DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is an important branch of applied linguistics which emphasis is on making it easier to understand written and spoken texts; these pieces of language that are commonly called speeches. Discourse is defined as a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative. (Crystal 1992:25).

The main domain of discourse analysis focus on what should be taught in the classroom in order to facilitate learners to comprehend and produce more native like speech participating in real conversations.

Most of the time language classes are taught only at the grammar and vocabulary level; however, what is missing there is a full understanding of cohesive devices, frames and phrases that are used in the real world. Students might understand a single sentence; nonetheless, when they are put together in a speech the might pass a hard time trying to fully comprehend the message, and that is because the sum of the parts is not equal to the whole. This knowledge is really helpful for second language teachers when teaching this features that will facilitate students interaction, in an oral and written form. In the same way learners benefit from knowing and using these pieces of language that many times are strategies to fill gaps, continue the speech, gain time to think and process information, and moreover to know certain linguistic devices that help make the same utterance or sentence sound more or less formal depending on the contexts it is used.

Discourse analysis is also concerned with how students are involved in the learning process; being established that students must interact, negotiate meaning, request for explanation in order to acquire a language, it is also necessary to teach different skills on the grounds of discourse analysis’ offerings (Trappes-Lomax 2004:153). Discourse analysis’ study helps us to interpret better written texts and by consequence to teach features that are necessary in order to understand what the writer wanted to express, features such as types of texts, arranging and cohesive devises.

I consider very important the way we teach vocabulary in the classroom, how can help students if we teach synonymy, homonymy and collocations to make it easier for students to manage the target language lexis. ‘’It is most profitable to teach new terminology paying close attention to context and co-text (phrases that surround a given word) that new vocabulary appears in which is especially helpful in teaching and learning aspects such as formality and register’’ (McCarthy 1991:64)

A second language teacher must have a wide range of knowledge not only in the target language itself but in strategies that facilitate this exceptional area of human development ‘’language’’ , discourse analysis is a way of researching many aspects of how we create language and how we can better understand and use better a second language.

REFERENCES:

· http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/discourse.htm

· http://eamonfulcher.com/discourse_analysis.html

· http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/cis/wp/johnsoja/whatisdiscourse/index.html

· http://grammar.about.com/od/d/g/discanalysisterm.htm