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ChapterI.The meanings of the Linguistic contexts
Generally speaking, the Linguistic context can be divided into two major parts: situational context and sociocultural context.
1.1.In a narrow sense, the Linguistic context means the situational context, in Halliday’s opinion, the situational contexts include the setting, the way of talking, and participants, but the most well-known definitions of the situational context are those by Roman Jakobson(1960)and Dell Hymes(1974).Hymes divides it into eight elements: setting,role,function, notion,style,stress and intonation,grammar, vocabulary and language aids.These factors affect each other and decide which language form is appropriate. And Jakcbson(1960)thinks that context is that which the message refers to “eizable by the addressee and either verbal or capable of being verbalized”it is, in other words, the topic or prepositional content of utterance.(Jakobson,1960,353).
In setting a situational context, the speaker and hearer must be in the same spatial and temporal situation. And the words employed must be in the situation of both speaker and hearer. For example, in such a dialogue, one student turns to the teacher for help.
S:How do you say“leave”?
T:Lt depends,it could be‘weggehen’or‘assen’.what’sthe context?
S:“Leave the children”
T: well,……lassen ,but it depends on the rest of the sentences.
S:“leave the children in the woods”.
T:ah,then it might be “erlassen”who says that to whom?
S: l’m the mother and I say to the father:“ou should leave the children in the woods”
T: So, you should use the second personal singular familiar form.
The more remote the thing is spoken about, the more clue must be affected in order that it may be identified.
A single word or a single clue can also form a situational context. The call of Encore after a song in a concert hall needs no further detail for its interpretation. Fire! means different things when we shout aloud at the dead of night and when pronounced by an officer in presence of his troops,but in both cases the single word suffices.
As can be observed,the situational context often involves several different times and several different places.For example,the sentence,I remember your telling me that your father had traveled in Spain.Three times and at least places are here involved,yet the thing meant is perfectly clear.situational context can be of many kinds Encore!Fire! may be called“present situational context”In Napoleon was defeated at waterloo,it could be called “situation of imagination.So it is easy to set a right situation to increase the students”interestand motivation in learning English. Here, teachercan set situations by some CDs,some questions and English communication can be carried well. So without situation, communication could hardly be achieved.
1.2 Sociocultural context is a term originally coined by Malinowski to describe the institutional and ideological background knowledge shared by participants in speech events.This context,called by Fowler(1986:19)‘the community’store of established knowledge’consists of‘structure of expectation that allow people to make sense of the world around them.
For example, one student in college has been told that she shouldn’bow in English or to Americans, because that was nor considered appropriate. The teacher was trying to teach her a sociolinguistic rule in English,she was crushed.“lknow Americans don’ t‘bow’she said,‘but that’my culture, and if I don’t do that, I’not being respectful and I won’t be a good person. So when we make some communication we should pay attention to the culture back knowledge. This is only an example happened in real life. But when teaching English in classroom, teacher should let students be aware that many different culture points existing in learning English. So when in classroom ,the students perform their tasks such as role-play or on 杇oing communication with others, teacher need to keep in mind that the most important role the students has to play is to consider himself or herself as a foreigner in a new linguistic and cultural environment with a limited command of the target language. This has a great a pressure in classes because both teacher and students play the important part in creating the special and alternative context of culture in classroom.
1.3. The situational context and sociocultural can’t be isolated from each other.In certain sociocultural context ,people must obey the particular communicative rules when they use a certain language . and in a certain situational context, people should not only pay attention to the social communication rules but adjust themselves according to the factors of the situational context. That is, the situational context and sociocultural context affect each other and are complementary to each other.
ChapterII.The linguistic context and the communicative competence
“Competence”is a central issue in linguistics, whether in terms of abstract syntactic theory(as with Noam chomsky) or in terms of social interaction (as with Dell Hymes) . and the ability to use a language in its context should be described as communicative competence. Hymes thinks the communicative competence should include four types: grammar competence,sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and context competence. If we consider the sociolinguistic competence is the core of the language teaching, then the other three abilities must also be taken into consideration. Wallwork suggests that “sociolinguistic competence is necessary to language study and to attempt to study language without society is like studying anatomy without a body.?A knowledge of our society will enable us to predict with some degree of accuracy the probablitity of certain kind of language being used in any particular situation, and conversely give a sketch of language we can predict with some reliability, so now teachers not only have become particularly aware of the diversity in English but also are able to apply this concept in real teaching practice according to those concrete sociolinguistic description. For example, teachers are not content to choose a rather limited production model of the spoken language. instead,they try to provide a variety of models for the spoken language and learners be aware that the language may vary widely in pronunciation, morphology, syntax and lexis in different parts of the country ,among different social classes ,and among different age groups,then teachers should choose some examples to show this kind of variability. For example, let learners listen to or read some materials and ask them to compare how the same individual playing various social roles,may display forms of standard and nonstandard English in different context.By analyzing these difference,the students can have a better understanding of language variability and take those into consideration when they express themselves in classroom tasks such as role-play or discussion with other students.but in giving students different roles,teachers need to keep in mind that the most important role the student has to performance is to regard himself or herself as a foreigner in a new linguistic and cultural environment with a limited command of the target language. This has a great bearing on classes because both teacher and students are instruments in creating these special and alternative contexts of culture in classroom.
