Overview

In Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics, Michael McCarthy presents a series of studies, which serve to conclude both how different genre classifications of spoken language can be determined and the status that spoken language should hold within the classroom study of applied linguistics and the L2 classroom in general. His book addresses issues applicable to language teachers and students and professors of applied linguistics.

Although the book is basically a collection of studies, the format of the book requires that it be read in order and it its entirety. This is particularly the case in consideration of the first three chapters, which really lay the ground work for the author’s main points. The book also requires that the reader have some previous knowledge of corpus linguistics; a student unfamiliar with the field might have trouble with some of the terms within the book.

Content Summary

McCarthy’s book consists of a collection of new and revised papers (previously published from 1988-1996). His studies are primarily qualitative; however, he includes some quantitative studies. The author views qualitative research as the most valuable in “gathering useful pedagogical insights from close observation of how people ‘do’ everyday talk” (McCarthy 1)

In the introductory chapter, McCarthy outlines the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English corpus project (CANCODE) from which most of his in-text examples are drawn. He explains that the initial corpus consisted of a mere 1,061,274 running words of informal spoken English; (however, at the time of writing the corpus was being expanded to 5 million words). McCarthy recognizes that this corpus is relatively small to today’s standards, but insists that rather than deeming it so, it is more important to “consider it in relation to the development of spoken corpora in general” (6). He goes on to consider the study in relation to other corpus studies and offers insight into the status of spoken language in language study and teaching historically. He emphasizes that familiarizing oneself with earlier –and smaller- studies is important in avoiding repetition.

In Chapter 2, McCarthy identifies a theory of speech by classifying genres of speech. He uses examples from CANODE “to demonstrate how extracts controlled for variables such as goal-type and context-type can be seen to display similarities at the lexico-grammatical level which fit in with the higher-order features of generically-oriented activity” (47). For example, he illustrates that in spoken language, as in written language, the adherence to an organizational structure may or may not be important. For instance, if four housemates were engaged in conversation about their day, it would not necessarily be inappropriate for one housemate to suddenly compliment another on their earrings for example. This kind of switch in conversation is acceptable in informal genre; however, given a formal speech genre, one would not expect such a switch in topic.

In Chapter 3, McCarthy addresses what should be taught about spoken language. He examines the usefulness, universality, and transferability of teaching the following features or transactions: exchanges and adjacency pairs, discourse markers, ellipsis, openings and closings. He observes that there are problems in teaching transactions and recognizes that in teacher-fronted classrooms, students may not be able to observe transition marking naturally. There is also the simple fact that teachers might not see importance in teaching their students to pause or insert markers like: ok, now, really and so on. Later in the chapter he concludes that there is much to be taught about spoken language. He replaces the traditional 3Ps (Presentation-Practice-Production) with the 3Is (Illustration-Interaction-Induction) as a starting off point.

Chapters 4 and 5 are focused on grammar and discourse. In chapter 4, McCarthy requests that we look and teach beyond traditional grammar boundaries. He illustrates that certain aspects of grammar are better examined when looked at in context and states that particular grammatical paradigms do not transfer from written to spoken grammar (and vise-versa). He uses the past perfect as an example. He concludes that teachers should focus on teaching the mostly likely grammatical forms rather than deterministic rules. In chapter 5, he addresses the potential danger in considering written and spoken grammar to be totally different grammars and suggests that comparison between the two could serve to be a helpful teaching method.

McCarthy discusses vocabulary teaching in chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 focuses on fixed vocabulary and questions whether students actually use the topic-centered vocabulary they are told to learn. McCarthy finds, in observing the CANODE, that subjects only use a small percentage of such vocabulary and that the majority of words used in conversation are fixed vocabulary (fixed expressions and idioms) and lexical words such as: know, well, get/got, go, think, right. Chapter 7 is a continuation of the vocabulary discussion, but specifically addresses the teaching of idioms. An interesting support in favor of teaching idioms that McCarthy makes is that the use of idioms is not random and plays a key role in social solidarity, so essentially, a language learner who is unexposed to the study of idioms in speech patterns might never achieve social solidarity with native speakers. He also observes the frequent occurrence of idioms in storytelling.

In chapter 8, McCarthy returns to the issue of grammar observing reported speech. He presents two extremes in speech reporting: literature and storytelling. While the literature appears much more complex, he shows the complexity of the storytelling. He observes for example that the transitions used in conversation in literature are rarely-if ever- used in spoken conversation. The same goes for other written text. Chapter 8 concludes with suggestions for the selection of reported speech used in language teaching.

Resources

While this book does not include sample lessons or even detailed examples to help a teacher develop a method for teaching spoken language, McCarthy includes distinct guidelines helpful in applying his conclusions to teaching. Such guidelines are typically found in the concluding remarks of each chapter and specifically may be found on the following pages:

On pg. 47, the Principals of pedagogically driven theory of spoken language in applied linguistics are provided. The final principal “Observation of spoken language use by participants in real encounters of various kind is the first step in building language syllabuses and teaching materials” is particularly straight-forward and sums up McCarthy’s stance.
In chapter 3, McCarthy includes a list focusing on questions to consider in, “the transaction and its ‘teachability’” (51). He answers these questions on subsequent pages.
Section 3.3 (66) “Bringing the arguments together: pedagogical modeling,” suggests what educators should teach about the spoken language and how (using the “Three Is”) they should do it.
The conclusion of chapter 4 (86) outlines the “grammar-as-discourse” approach to teaching grammar.
The concluding remarks of chapter 5, lists bulleted benefits of contextualized grammatical statements to language teachers who are teaching grammar (106).
Chapter 6 includes samples of fixed expression (120) and a chart of the 50 most frequent words in both written and spoken English (123) found in the CANCODE data.
In chapter 7, 7.6 outlines the conclusions that McCarthy draws about the function of idioms. This chapter particularly fascinated me because I had never considered the abundance of idiom usage in everyday language (examples of this are provided throughout the chapter).
Finally, the closing Chapter, outlines Principals for teaching using authentic speech data (173).