CONTEXTUALIZING LINGUISTIC INPUT

Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching B. KUMARAVADIVELU

Context
o Extremely meaningul provides information without which language communication makes little sense. o Though it is an important concept, its meaning is not clear. o Halliday and Hassan:

the joining of realities that make up a context

Four realities

* Linguistic

* Extralinguistic * Situational * Extrasituational

Linguistic Context
Immediate linguistic environment: grammatical and lexical level within a sentence o between sentences. Sentence level: the environment helps to identify the meaning of words.

Eg. They own a house on the banks of the Medina River. Eg. My salary is paid directly into my bank.

Intersentential level: relations of semantic meaning between sentences in a text (Cohesion).

Eg: A: whats the weatherlike? B: Its quite warm. cohesive

A: whats the weather like? B: The dog is outside. Not cohesive

Extralinguistic context
Suprasegmental features such as stress, intonation, pitch and key by means of which participants asses others intentions.

Eg: Indian and Pakistani women serving in a cafeteria at a British Airport using falling intonation to make a polite offer, where a rising intonation was needed. A: / /Chicken? A: / / Chicken?

Situational context

The illocutionary force of the text: WHO, TO WHOM, WHERE, WHEN, HOW.

Hymes: SPEAKING S etting P articipants

E nds
A ct sequence K ey I nstrumentalities COHERENCE

N orms
G enre

Extrasituational context

Social, cultural, political and ideological contexts shape meaning. wider frames of interpretation that vary from culture to culture.

Eg: Hello, Margie. How are you? Oh, I see youve put on
weight

A remark with good intentions uttered by a Zambian

to an American friend in a cross-cultural encounter.

It is considered unappropiate since it sounds rude where American cultural values and expectations operate. Results in miscommunication and a clash of conventional patterns.

Microstrategies for contextualizing

Role play Timeline Cloze Procedures News stories

In closing
Successful language communication is a matter of realities coming together that make up linguistic, extralinguistic, situational and extrasituational contexts. All of them contribute to the process of meaning-making. Then Teaching language necessarily demands contextualization of linguistic input.