Page 550 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

528 Jonathan Newton

person at least to, um, to look at before you, before you post it. Even when
you send it to me to look at it must also be checked by others. Of course
when you’re doing a big chunk of work then that’s normal for us t- – we
always do that checking. Even with just simple letters make sure that
they’re looked at. It’s so easy to overlook just a simple mistake and the
less mistakes we send out the better

Sara is a team leader (i.e. manager) in a Government department, and her gentle
way of giving the team a directive as well as negative feedback about their writ-
ing reflects a ‘team’ culture in this particular workplace. Sara manages by con-
sensus and collaboration rather than coercion and directive. At a pragmaling-
uistic level we see this in features of her talk such as the use of inclusive third
person pronouns (‘we’re drafting’), downsizers (‘a couple of mistakes’), indi-
rect speech acts (‘I really ask for all of you to …’), expressions of understanding
(‘It’s so easy to overlook just a simple mistake’), and extended explanation lead-
ing up to the negative feedback and directive. These are all potentially valuable
targets for awareness-raising that highlight culturally specific ways of doing
workplace talk.

6.2.2. Awareness as noticing

Analysis of Sara’s talk leads us to the second formulation of awareness: aware-
ness as noticing. Tasks which require learners to analyse and interpret authentic
workplace talk encourage awareness as noticing of salient sociopragmatic fea-
tures of talk. As noted above, noticing of features in input is facilitated by prac-
tice opportunities that make learners aware of a gap between their performance
and the performance that they are exposed to in an authentic interaction. It is
also aided by the provision of explicit knowledge which makes non-obvious or
ambiguous features of input more salient.
Prompt questions are a simple yet effective way of encouraging noticing
since the questions themselves require learners to take a critical look at com-
munication and to become more aware of the processes involved in identifying
and interpreting the multiple meanings bound up in everyday interactions. The
following prompt questions lend themselves to interpretation of a range of so-
ciopragmatic features of workplace talk:

– What is the basic proposition?
– What other social meanings are being communicated? (e.g., disapproval,
surprise)
– How are these meanings being communicated (wording, tone, non-verbal
language)?
– What does the way people are talking to each other tell you about their rela-
tionship with each other?