The context competence and strategic competence can be realized in certain language context and have their effects on communication. In a normal language context, we often communicate in discourse, not in a single phrase or sentence. A learner who can communicate with the correct language form has a strong context competence and knows how to use the signals to convey the information and conform it to the meaning. And according to these signals, they can understand each other better, in different language contexts, we can also make use of the strategic competence to start, end, maintain or extend a conversation. And the communication strategies we often used are such as avoidance, tolerance, suspense and accmmodation.
With the above theories, in communicative language teaching,class activities that simulate real-life situations help build pragmatic ,cultural. linguistic components of foreign language competence in an integrated manner. A constant aim for the language teacher should be to relate the language being taught to the students?environment and reality as much as possible. This should be done not only through isolated activities within the syllabus but also through a series of integrated contexts, roles and tasks that they conceivably could face some day, such as helping a foreigner visitor on the street or serving as a translator for a U.S Company. Communicative competence involves the ability to react mentally as well as verbally in such situation.
ChapterIII. How to set the Linguistic context.
Setting: refer to the time and place,that is,the physical set up of the class. Place includes: the space occupied by the teacher and the students; the movements of students within that space; the seating arrangement; the temperature, background noise place,size and quality of the back ground, ect. Time includes: the time devoted to teach activity,its timing within the whole lesson,its relative length, its pace, the presence or absence of current activities.
1.1The exact steps are as follows:
A. Use all kinds of teaching aids
In the classroom, students should be provided with a chance to experience the language in meaningful ways and try out their skills, so the teachers should try to use all kind of teaching aids to set the context for the students. And we should not only be acquainted with the use of flash cards and wall pictures, but also we need to learn to collect and make visual aids, such as pictures from magazines, used objectives like cans and boxes, flanned board, and stick figures. So with a piece of chalk,objects, people, animals, settings are created on the blackboard and the students”interest and attention are aroused. A relaxed atmosphere is created. Another technique is to use latern slides, not to tell a story but to create situation when the students are asked to act out their dialogues or play their roles against the back ground of a restaurant, street, playground. we can use an overhead project, then the students can talk like real “native speakers”.And when we use the pictures, we should know the picture with accompanying voice will impress the students greater than a printed text or the voice alone.
B. Design all kinds of activities
The role of the teacher in a communicative classroom is not an informer or a supervisor but a manager or helper. The teachers should tryto design all kinds of activities to help the students perform or interact among themselves as much as possible. But designing a course which prepares students to interact in specific roles in real life situations requires that the course designer first discovers that what part is played in these activities by thedifferent kinds. He must find out what topics come up often enough to be worth discussing in class, and we must also bear in mind the kind of people the pupil will eventually have to deal with. So we should le t the students have the opportunity to learn, and become proficient in the games and diversions of English speaking people. They should be able to participate in verbal competitions,where there are special activities to be associated with festivals or national holidays, students should be able to engage them at the appropriate time, decorating the Christmas tree and singing Christmas carols, celebrating GuyFawkes Day, rolling eggs at Easter, dressing up for trick-or-reat, preparing a Thanksgiving dinner, ect. On the other hand, much autonomous interaction can take place at the English language students?club or at class excursions and on picnics. So we can arrange some visits to see exhibitions of American or British paintings, to eat at restaurants which serve English or American specialities, to see films in English, or to attend performances by visiting theatrical companies. Groups within class may take turns preparing typical meals and inviting the others. we also invite some foreign guests and students to have a talk with us. And students should try to show their towns or schools to English speaking visitors or tourists. for these courses activities such as those describe.above will plunge the students into normal use of language.
