FEATURES OF SPOKEN ENGLISH GRAMMAR MOSTLY USED …

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FEATURES OF SPOKEN ENGLISH GRAMMAR MOSTLY USEDIN CLASSROOM DISCUSSION

IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROGRAM(An Educational Issue in Teaching Grammar for EFL Students)

Romi Febrianto

English Department, Institut Agama Islam [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Presently, it is widely known that grammar is not only as a set of rules that outlines correctusage and involves the examination of grammar as an object, but it is also as a tool. This is

called as functional grammar. Functional grammar has wider implication and uses of language.It can be a best support and allow the speaker to be more clearly and accurately expressing their

ideas in communication.Then, this also makes the grammar of spoken and written languagediffer.This study was conducted to analyze and find out the features of spoken English grammar

that mostly occurred in the classroom discussion.

Key Words: Features of Spoken English Grammar,Classroom Discussion.

INTRODUCTION

iscussing about communication, there areat least two forms. They can be in the

form of spoken and written one. Each of themhas its own characteristics. Specifically,Doshiand Ray (2008) explain that spoken languageis one of the most intuitive forms of interactionbetween humans and others. Moreover, spokenlanguage as explained by White onQualifications and Curriculum Authority(2004: 6) deserves attention in its own rightbecause of the special and distinctcharacteristics. This enables speaker tocommunicate complex ideas and feelings inchanging and fluid environments. It issupported byBiber et al. (2002: 427) explainssome characteristics of spoken language, suchas: spoken language appears to be untidy,omits words or phrases and tends to beadditive, repetitive, interactive andvague.Consequently, these characteristics ofspoken language create some distinctions towritten. One of the distinction is aboutgrammar.

Meanwhile, spoken grammar can beviewed from three different perspectives. Thefirst view rejects the existence of any grammarexcept written grammar (Leech, 2000),although nowadays, with advances in corpuslinguistics and analysis of spoken corpora, thisview is not taken seriously. The second viewholds that there is no special grammar ofspoken language, and its proponents. Expertsbelieve that both spoken and written languagehave same grammar performing. They arguethat speech and writing draw on the sameunderlying grammatical system rather than ontwo separate systems. The last view, however,maintains that there is a special grammar ofspoken language. Carter and McCarthy (1995)highlight the grammatical features of spokenlanguage largely neglected by standardgrammars and somehow take the view of anew grammar of speech. Nevertheless, theystate that “spoken language and writtenlanguage are not sharply divided but exist on acontinuum”. As Wendy and Lam (2002: 250)point out, “spoken language is not writtenlanguage spoken aloud,” but it has its own

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features and structures that differ from writtenlanguage.

Then, since the grammar of spokenlanguage is different from written,consequently the grammatical features ofspoken discourse is also different.White(2004:15) claims that there are at leastsix features of spoken English grammar. Theyare ellipsis (omission of subject and verb),heads (the occurrence of noun/noun phrase atbeginning) and tails (the occurrence of clauseat the end),deixis (spatial and temporal deixis),spoken clause structure (the occurrence ofcoordinating and subordinating conjunction),vague language and modal expression. Thesesix features are summarized and gotten fromthe result of CANCODE spoken corpus.CANCODE stands for “Cambridge andNottingham Corpus of Discourse in English”.The corpus was established at the Departmentof English Studies, University of Nottingham,UK. It consists of five million words oftranscribed conversations. These features ofspoken English grammar were the core pointin this research.

Therefore, people need to think andconsider about the spoken English grammar intheir communication, especially for teachingand learning English as a foreign languageactivity. This is because the current trends ofteaching English which has shifted from ageneral notion of proficiency or competencetowards skills-based approaches or called byCommunicative Language Teaching (CLT).Moreover, talking about CLT is fundamentallyconcerned with making meaning in thelanguage, whether by interpreting someoneelse’s message, expressing one’s own, ornegotiating when meaning is unclear.

