Reflection+on+ELT+Article+by+Volkan+Esen

**ARTICLE REFLECTION **
 * FLE-324 TEACHING LANGUAGE SKILLS **


 * Name of the Student: **Volkan ESEN


 * Name of the Article: **Dialogue and Dialogue Teaching


 * Writer of the Article: ** R. S. Sharma

 **Name of the Journal:** English Teaching Forum


 * Publishing Year: **January, 1987


 * Page no: ** 21-24

 Nearly every book on the teaching of English includes dialogue. Most of them present dialogue as a means of inculcating basic language skills and vocabulary, not as an end in itself, as a form of discourse employed in social interaction by the members of a speech community.

**Sociolinguistic aspects of dialogue **

 The focus in all the books I have referred to is on language, and the discoursal and other sociolinguistic aspects of dialogue are mentioned either in passing or not at all. The purpose of my comments is not to criticize the authors of these books, but rather to show the overwhelming trend in the treatment of dialogue in books on language teaching. Newmark and Diller, in their article “Emphasizing the Audio in the Audio-lingual Approach”, discuss what they call the dialogue-pattern-drill approach. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> My purpose is to bring new sociolinguistic insights to bear on the definition and teaching of dialogue. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> On major difficulty in discourse analysis is the terminology, which is far from standardized, so that terms are not always used to mean exactly the same thing.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">Analyzing discourse **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> We may now turn to the analysis of discourse. Discourse analysis took a wrong turn at its very inception. The first important model was presented in 1975 by Sinclair and Coulthard(1975). The analytical categories created on the analogy of earlier Hallidayan framework represent a pioneering effort, not yet superseded by any better proposal.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">Dialogue skills **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> Next we turn to what may be called dialogue skills, these are to be superposed to the usual language skills, and I leave the latter out of the consideration. Salih has listed five skills under the main heading “Dialogue Communicative Competence.” These five skills are appropriateness of response, intelligibility, ease and dialogue fluency, roleplaying, and turn-taking.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">Teaching dialogue **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> Our final concern is the teaching of dialogue. I have no intention of presenting a complete method. I wish to confine myself to certain aspects of dialogue teaching that arise out of our discussion. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> The importance of audiovisual aids in dialogue teaching cannot be overemphasized; dialogue can never be taught properly without these aids. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;"> At the presentation stage, the problem is how to begin most effectively. I suggest the teacher should begin with a metadialogue, or an introductory dialogue, greeting the pupils and then asking some carefully chosen questions about dialogue; or introducing the subject matter of the dialogue he is going to teach and asking some pertinent questions that draw attention to dialogue components and dialogue skills.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">a) I think the author of the article is right on most of the ideas he put forth. He defends his ideas using examples and his experiences. Using dialogues in language teaching is inevitable and also necessary since communication is the main purpose and to communicate people have to understand each other in a short and easy way to share their ideas, feelings and thoughts.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">b) I believe these methods are still in use and really necessary for language learning and teaching in all matters. Because the main goal is to be able to speak and understand what is being said, using chunks and dialogues in communication in a foreign language is important and should be integrated to the teaching of it.