C.Use paralinguistic features
Sometimes when we set the language context,using paralinguistic features,such as gestures, facial expressions and some actions will be more convenient and vivid than using teaching aids such as pictures or slides. eg In unit 5 of SB1A, when we explain how to grow cabbages, if we use the teaching aids such as pictures, or slides, it will take us a lot of time to prepare the teaching materials before class. But if we act out the process of growing cabbages in class with a few actions, the students will understand the process more vividly in a short while. So no matter when the teachers are present, demonstrate, drill, practice the teaching material we should pay attention to using paralinguistic features flexibly and appropriately. And paralinguistic features are complementary to the teaching aides in the English teaching
1.2 The principles of setting linguistic context
How to set the linguistic context correctly and flexibly becomes a problem which the teachers are concerned about.
A.The linguistic context must be real
Situational teaching aids meaning teaching both mean that the teaching materials should be those normal utterance made in reallife situations and be practiced in authentic everyday situations.
B.The linguistic context must be interesting
The more interest the learner has,the higher creativity he can develop.If the students can transfer the interest into a intrinsic need of learning English, the student will act from“force me to study”into “lwill study willingly.”
kC.The linguistic context must be relevant
Situations set for practice should be those which the students are likely to encounter in their present and future communication. It is a waste of time to ask them to discuss problems beyond their level of maturity and knowledge of the world.
D.The linguistic context must be definite.
When we set a linguistic context, we should take all the factors of linguistic context into account. For example, in a shop, we can start a talk between shopkeepers and customers. Then what is the objective of the talk? What kind of linguistic form can be used in the linguistic context? It requires that the teachers must give some clear or definite explanation to the students. Only when the students know what kind or roles they will play and what the objective of the talking is, they can avoid mechanical memorization and be able to start a free conversation in the linguistic context.
E.The linguistic context must be helpful in developing the students’creativity.
F.The linguistic context must be easily carried on.
The definite situation must be set by the students?English level. The best situation is that some difficulty exists in it, but students can still jump and get an apple.
As proved in my teaching process, setting right context is very helpful in developing the ability in learning English.
Conclusion
The way context is shaped through the English determines the types of meanings the students will be allowed to explore, discover, and exchange. The more potential meanings they are encouraged to discover, the richer the opportunities for learning. So in the process of English teaching, the teachers should not remain satisfied with the memorization of the dialogue , but should extend the development of learning skills through English study and proceed from the communicative use of the language. After the students have learned some language points in a unit, they must be asked to create a new situation to practise the points, thus the students can master them quickly and memorize deeply.
（作者单位：250200山东省章丘市第四中学）
Generally speaking, the Linguistic context can be divided into two major parts: situational context and sociocultural context.
1.1.In a narrow sense, the Linguistic context means the situational context, in Halliday’s opinion, the situational contexts include the setting, the way of talking, and participants, but the most well-known definitions of the situational context are those by Roman Jakobson(1960)and Dell Hymes(1974).Hymes divides it into eight elements: setting,role,function, notion,style,stress and intonation,grammar, vocabulary and language aids.These factors affect each other and decide which language form is appropriate. And Jakcbson(1960)thinks that context is that which the message refers to “eizable by the addressee and either verbal or capable of being verbalized”it is, in other words, the topic or prepositional content of utterance.(Jakobson,1960,353).
In setting a situational context, the speaker and hearer must be in the same spatial and temporal situation. And the words employed must be in the situation of both speaker and hearer. For example, in such a dialogue, one student turns to the teacher for help.
S:How do you say“leave”?
T:Lt depends,it could be‘weggehen’or‘assen’.what’sthe context?
S:“Leave the children”
T: well,……lassen ,but it depends on the rest of the sentences.
S:“leave the children in the woods”.
T:ah,then it might be “erlassen”who says that to whom?
S: l’m the mother and I say to the father:“ou should leave the children in the woods”
T: So, you should use the second personal singular familiar form.
The more remote the thing is spoken about, the more clue must be affected in order that it may be identified.
A single word or a single clue can also form a situational context. The call of Encore after a song in a concert hall needs no further detail for its interpretation. Fire! means different things when we shout aloud at the dead of night and when pronounced by an officer in presence of his troops,but in both cases the single word suffices.
As can be observed,the situational context often involves several different times and several different places.For example,the sentence,I remember your telling me that your father had traveled in Spain.Three times and at least places are here involved,yet the thing meant is perfectly clear.situational context can be of many kinds Encore!Fire! may be called“present situational context”In Napoleon was defeated at waterloo,it could be called “situation of imagination.So it is easy to set a right situation to increase the students”interestand motivation in learning English. Here, teachercan set situations by some CDs,some questions and English communication can be carried well. So without situation, communication could hardly be achieved.