English graduate program at the StateUniversity of Padang (UNP) is one ofinstitution which offers a course of teachingand learning English as a foreign language(EFL). It provides the students to have goodquality in English both orally and written,because sooner or later the students areexpected to be professional English teachers orlecturers who have good skills especially inspeaking. Dealing with EFL learning syllabusat English graduate program of UNP, most ofthe teaching and learning processes apply

presentation and discussion. Each meeting,one of group presents certain topic and thenfollowed by discussion section.Thesediscussion and presentation can be the bestway to see the classroom interaction betweenlecturer and student, student and student, andlecturer and a group of students.

Dealing with classroom discussion,McGonial (2005:1), points out someadvantages of classroom discussion. They are:1) Increasing students’ comfort with thespecialized language and methods of a field. 2)Developing critical thinking. 3) Developingproblem solving. Shortly, it can be concludedthat discussion is a medium for learners andteacher, learners and learners to interact eachother which deals with some particular topics

As stated previously, the major goal ofthe CLT is to develop students’ abilities tocommunicate in meaningful context.Unfortunately, the goal of CLT has not fullyreached yet at UNP. Based on the experienceduring studying at UNP, the students seemedto speak not effectively, interactively andcommunicatively. They were like bookish andtended to use complete sentence during theclassroom interaction.

Furthermore, the classroomobservation was done also in order to supportthe phenomena that related to the spokengrammar that used by the students’ in theirutterances in the classroom discussion. It wasdone on March 4th, 2015. The result of theclassroom observation showed that onlyseveral features of spoken English grammartend to be used, such as discourse marker (thestudents used words/phrases like I think,because, I mean) and modal expressions (thestudents used words/phrases like maybe and Idon’t know) in the students’ utterances in theclassroom discussion.

Staying on the phenomena abovewhich related to the students’ spoken languagethat was not interactive, effective andcommunicative one and because of theimportance of spoken English grammar, sothat this article presents the features of spokenEnglish grammar mostly used by students ofUNP in the classroom discussion.



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RESEARCH METHOD

The type of this research is descriptivequalitative research. This type of researchdetermines and reports the way things are.Hence, this research explained the features ofspoken English grammar mostly used in theclassroom discussion at graduate EnglishEducation Program at the State University ofPadang.

The data of this research were thetranscription of utterances of the features ofspoken English grammar in the classroomdiscussion used by the students of EnglishGraduate program at the State University ofPadang. The source of data was the students ofEnglish Graduate program in the first semesterat UNP who took a subject by applyingdiscussion in the learning process. There wereabout 72 students from three different classesnamely A, B and C. Moreover, at the firstsemester there were six subjects, namelyTrends in TEFL, Academic Writing, AppliedLinguistic, Advance Sociolinguistic, ResearchMethod and Statistic. All of those subjectsmostly applied discussion in the learningprocess, but the data were taken in AppliedLinguistic subject. This was due to Appliedlinguistic subject was a subject that applieddiscussion in the teaching and learningprocess, and the students were forced to use orspeak English during the classroom discussion.In short, this was one of the consideration totake the data in the Applied Linguistic subject.

There were two instruments used togather the data, namely observation sheet andvideo recorder. Observation sheet was used toobserve how the features of spoken Englishgrammar occurred during classroomdiscussion. Then, video recorder was used torecord the students’ utterances in theclassroom discussion. The recording providednaturalistic material and it was a kind ofauthentic instrument. The data were recordedfor five sections or times from three differentclasses which applied discussion in theteaching and learning process.

The data were gathered by doingobservation in the classroom discussion forseveral times and the observation guidelineswere used. Then, coming to the class and

observing the discussion based on theobservation guidelines and then writing somenotes based on what were found during thediscussion were done. The aim of observationwas to get real detail practice of features ofspoken grammar during classroom discussion.Then, video recorder was used to record theclassroom discussion in order to get whatreally happens in classroom and how thegrammar of spoken language occurred. Theresearcher got involved in the classroomdiscussion as an observer while doingrecording. It was done for some periods tocollect data.

