some discourse features of requests and their responses in short conversations in the listening comprehension section of toefl materials

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES VÕ VIỆT CƯỜNG SOME DISCOURSE FEATURES OF REQUESTS AND THEIR RESPONSES IN SHORT CONVERSATIONS IN THE LISTENING COMPREHENSION SECTION OF TOEFL MATERIALS Một số đặc điểm diễn ngôn của yêu cầu và đáp lại yêu cầu trong các hội thoại ngắn trong mục nghe hiểu của tài liệu luyện thi TOEFL M.A. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60 22 15 HANOI – 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES VÕ VIỆT CƯỜNG SOME DISCOURSE FEATURES OF REQUESTS AND THEIR RESPONSES IN SHORT CONVERSATIONS IN THE LISTENING COMPREHENSION SECTION OF TOEFL MATERIALS Một số đặc điểm diễn ngôn của yêu cầu và đáp lại yêu cầu trong các hội thoại ngắn trong mục nghe hiểu của tài liệu luyện thi TOEFL M.A. MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE: 60 22 15 SUPERVISOR: PHẠM XUÂN THỌ, M.A. HANOI – 2010 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii Table of contents v List of tables vii PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale for the study 1 2. Aims of the study 3 3. Scope of the study 3 4. Methods of the study 4 5. Design of the study 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5 Chapter 1: Theoretical background 5 1.1. Introduction 5 1.2. Systemic Functional Grammar and the clause 5 1.2.1. A brief overview of Systemic Functional Grammar 5 1.2.2. The clause 6 1.3. Above the clause: the clause complex 7 1.3.1. Clause complex and sentence 7 1.3.2. Types of interdependency in clause complexes: parataxis and hypotaxis 8 1.3.3. A brief overview of logico-semantic relations in clause complexes: expansion and projection 9 1.3.4. Expansion 10 1.3.4.1. Elaboration 10 1.3.4.2. Extension 12 1.3.4.3. Enhancement 13 vi 1.3.4.4. Embedded expansions 14 1.3.4.5. Implicitly marked logical-semantic relations in expansion 15 1.4. Summary 17 Chapter 2: Expansion in the requests and their responses of the short conversations18 2.1. Introduction 18 2.2. Clause complexes in the requests and their responses of the short conversations 19 2.3. Expansion in the requests and their responses of the short conversations 24 2.4. Conjunctions for expansion in the requests and their responses of the short conversations 32 2.5. Summary 37 PART III: CONCLUSION 38 1. Major findings 38 2. Implications 39 3. Suggestions for further research 40 References 41 Appendix: Twenty selected short conversations I vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The rank scale (Thomson, 1996:22) 7 Table 2: Primary and secondary clauses (Halliday, 1994:219) 8 Table 3: Basic types of clause complex (Halliday, 1994:220) 10 Table 4: Inserted conjunctions in the short conversations 22 Table 5: Percentages of paratactic expansion in the short conversations 31 Table 6: Percentages of hypotactic expansion in the short conversations 31 Table 7: Original conjunctions in the short conversations 33 1 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study Besides IELTS (International English Language Testing System), TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), and TOEFL iBT (Test of English as a Foreign Language: Internet-based Test), TOEFL ITP (Test of English as a Foreign Language: Institutional Testing Program), which is composed of previously administered TOEFL Paper-based Test forms or TOEFL PBT, has often been used to test the English competence of learners. A certain acceptable TOEFL ITP score is now one of the conditions and options which can help professionals get a higher degree or advancement in their career or both. This is manifested in Circular number 08/2009/TT-BGDĐT from the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam that candidates who have a valid minimum TOEFL ITP score of 400 or higher do not have to take the English entrance examination for his M.A. In addition, candidates who have a valid TOEFL ITP score of 450 or higher are allowed to defend their M.A. dissertation without taking the final exam in English. This is also manifested in Circular number 10/2009/TT-BGDĐT from the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam that candidates who have a valid minimum TOEFL ITP score of 450 or higher do not have to take the Ph.D. entrance examination for English, and candidates who have a valid TOEFL ITP score of 500 or higher are allowed to defend their Ph.D. dissertation without taking the final exam in English. Realizing the importance of English, the President of Thai Nguyen University issued Decision number 805QĐ/TCCB stating that from 2008, a TOEFL ITP score is one of the conditions and options used to decide the job status of the lecturers in all member institutions of the University. Specifically, only applicants with a minimum TOEFL ITP score of 400 can sign teaching contracts; only applicants with a minimum TOEFL ITP score of 450 can apply for a permanent teaching position. A considerable number of other institutions, like Hanoi University of Education, also require their lecturers to have a valid and acceptable TOEFL ITP score. As a teacher of English in Thai Nguyen University, I have had some experience in instructing quite a large number of students in TOEFL ITP. During the lessons, I have found that listening seems to be a challenge to my students. One reason is that their English is not good enough. Our students are graduates, so they probably have the 2 necessary experience and knowledge about the world. However, their knowledge of English is quite limited because they were not English majors, and the majority of them do not use English much in their jobs. Thus, they tend to do poorly in the listening comprehension section of the practice tests in TOEFL PBT materials designed and introduced by ETS (Educational Testing Service), in which the short conversations between two people in part A are the first challenge. Besides the high speaking speed of the native speakers in the recordings and the fact that test takers are allowed to listen to the recordings only one time without taking notes, the meaning of each conversation conveyed by the grammatical structures seems to be one of the linguistic components affecting the students‘ understanding. This means that to comprehend these conversations, the students have to combine their knowledge of the world and their experience with their knowledge