1.2 Sociocultural context is a term originally coined by Malinowski to describe the institutional and ideological background knowledge shared by participants in speech events.This context,called by Fowler(1986:19)‘the community’store of established knowledge’consists of‘structure of expectation that allow people to make sense of the world around them.
For example, one student in college has been told that she shouldn’bow in English or to Americans, because that was nor considered appropriate. The teacher was trying to teach her a sociolinguistic rule in English,she was crushed.“lknow Americans don’ t‘bow’she said,‘but that’my culture, and if I don’t do that, I’not being respectful and I won’t be a good person. So when we make some communication we should pay attention to the culture back knowledge. This is only an example happened in real life. But when teaching English in classroom, teacher should let students be aware that many different culture points existing in learning English. So when in classroom ,the students perform their tasks such as role-play or on 杇oing communication with others, teacher need to keep in mind that the most important role the students has to play is to consider himself or herself as a foreigner in a new linguistic and cultural environment with a limited command of the target language. This has a great a pressure in classes because both teacher and students play the important part in creating the special and alternative context of culture in classroom.
1.3. The situational context and sociocultural can’t be isolated from each other.In certain sociocultural context ,people must obey the particular communicative rules when they use a certain language . and in a certain situational context, people should not only pay attention to the social communication rules but adjust themselves according to the factors of the situational context. That is, the situational context and sociocultural context affect each other and are complementary to each other.
ChapterII.The linguistic context and the communicative competence
“Competence”is a central issue in linguistics, whether in terms of abstract syntactic theory(as with Noam chomsky) or in terms of social interaction (as with Dell Hymes) . and the ability to use a language in its context should be described as communicative competence. Hymes thinks the communicative competence should include four types: grammar competence,sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and context competence. If we consider the sociolinguistic competence is the core of the language teaching, then the other three abilities must also be taken into consideration. Wallwork suggests that “sociolinguistic competence is necessary to language study and to attempt to study language without society is like studying anatomy without a body.?A knowledge of our society will enable us to predict with some degree of accuracy the probablitity of certain kind of language being used in any particular situation, and conversely give a sketch of language we can predict with some reliability, so now teachers not only have become particularly aware of the diversity in English but also are able to apply this concept in real teaching practice according to those concrete sociolinguistic description. For example, teachers are not content to choose a rather limited production model of the spoken language. instead,they try to provide a variety of models for the spoken language and learners be aware that the language may vary widely in pronunciation, morphology, syntax and lexis in different parts of the country ,among different social classes ,and among different age groups,then teachers should choose some examples to show this kind of variability. For example, let learners listen to or read some materials and ask them to compare how the same individual playing various social roles,may display forms of standard and nonstandard English in different context.By analyzing these difference,the students can have a better understanding of language variability and take those into consideration when they express themselves in classroom tasks such as role-play or discussion with other students.but in giving students different roles,teachers need to keep in mind that the most important role the student has to performance is to regard himself or herself as a foreigner in a new linguistic and cultural environment with a limited command of the target language. This has a great bearing on classes because both teacher and students are instruments in creating these special and alternative contexts of culture in classroom.
The context competence and strategic competence can be realized in certain language context and have their effects on communication. In a normal language context, we often communicate in discourse, not in a single phrase or sentence. A learner who can communicate with the correct language form has a strong context competence and knows how to use the signals to convey the information and conform it to the meaning. And according to these signals, they can understand each other better, in different language contexts, we can also make use of the strategic competence to start, end, maintain or extend a conversation. And the communication strategies we often used are such as avoidance, tolerance, suspense and accmmodation.
With the above theories, in communicative language teaching,class activities that simulate real-life situations help build pragmatic ,cultural. linguistic components of foreign language competence in an integrated manner. A constant aim for the language teacher should be to relate the language being taught to the students?environment and reality as much as possible. This should be done not only through isolated activities within the syllabus but also through a series of integrated contexts, roles and tasks that they conceivably could face some day, such as helping a foreigner visitor on the street or serving as a translator for a U.S Company. Communicative competence involves the ability to react mentally as well as verbally in such situation.
ChapterIII. How to set the Linguistic context.
Setting: refer to the time and place,that is,the physical set up of the class. Place includes: the space occupied by the teacher and the students; the movements of students within that space; the seating arrangement; the temperature, background noise place,size and quality of the back ground, ect. Time includes: the time devoted to teach activity,its timing within the whole lesson,its relative length, its pace, the presence or absence of current activities.