Moreover, in order to check the truthworthiness of the data, the triangulationtechnique was used. The triangulation is atechnique of checking validity of the data thatutilize something outside the data as checkingor comparing toward the data. In this research,the data were collected by using variousinstruments such as video recorder andobservation sheet. The data were gatheredfrom three different classroom discussions.The researcher also did analysis based onvarious theories from the first and secondsources. Regarding to this research, the datawere derived from five recordings ofclassroom discussion from different classes.Hence, it can be stated that the truth-worthiness of this data and instruments havebeen reached.

After collecting the data that weresufficient needed from the video recording ofdiscussion and observation sheet, the datawere analyzed. There were several steps inanalyzing the data collected. The first isrecording the data by using video recorder andobserving by using observation sheet. Afterthat, the video recordings were transcribed. Intranscribing the video recording, the code wasgiven to classify the utterances of features ofspoken English grammar from each recording.Then, the features of spoken English grammarof each transcription were put and identifiedinto table and explained them into analysis.The features were classified based on thetheories from some experts.

Furthermore, the researcher observedand classified how the features of spoken



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English grammar occurred during theclassroom discussion by observing the videorecording and classifying them based onrelated theories. Then, to see the percentage ofthe grammatical features of spoken Englishthat mostly occurred in classroom discussion,the formula suggested by Sugiono (2010) wasused. The formula is as follows:

P = F/N X 100%P: Percentage of grammatical featuresF: Frequencies of grammatical featuresN: Number of grammatical features

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The research finding is explained inthis part deals with the features of spokenEnglish grammar mostly used in classroomdiscussion. It can be seen in the followingexplanation.

The data of this research werecollected in the forms of words, phrases andsentences used by the students in theirutterances in classroom discussion. In thisresearch, there were five recordings ofclassroom discussion. Then, the data wereobtained from the transcription of theclassroom discussion.

After analyzing the transcription offive recordings of classroom discussion, theresearch finding about the features of spokenEnglish grammar used by the students in theclassroom discussion has been drawn. Words,phrases and sentences included in eachfeatures of spoken English grammar werecategorized into a table. As a result, eachfeatures of spoken English grammar used bythe students in the classroom discussion can beseen completely in the following table:

Table 1: The Features of Spoken English Grammar that were Found in the Five DataRecordings

No. Recording I Indicators1 Tail Reinforcement (voice, right, eee… 18 months later),

Interrogatives (is it right?)

2 Deixis Now, then, here3 Ellipsis Omission of subject4 Spoken clause structure And, so

5 Vague language About, like6 Modal Expression Maybe, can, I think, should, have to, could, may

No. Recording II Indicators1 Tail Reinforcement (Can affect the target language)

Interrogative (right?)

2 Deixis Here, then, now3 Ellipsis subject and the verb (any contribution or first language

right?)4 Spoken clause structure And

5 Vague language About, like, how do we call this?, what we call this?

6 Modal Expression Can, I think, have to, possible, maybe, could, need to,should, must

No. Recording III Indicators1 Tail (we can say that such as American people)



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Reinforcement (… What factor) interrogative (right?)2 Deixis Then, here, now3 Ellipsis Omission of subject and verb (Maybe want to give

additional information?)4 Spoken clause structure And, so5 Vague language About, like, what we call6 Modal Expression Maybe, can/could, need to, I don’t know, I think

No. Recording IV Indicators1 Tail Interrogative (… right), Reinforcement (… you get it

my point, and … in general)2 Deixis Then, here, now3 Ellipsis The omission of subject and verb (how the teacher

apply the turn taking aaa… in the classroom? and anyaddition?)

4 Spoken clause structure And5 Vague language About, like, something like that6 Modal Expression I think, can/could, maybe, have to, should, need to

No. Recording V Indicators1 Tail Interrogative (right?) and reinforcement (That’s it)2 Deixis Then, here3 Ellipsis Omission of subject and the verb (tense less?)