of English, in which phonetics and semantics are logically structured and conveyed in grammar to create communication or language in use known as discourse in social contexts. This also means that grammar is the base supporting meaning in discourse and discourse analysis. This role of grammar has been recognized by Halliday (1994: xvi): …. But whatever the final purpose or direction of the analysis, there has to be a grammar at the base. …. The current preoccupation is with discourse analysis, or ‘text linguistics’; and it is sometimes assumed that this can be carried on without grammar – or even that it is somehow an alternative to grammar. But this is an illusion. A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text: …. The requests and their responses in the short conversations between two people in part A of the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests by ETS consist of clause complexes formed by clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar. These clause complexes help the speakers in these conversations express their intentions in a logical way known as the logico-semantic relations among their clauses in Systemic Functional Grammar. The reason for the analysis of the clause complexes in the requests and their responses in these conversations also originates from Halliday‘s (1994:224) viewpoint: The clause complex is of particular interest in spoken language, because it represents the dynamic potential of the system – the ability to ‘choreograph’ very long and intricate patterns of semantic movement while maintaining a continuous flow of discourse that is 3 coherent without being constructional. This kind of flow is very uncharacteristic of written language. All the reasons above have encouraged us to conduct an analysis of clause expansion in the requests and their responses in these short conversations in light of Systemic Functional Grammar so as to know how it functions to display their typical discourse features, which can contribute to improving the teaching and learning of the conversations of this kind. 2. Aims of the study As stated in the title and the rationale for the study, this study is intended to find out the typical discourse features of the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests in light of clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar. To achieve this aim, the study attempts to answer the following research questions: 1. How does clause expansion function in relation to the other aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar to display the typical discourse features of the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests? 2. Which typical discourse features in light of clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar can be generalized from the analysis of the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests? 3. Scope of the study As stated in the aims of the study, within the framework of an M.A. minor thesis, we can only focus on the issues concerning clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar in the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests. These issues are the components of clause expansion and clause expansion-related aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar, which are discussed and realized throughout the study. Twenty short conversations containing requests and their responses were selected from Part A of the listening comprehension scripts of the book ―TOEFL Preparation Kit Workbook 2002- 2003, Volume 1‖ designed and introduced by ETS. Each of the short conversations 4 consists of two utterances, each of which is made by a man or a woman. Only the clause complexes in the requests and their responses are analyzed in light of clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar. The twenty short conversations under analysis were selected according to Quang‘s (2007:151-172) and Nguyen and Vinh‘s (2008:182-184) suggestions for identifying and using requests and their responses, which will be discussed in more detail in the introduction of chapter two of the dissertation. 4. Methods of the study The basic methods applied to this study are descriptive, comparative, and analytical methods of language research which are generally inductive. Firstly, the issues concerning clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar are extracted, described, compared, and discussed in chapter one of the thesis to set up the theoretical background underlying the analysis, discussion, and generalization in chapter two and part three of the dissertation. Then, the thirty-two clause complexes in the requests and their responses in the twenty selected short conversations are analyzed in light of clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar. In chapter two and part three of the thesis, the results of the study will be discussed and generalized based on the statistics to be able to contribute to improving the teaching and understanding of the conversations of this kind. 5. Design of the study This dissertation consists of three main parts: Part one presents the rationale for the study, the aims, scope, methods, and design of the study. Part two consists of two chapters. Chapter one discusses clause expansion and its relevant issues in Systemic Functional Grammar that underlie the analysis of the clause complexes in the requests and their responses in the short conversations in chapter two. Chapter two analyzes the clause complexes in the requests and their responses in the short conversations in light of clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar and discusses their typical discourse features. Each section of this chapter analyzes and discusses one aspect of expansion in the requests and their responses. Part three summarizes the major findings of the study, draws out the theoretical and pedagogical implications of these results, and suggests the directions for further research. 5 PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Introduction This chapter discusses the main issues concerning clause expansion in Systemic Functional Grammar that underlie the analysis of the clause complexes in the requests and their responses in the short conversations in chapter two. We will present an overview of Systemic Functional Grammar in which the clause and clause expansion creating the clause complexes play a crucial part. Then, the main components and features of the clause complex and clause expansion will be discussed. Projection, which is not the main issue of the study, will also be discussed briefly because it also contributes to clause expansion to create clause complexes. 