Transactional and Interactional English Content

Report

Transactional and interactional English refer to different purposes of speech. In this activity was a little confusing to identify if it was transactional or interaction because we had a conversation different than a normal form than we usually do in our real life, since it was with a studying purpose guided by instructions. My partner and I said that it is difficult to have a conversation like this form, because even when we tried to do it naturally, at some point it looked as artificial speech.

Even when the conversation had characteristics of natural speech, since there are two people interacting, they give immediate feedback, there is a turn-taking interaction, people have shared knowledge and know the context around, they are yielding the turn, and it is suppose to be an interactional speech; it seems artificial for the following characteristics and it becomes transactional (school purpose).

-       Artificial intonation

-       Long Pauses

-       Lack of discourse markers

-       Clear sentence definition

-       Lack of expression

-       Lack of verbal fillers or any item for starting up

-       Lack of fillers of thinking devices, hedges

-       The conversation is kind of rigid.

To work with these characteristics, first, teachers need to know about spoken discourse. So, in order to solve the identified problems we have to know about them. First, we have to know some principals of a conversation as: maxim of quality, quantity, relation, and manner. We can teach our students these aspects, giving them tasks to analyze conversations and identifying problems related with these maxims. Then, we also can teach about social role of conversation and rules related, the students can be asked to make conversations, or to analyze conversations in shows, news, etc., and identify certain characteristics.

I think there is not much more to say, we know that these kind of activities are interactive, dynamic and students with any learning style can participate, so it is a great tool to use in the classroom and fundamental information for teachers to know.