4 Spoken clause structure And, so

5 Vague language About, like, can be called, they called, what we called

6 Modal Expression Maybe, can, could, should, I think, have to, may

a) Deixis

Dealing with deixis, it occurred in allof the data recording. Deixis was one of thefeatures of spoken English grammar that oftenused by the students in the classroomdiscussion. The occurrence of deixis insomeone’s utterances was to describe theorientational features of language, includingwords and phrases which point directly toparticular features of the immediate situation.In the first data recording (20 times ofoccurrence), it was found the words now, thenand here in the students’ utterances as theindication of the occurrence of deixis, and it isas well as in the second (14 times ofoccurrence), the third (14 times of

occurrences) and the fourth data recording (25times of occurrence). Meanwhile, in the fifthdata recording only then and here which werefound in the students’ utterances (12 times ofoccurrence). The occurrences of deixis in thestudents’ utterances can be seen in theexamples below:Student: Thank you for the last speaker, now

we come to the next session aaa… itis discussion session if you havesomething to be discussed pleaseraise your hand!

Student: … ok cohesion focus on lexical andphrasal hesitation and thenanaphora, third syntacticconjunction …



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Student: … aaa… narration here that meansthat aaa… everybody has ability totell the story …

Dealing with the example above, thestudents used now, then and here in theirutterances to indicate that they were talkingabout point or period in time matches the timeof their utterance. They used now, then andhere to indicate the time and place when theywere in the classroom discussion. As a result,the listeners or the audience understood thatthe word now, then and here mean the timeand place which indicate the period in theclassroom discussion.

In short, it can be concluded that onlynow, then and here were found in the students’utterances as the indication of deixis in theclassroom discussion.b) Ellipsis

The next features of spoken Englishgrammar which occurred in the data recordingis ellipsis. Ellipsis means that when the subjectand verbs are omitted by the speaker. Theoccurrence of ellipsis in students’ utteranceswas not as many as deixis. The ellipsisoccurred when the speakers can assume thatthe listeners know enough about people andthings in the immediate situation. It can beseen in the examples of utterance below:

Student: Aaa… any other additionalinformation about the example Lesviask?

In that utterance, actually it was notcomplete yet, there was no subject. But, thelistener knew what the speaker said. Thespeaker said it to ask to the listeners abouttheir point of view on the previous topic,rather they had additional information or not.By using ellipsis or omitting some words inthe utterances, the speaker can create efficientand clear communication.

Relating to the data finding, it wasfound both omission of subject and verbappeared in the data recording, except in thefirst recording (only omission of subject). Inshort, it can be concluded that the students

used ellipsis in their utterances in theclassroom discussion.

c) Head and Tail

Furthermore, based on the datarecording and transcript, it was also foundsome students’ utterances used head and tail inthe classroom discussion. Head allows thespeakers to highlight the topic they want totalk about before commenting on it, givingboth the speaker and the listener moreprocessing time in real time communication.Meanwhile tail deal with the real timeprocessing and interactiveness of speech byallowing the speakers to both edit theircomments and give evaluative statements oftopics. The function of tail including clarifyinga comment, expressing a personal attitude andserving an interpersonal function. Theexamples of head and tail can be understood inthe following examples:

Student: And the most important thing that likethe presenter said that it is about themovie aaa… aaa… horror story,and… this is also give social aaa…voice, social voice about American,right, like presenter said before.

Student: we can say that such as Americanpeople, they tend to be individual sothey (inaudible), but in Asia aaa…most of the society aaa… have thesocial construction, so they… sothey have high social construction.

Based on the examples above, the firstis the example of tail. The speaker used “right,like presenter said before” to help to reinforcewhat was said, or it can also to add emphasisand ensure that the listener did not losereference to the original topic. Then, in thesecond example it belongs to the head. Thespeaker said “we can say that such asAmerican people”, it is a kind of noun phrasewhich was placed at the beginning of a clausethat was then followed by a subsequentpronoun (they tend to be individual so they,but in Asia aaa… most of the society aaa…) toensure that the listener follow the reference.



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Dealing with the five data recordings,it was found that 5 times of the occurrence oftail in the first recording. Then, in second, thethird and the forth recording, tail occurred 3time in the students’ utterances. For the lastrecording, tail occurred 6 times.It can beconcluded that the students mostly used tails inthe form of interrogative and reinforcement.

d) Modal Expression

The next features of spoken Englishgrammar that occurred in each data recordingis modal expression. Modal expression is oneof the most frequent that occurred in thestudents’ utterances in the classroomdiscussion. The occurrence of modalexpression was signed by the use of modalverbs, marginal modal, and semi modals.

