sensibly amongst sentences. I think students will gain many benefits from this
lesson. Firstly, they are provided with real discourse which enhances their speaking
competence naturally. Secondly, they get involved in a real situation and have to apply
given language, particularly related-vocabulary, lexical terms, modifications to solve the
problem with their partners. Thanks to this, they will acquire speaking competence
naturally and effectively. Besides, their confidence in speaking performance will be
improved when they make a conversation or share their favorite seat on the boat in front of
the class. Thus, their motivation to learn, especially to speak English will grow gradually.
In conclusion, conjunction is one of the main factors of discourse competence. It plays an
important role in combining ideas and utterances into cohesive texts. In this lesson,
conjunctions are used to express reasons and modification when giving ideas about seat
arrangement on a boat. To help students use them effectively and properly, the teacher has
to provide them a list of conjunctions in the presentation stage, then give them chances to
practice these lexical terms. Moreover, being exposed to real-like conversations also aid
students in forming discourse competence and enhancing their ability to connect linguistic
information into cohesive and coherent flows of speech.

REFERENCES

Bachman, L.F. 1990a. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Bachman, L.F. 1990b. “Constructing measures and measuring constructs”. in B. Harley,

P. Allen, J. Cummins & M. Swain (eds.) The Development of Second Language
Proficiency. New York: Cambridge University Press. 26-38

Canale, M. and Swain, M. 1988. “Some theories of communicative competence”. In W.

Rutherford and M. Sharwood Smith (eds) Grammar and second language teaching.
New York: Newbury House. 61 – 84.