Teaching Response Tokens Through Story Telling Tasks Silvana Dushku University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign s-dushk@illinois.edu

Definition & Classification Response tokens (RT) are high-frequency turn-initial lexical items which occur in responses in everyday spoken genres, and which reveal various levels of the listener’s interactional engagement (McCarthy, 2003, p. 4) Minimal RT Non-Minimal RT: Non-minimal RT without expanded content (NM-EC) Non-minimal RT plus expanded responses (NM+ER) RT with pre-modification Negated RT Clusters (Ibid. pp. 21-35)

Overview Goals Data Collection and Methodology Findings Pedagogical Implications

Goals Develop a better understanding of students’ current level of interactional competence and their needs through the investigation of their use of engagement tokens (assessment and surprise tokens) (Schegloff, 1982) On the basis of needs analysis, develop task-based materials that can lead to awareness raising and gradual appropriate production of these engagement tokens in conversation

Data Collection and Methodology Video and digital recordings of free 25-minute conversations over the Thanksgiving Break: Four triads of 2 NNSs and their NS Conversation Partner Four triads of 3 NS graduate students and new graduates Written survey of both groups’ participants: responding to 8 Thanksgiving Break-related situations designed to elicit surprise (4) and evaluation (4) NNS students’ survey results rated on appropriateness/inappropriateness by 4 NS ESL teachers.

Data Collection and Methodology Data transcription (first 10 minutes) and analysis (transcription coding key, O’Keeffe, McCarthy, Carter, 2007) Identification and classification of surprise and assessment tokens used by both NNSs and NSs according to FORM (McCarthy 2003 classification) and descriptive statistical analysis NNSs’ use of surprise and assessment tokens (6 video excerpts) rated on appropriateness/inappropriateness by 18 trained NS university students Inter-rater reliability measured for both groups of raters: 4 NS raters : Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.913 18 NS raters: Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.870 Analysis of CONTEXTS and FUNCTIONS: kinds of inappropriateness in the use of surprise and assessment tokens by NNSs

Findings Analysis of assessment tokens in 10-minute conversations: Significant differences (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: All assessment tokens Non-minimal assessment tokens without expanded content Non- minimal assessment tokens with expanded response Less complex assessment tokens used by NNSs.

Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation

Findings Analysis of surprise tokens in 10-minute conversations: Significant difference (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: Minimal surprise tokens (extended foreign vocalizations)

Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Ten-Minute Conversation

Findings Analysis of assessment and response tokens in surveys: Significant difference (p value < 0.05) found in the use of: Pre-modified assessment tokens: Too + adjective So + adjective No significant difference found in the use of surprise tokens

Mean Number of Assessment Tokens in Survey Component

Mean Number of Surprise Tokens in Survey Component

Findings – Inappropriate Uses Prosodic: Extended foreign vocalizations (E.g.: Ahh!) Non-native fall-rise (instead of the typical exclamatory fall in English – Wells, 2006) in vocalized exclamations of surprise

Findings – Inappropriate Uses Pragmatic: Factual recount of events with little or no engagement from the listener: Dry, depersonalized responses Use of extended foreign vocalizations to express convergence, acknowledgement, or information receipt Pragmatic competence deficiency to demonstrate surprise, sympathy/ empathy, and interest/excitement ‘Cultural’ verbal and gestural responses Inappropriate question responses

Findings – Inappropriate Uses When listening, students often failed to anticipate clues – Listening-response relevance moments (LRRM) (Erickson & Schultz, 1982; McCarthy, 2003) - in the native speakers’ conversation While-listening strategy deficiency – how to ‘tune in’ to the clues Insufficient ability to make a pragmatic inference and plan the response

Findings – Inappropriate Uses Lexico-Grammatical: Use of “it” instead of “that” referring to past events in assessment tokens by the listener E.g.: It’ s terrible! Use of present tense instead of the past in assessment tokens E.g.: It’ s nice! Failure to give a yes/no response to a speaker’s question before using a response token or a statement E.g.: A: Did you have a good time? B: I have enjoyed skiing. Ungrammatical questions attempted to show engagement E.g.: A: I lost my passport at the airport! B: How did you do?

Pedagogical Implications Teaching approach: The three ‘Is’ (Illustration-Interaction-Induction) approach (McCarthy and Carter, 1995 (also 2005, 2007): Illustration – through authentic data samples Interaction – discussion of language features observed in the samples Induction – discovering rules through observation and analysis the ‘explicit’ approach (Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006) ‘Language awareness-based’ approach (Fung and Carter, 2007)

Pedagogical Implications Suggested teaching goals (intermediate level): Identify and practice the tenses of narration (past/past progressive in statements and questions) Identify and practice high-frequency (minimal and non-minimal) response tokens to show surprise and assessment Recognize the exclamatory fall in exclamations Practice ‘It”- and “That”- initiated responses showing assessment or surprise Analyze conversation clues that trigger possible listener responses/reactions: Identify facts in a news story - the 5 Wh-s Identify opinion discourse markers Review how to maintain conversation in narrative discourse: Explain how to formulate appropriate Wh- questions Explain how to use continuers Analyze cultural differences in expressing assessment and surprise in conversation narratives

Pedagogical Implications Needs Analysis Teacher recounts her holiday/Break travel experience, students digitally record their reactions to the story Students tell holiday/Break stories to one another, record them and their reactions Students complete a questionnaire with holiday/Break situations requiring them to continue the conversation by verbally reacting to the situation

Pedagogical Implications Textbook-Supplementary Task Examples: Task I – Observation Students tell their holiday stories (that would elicit expressions of affect) to NSs, record the NSs’ responses, and discuss them in class Task II – Noticing Lack of RTs in Responses Students look at a bookish and dry conversation, discuss what is missing, suggest other ways to respond (use the language they noticed in NSs’ conversation?) Task III – Noticing Appropriate Responses Students analyze teacher-selected clips from video/MP3 recording and authentic transcripts of NS’s use of engagement tokens and other engagement strategies in conversation (according to teaching goals selected)

Pedagogical Implications Task IV - Noticing Inappropriate Responses & Controlled Practice of Appropriate Responses Students analyze excessive vocalizations in a funny movie clip, Replace them with response tokens from a given list, explain their choice, role-play the situation Task V – Analysis and Discussion of Students’ Own Responses Students in pairs analyze their own, previously recorded narratives using an evaluation rubric

Pedagogical Implications Task VI – Analysis and Controlled Practice Students in pairs watch a movie clip of an unusual event, record the story elements according to a 5-Wh- questions’ list, identify conversation clues that trigger possible listener responses/reactions, plan appropriate responses/reactions to them, tell and react to the movie story following a role play scenario

Acknowledgements Many thanks to The UIUC IEI administration, students, teachers, and Conversation Partners – for making this research possible Dr. Irene Koshik, Dr. Numa Markee, Dr. Andrea Golato, Dr. Fred Davidson– for their invaluable guidance and input Professor Michael McCarthy and Professor Ronald Carter – for the tremendous inspiration in this undertaking

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