Regarding to the data description, itwas discovered some indicators in the fivedata recordings which indicated the modalexpression. The indicators that were found inthe form of words, phrases and sentence. Theywere like: Maybe, can, I think, should, have to,could, may, possible, maybe, need to, must,and I don’t know.

Then, dealing with modal expression,it was found 23 times of occurrence in the firstrecording. Then, 28 times were found in thesecond recording. In the third recording, it wasfound 31 times of the occurrence of modalexpression. For the forth and the fifthrecording, modal expressions were found 20and 28 times. The occurrences of modalexpression in students’ utterances can be seenin the examples below:

Student: Before we… before we do narrationeee… before we get narration we donarrating, maybe narrating is justlike classes.

Student: we can tell the… story even the storynot happen to us, we can create thestory, so aaa… narration is the skillthat everyone brings to school heremeans that aaa…

Student: Ooo… I think if we talk about aaa…the narration in your statement, butyou don’t give example whynarrating, aaa… my question basedon your statement and give theexample…

Student: How they do twice in…. research andwhy should wait aaa… until 8months later? Eee… 18 monthslater?

Student: you have to find that cost, cost islike lack.

Student: how are they related or how couldyou say that these two articlesrelated to applied linguistic?

Student:May I try mam?

e) Vague Language

Moreover, the less features of spokenEnglish grammar which found in the students’utterances in the classroom discussion werevague language. Vague language is signed bythe individual general lexical terms (e.g. thing,stuff and whatever) as well as high frequencyverbs. The function of vague language can beused when someone does not the name ofsomething (do you call it?, what’s it called it?etc.). Then, when someone wants to makethings sound less factual (about, kind of, sortof) and when someone wants to talk aboutgroups and categories (necklaces, braceletsand things like that). Relating to the datadescription and analysis, it was found somevague languages from the five data recordings.

In the first data recording, the wordslike about and like became as the indicationsof the occurrence of vague language in thestudents’ utterances (20 times of occurrence).Then for second data recording (24 times ofoccurrence), the words or phrases like about,like, how do we call this and what we call thissigned the occurrence of vague language.Furthermore, for the third (26 times ofoccurrence), the fourth (16 times ofoccurrence) and the fifth (34 times of



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occurrence) data recordings there were somewords or phrases that can be as indication ofthe occurrence of vague language. They wereabout, like, what we call, something like that,can be called and they called. Relating to thefive data recordings, it can be said that theoccurrence of vague language in students’utterances in the classroom discussion wasproved by some words or phrases like about,like, can be called, they called, how do we callthis? what we called, and something like that.

f) Spoken Clause Structure

Spoken clause structure related to thecharacteristic of spoken language thatspontaneous, with only limited planning andthinking time. It is particularly marked inclause structure, where one clause is added toanother in linear way. The sign of the spokenclause structure is usually indicated bycoordinating conjunction (and) or by simplesubordinating conjunction (cos or so). Dealingwith data recording, almost in each datarecording was found the word andandso.Andandso were the indication of theoccurrence of spoken clause structure onstudents’ utterances in the classroomdiscussion. For example:

Student: Aaa… like I explained before, turntaking is the… aaa… the… theteachers andaaa… the teachers andthe students aaa… take the… the..the… the.. turn, take the turn, it’smean that when the teacher aaa…get instruction to the teacher…when the teacher give instruction to

the students and when the studentsaaa… aaaa… respond the teacher’sinstruction. (see appendix)

Based on the example above, thespeaker had several clauses in her/hisutterances, it is indicated with the occurrenceof “and” in the utterances. First, the speakersaid “Aaa… like I explained before, turntaking is the… aaa… the… the teachers” andafter that the speaker directly added his/herutterances by “andaaa… the teachers and thestudents aaa… take the… the.. the… the.. turn,take the turn, it’s mean that when the teacheraaa… get instruction to the teacher… whenthe teacher give instruction to the students….”Based on this example, the speakerspontaneously added a new clause in her/hisutterance, because she/ he did not have time toconstruct any main and subordinate clause, sothat she/he linked his/her clauses bycoordinating conjunction.

