Stage 3 guidelines for listening: Functions

Here are some functions objectives for Stage 3 for listening:

To express one's self indirectly

• To accomplish social functions with a complication or twist
• To ask questions and report information
• To understand what people mean when they express something indirectly, such as hinting, avoiding commitment, and hedging
• To understand arguments and abstract relationships between ideas, such as persuading, debating, negotiating, convincing, and giving advice

Here are some functions strategies for Stage 3 guidelines for listening:

• Advance organization

  Use a functions checklist for ideas about the kinds of communicative purposes people use language to express

• Analysis

  Analyze the scripts of social situations of everyday life and how people use language to accomplish their purposes. Try to determine what the real communicative purpose is behind what people are saying.

• Inquiry

  Ask a local friend about the indirect meanings that are attached to speech. When the words do not add up to the obvious meaning, what are the cues that bridge the gap?

• Practice

  Include practice activities in which you listen to people performing communicative functions.

• Selective attention

  Listen and watch for ways people express specific functions.

Here are some functions techniques for Stage 3 guidelines for listening:

The Dialogue techniques

• The Script Analysis technique
• The Participant Observation technique

Here are some functions activities for Stage 3 guidelines for listening:

The Social Visiting activity

• The Shopping trip activity
• The Join in the Work activity
• The Eating Out activity
• The Public Transport activity
• The Telephone Procedures activity

• Sociocultural themes: Daily life
• Sociocultural themes: Social relations

• Generic module: Stage 3 guidelines for listening: Functions
• In overview module: Stage 3: Listening modules
• In modular book: Guidelines for a Language and Culture Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In document collection: Other Resources
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 8 December 1998

© 1999 SIL International