1.1The exact steps are as follows:
A. Use all kinds of teaching aids
In the classroom, students should be provided with a chance to experience the language in meaningful ways and try out their skills, so the teachers should try to use all kind of teaching aids to set the context for the students. And we should not only be acquainted with the use of flash cards and wall pictures, but also we need to learn to collect and make visual aids, such as pictures from magazines, used objectives like cans and boxes, flanned board, and stick figures. So with a piece of chalk,objects, people, animals, settings are created on the blackboard and the students”interest and attention are aroused. A relaxed atmosphere is created. Another technique is to use latern slides, not to tell a story but to create situation when the students are asked to act out their dialogues or play their roles against the back ground of a restaurant, street, playground. we can use an overhead project, then the students can talk like real “native speakers”.And when we use the pictures, we should know the picture with accompanying voice will impress the students greater than a printed text or the voice alone.
B. Design all kinds of activities
The role of the teacher in a communicative classroom is not an informer or a supervisor but a manager or helper. The teachers should tryto design all kinds of activities to help the students perform or interact among themselves as much as possible. But designing a course which prepares students to interact in specific roles in real life situations requires that the course designer first discovers that what part is played in these activities by thedifferent kinds. He must find out what topics come up often enough to be worth discussing in class, and we must also bear in mind the kind of people the pupil will eventually have to deal with. So we should le t the students have the opportunity to learn, and become proficient in the games and diversions of English speaking people. They should be able to participate in verbal competitions,where there are special activities to be associated with festivals or national holidays, students should be able to engage them at the appropriate time, decorating the Christmas tree and singing Christmas carols, celebrating GuyFawkes Day, rolling eggs at Easter, dressing up for trick-or-reat, preparing a Thanksgiving dinner, ect. On the other hand, much autonomous interaction can take place at the English language students?club or at class excursions and on picnics. So we can arrange some visits to see exhibitions of American or British paintings, to eat at restaurants which serve English or American specialities, to see films in English, or to attend performances by visiting theatrical companies. Groups within class may take turns preparing typical meals and inviting the others. we also invite some foreign guests and students to have a talk with us. And students should try to show their towns or schools to English speaking visitors or tourists. for these courses activities such as those describe.above will plunge the students into normal use of language.
C.Use paralinguistic features
Sometimes when we set the language context,using paralinguistic features,such as gestures, facial expressions and some actions will be more convenient and vivid than using teaching aids such as pictures or slides. eg In unit 5 of SB1A, when we explain how to grow cabbages, if we use the teaching aids such as pictures, or slides, it will take us a lot of time to prepare the teaching materials before class. But if we act out the process of growing cabbages in class with a few actions, the students will understand the process more vividly in a short while. So no matter when the teachers are present, demonstrate, drill, practice the teaching material we should pay attention to using paralinguistic features flexibly and appropriately. And paralinguistic features are complementary to the teaching aides in the English teaching
1.2 The principles of setting linguistic context
How to set the linguistic context correctly and flexibly becomes a problem which the teachers are concerned about.
A.The linguistic context must be real
Situational teaching aids meaning teaching both mean that the teaching materials should be those normal utterance made in reallife situations and be practiced in authentic everyday situations.
B.The linguistic context must be interesting
The more interest the learner has,the higher creativity he can develop.If the students can transfer the interest into a intrinsic need of learning English, the student will act from“force me to study”into “lwill study willingly.”
kC.The linguistic context must be relevant
Situations set for practice should be those which the students are likely to encounter in their present and future communication. It is a waste of time to ask them to discuss problems beyond their level of maturity and knowledge of the world.
D.The linguistic context must be definite.
When we set a linguistic context, we should take all the factors of linguistic context into account. For example, in a shop, we can start a talk between shopkeepers and customers. Then what is the objective of the talk? What kind of linguistic form can be used in the linguistic context? It requires that the teachers must give some clear or definite explanation to the students. Only when the students know what kind or roles they will play and what the objective of the talking is, they can avoid mechanical memorization and be able to start a free conversation in the linguistic context.
E.The linguistic context must be helpful in developing the students’creativity.
F.The linguistic context must be easily carried on.
The definite situation must be set by the students?English level. The best situation is that some difficulty exists in it, but students can still jump and get an apple.
As proved in my teaching process, setting right context is very helpful in developing the ability in learning English.
Conclusion
The way context is shaped through the English determines the types of meanings the students will be allowed to explore, discover, and exchange. The more potential meanings they are encouraged to discover, the richer the opportunities for learning. So in the process of English teaching, the teachers should not remain satisfied with the memorization of the dialogue , but should extend the development of learning skills through English study and proceed from the communicative use of the language. After the students have learned some language points in a unit, they must be asked to create a new situation to practise the points, thus the students can master them quickly and memorize deeply.
（作者单位：250200山东省章丘市第四中学）