Dealing with data recording, it wasfound 13 times of the occurrence of spokenclause structure, then 14 times in the seconddata recording. In the third data recording,spoken clause structure was used 25 times.Then, for the fourth and the fifth datarecording, spoken clause structure was found 9and 13 times.

In short, all of the explanation about thefeatures of spoken English grammar mostlyused in the classroom discussion above can beseen in the following table:

The Frequency of Features of SpokenEnglish Grammar Used by the Students

in the Classroom Discussion

Features of spoken English Grammar The Frequency of the Occurrence1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th Total Perc.

Head and Tail 5 3 3 3 6 23 5.06%

Deixis 20 14 14 25 12 85 18.68%

Ellipsis 4 9 3 5 2 23 5.06%

Spoken Clause Structure 13 14 25 9 13 74 16.26%



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CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

1. Conclusion

Based on the result of the research, itcan be concluded that the students used all ofthe features of spoken English grammar intheir utterances in the classroom discussion.They used tail (reinforcement andinterrogative), deixis (now, then and here),ellipsis (omission of subject and verb), spokenclause structure (andandso), vague language(about, like, can be called, they called, how do

we call this? what we called, and somethinglike that) and modal expression (Maybe, can, I

think, should, have to, could, may, possible,maybe, need to, must, and I don’t know).

Then, dealing with the features ofspoken English grammar that mostly occurredin the classroom discussion, it can beconcluded that the most frequent was modalexpression which occurred 130 times(28.57%). Meanwhile the less frequent and theleast frequent features were vague language120 times (26.37%), deixis 85 times (18.68%),spoken clause structure 74 times (16.26%),ellipsis 23 times (5.06%) and head and tails 23times (5.06%).

2. Suggestion

Based on the result of the research,

there are several suggestions can be given.

First, for English graduate students, as

presenters, they should consider more features

of spoken English grammar. They should

improve their willingness to know more about

words, phrases, or sentences included in each

features of spoken English grammar and use

them appropriately in their utterances. It is

because they influence an effective

communication in which the presenters as the

speakers can organize their speech and lead

the listeners to the topic being discussed. In

other words, it influences interactions occur

between them.

Furthermore, despite spoken English

grammar has an important role in

communication, but it is rarely or never taught

to the students. Therefore, it is suggested for

the teacher or lecturer to teach the features of

spoken English grammar more frequently in

teaching. Moreover, they are also suggested to

provide more learning activities for students to

employ the features of spoken English

grammar to encourage their students to use

more variations of features of spoken English

grammar in their communication.

REFERENCES

Biber, D, Conrad, S and Leech, G. 2002. The

Longman Student Grammar of Spoken

and Written English. London: Longman.

Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. 1995. Grammar

and the Spoken Language. Applied

Linguistics, 16/2: 141-158

Doshi, F., & Ray, N. 2008. Spoken Language

Interaction with Model Uncertainty: An

Adaptive Human Interaction System.

Connection Science. Vol. 00, No. 00,

January 2008, 1–21.

Vague Language 20 24 26 16 34 120 26.37%

Modal expression 23 28 31 20 28 130 28.57%

455 100%



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Leech. G. 2000. Grammar of Spoken English:

New Outcomes of Corpus-Oriented

Research. Langauage Learning, 50, 675-

724.

McGonial.2005. ‘Using Class Discussion toMeet Your Teaching Goal”. StanfordUniversity’.Retrieved on January 3rd

2016. Available in

http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/Newsl

etter/discussion_leading.pdf

Sugiono. 2010. MetodePenelitianKuantitatif,

Kualitatifdan R & D. Bandung.

Alfabeta.

White, J. 2004. Introducing the Grammar of

Talk. Retrieved on July 2nd 2015.

London. Available in www.qca.org.uk/

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