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Understanding Text in Language Teaching

This document discusses discourse studies and analyzing texts beyond individual sentences. It explains that language occurs as whole texts, not isolated words or sentences, and teachers' priority is helping learners engage with and create texts. Discourse analysis studies how language is used communicatively in real situations, and text analysis is part of discourse analysis by examining features and uses of texts, with discourse being the language process and texts being the products.

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Debby Mulya
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108 views7 pages

Understanding Text in Language Teaching

This document discusses discourse studies and analyzing texts beyond individual sentences. It explains that language occurs as whole texts, not isolated words or sentences, and teachers' priority is helping learners engage with and create texts. Discourse analysis studies how language is used communicatively in real situations, and text analysis is part of discourse analysis by examining features and uses of texts, with discourse being the language process and texts being the products.

Uploaded by

Debby Mulya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Discourse Studies

(1)
Helena I. R. Agustien
hagustien@[Link]
Youll be able to explain
what text is and what its characteristic features are;

how to categorize and describe texts, e.g. according to their


genre, function, organization and style;

how to find, select and adapt texts;

how to exploit texts for language teaching and skills


development purposes;

how to unpack the hidden messages of texts;

how to use (literary) texts in the classroom;

how to evaluate and use learners texts.


To help you to

develop your skills and confidence;

reflect on what you do and why you do it;

inform your practice with theory;

improve your practice;

become the best teacher you can be.

Check out: [Link]


Text: Language Beyond the Sentence

A continuous piece of spoken or written language, especially


one with a recognizable beginning and ending.
Language is realized, first and foremost, as text. Not as
isolated sounds or words or sentences, but as whole texts.
Language users have to cope with texts.

They have to make sense of them and they have to produce


them.
Teachers top priority is to help learners engage with and
create texts.
Facts of life

The average American is targeted by 3000 messages


everyday.

Typical workers send and receive some 200 messages and


documents a day.

We are exposed to anything from 600 to 1600 advertising


messages a day.

In 2003, people in Britain were sending 56 million text


messages; by the end of 2004 they had sent 20 billion
messages.
Facts
Language teaching has traditionally been more concerned with
individual sentences rather than texts, as such.

Even in this supposedly communicative era, a lot of language


presentation and and materials available in published course books
are sentence based.

The reason: sentences are the building blocks of language.

But language always happens as text and not as isolated words and
sentences.

From an aesthetic, social or educational perspective, it is the text


which is the significant unit of language.
Going beyond sentence

it falls within the orbit of what is called discourse analysis.

Discourse is the way that language either spoken or written


is used for communicative effect in a real-world situation.

Discourse analysis is the study of such language, and the


analysis of features and uses of texts or text analysis is an
integral component of discourse analysis.

One way of looking at the distinction between discourse and


text is to think of discourse as a process and the text as the
product.

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