1.2. Systemic Functional Grammar and the clause 1.2.1. A brief overview of Systemic Functional Grammar Systemic Functional Grammar is based on the functions of language suggested by Halliday (1970, 1985, cited in Van (2006a:28-29)). According to him, language performs three metafunctions which are ideational function, interpersonal function, and textual function. The ideational function reflects the speaker‘s experience of the real world, including the inner of his consciousness known as the ―content‖. The ideational function consists of two subtypes, namely the experiential function and logical function. Language gives structures to experience and helps determine our way of looking at things and combining things in a logical way to serve this function. The interpersonal function serves to establish and maintain social relations among people who play the role of a questioner or a respondent by asking or answering a question and getting things done. The textual function provides links with language itself and with the situation in which language is used. This function enables speakers and writers to create situationally relevant discourses. This function also enables listeners and readers to distinguish a discourse from a random set of utterances and sentences. According to Halliday‘s (1978, 1985, 1994, cited in Van (2005a, 2005b, 2006b), each of the three metafunctions above is realized through a different system. The ideational metafunction is realized through the transitivity system or system of process types. There [...]... understanding of the meanings of the conversations to some extent In the following section, the 24 interdependency and logical-semantic relations among the clauses in the clause complexes of the conversations will be analyzed and discussed in more detail 2.3 Expansion in the requests and their responses of the short conversations In the previous section, we have just analyzed and discussed the initial... The interdependency and logical-semantic relations among these embedded clauses and the other clauses in the clause complexes will be displayed in more detail in the next section of the thesis In this section, we have discussed some initial typical discourse features of the requests and their responses based on the analysis of the clause complexes in the conversations These discourse features can affect... explained, followed by a detail discussion of expansion and its components All the discussed issues in this chapter underlie the analysis in chapter two and the conclusion in part three of the thesis 18 Chapter 2: EXPANSION IN THE REQUESTS AND THEIR RESPONSES OF THE CONVERSATIONS 2.1 Introduction This chapter presents the analysis of the clause complexes in the requests and their responses in 20 short. .. 18.7% In paratactic elaboration, there are only inserted conjunctions which account for 8.3% in the requests and 10.4% in the responses In paratactic extension, there are both original and inserted conjunctions in which the original ones in the responses dominate with 16.6% while the original ones in the requests account for 2.1% The inserted ones in the requests and the responses account for 6.3% and. .. typical discourse features found in the conversations in terms of clause complex analysis In this section of the thesis, both the interdependency and the logico-semantic relations among the clauses in the clause complexes are analyzed and discussed in more detail The configuration of the clause complexes in the requests and their responses is modified in which the original conjunctions are highlighted in. .. respectively In paratactic enhancement, there are only inserted conjunctions in the requests, and the inserted conjunctions in the responses dominate with 14.5% while the inserted ones in the requests and the original ones in the responses account for 6.3% There are only original conjunctions in hypotactic expansion in the requests and the responses Hypotactic expansion accounts for only 27.1% Enhancement dominates... ―I‘m looking for …‖, ―I‘m calling to see …‖ In the following section, these twenty short conversations will be analyzed and discussed in terms of clause complex analysis, clause expansion analysis, and conjunction analysis respectively 19 2.2 Clause complexes in the requests and their responses of the short conversations In order to analyze the clause complexes in the requests and their responses. .. and finite Residue is composed of predicator, complement, and adjunct The textual metafunction is realized through the thematic structure The thematic structure consists of theme and rheme Theme coincides with the initial component(s) of the clause Thus, theme is known as the point of departure of the message of the clause Rheme is the remainder of the message which develops theme by adding more information... can be seen from the table above, the inserted conjunctions are in fact‖ for elaboration, and for extension, and ―so‖ for enhancement These conjunctions appear in the respective numbers of the clause complexes of the conversations listed in the table in which they appear ten times in the requests and thirteen times in the responses The total 23 number of the clause complexes using these three conjunctions... number the conversations from one to twenty, each of which consists of two utterances The first one is the request, and the second one is the response We also use the notation ―///‖ for the clause complex boundaries and the notation ―//‖ for the clause boundaries in the requests and their responses of the conversations The clause simplexes in the conversations do not have any notations The conjunctions in . typical discourse features of the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests in light of clause expansion in Systemic. typical discourse features of the requests and their responses in the short conversations in the listening comprehension section of the TOEFL PBT practice tests? 2. Which typical discourse features. their responses of the short conversations 19 2.3. Expansion in the requests and their responses of the short conversations 24 2.4. Conjunctions for expansion in the requests and their responses