file3.html be used for study and reproduction; library cards, Sear'sCatalogue and the Yellow Pages are further useful places to begin from.

Writing begins as a commentary on something. Beginners can write theirown words next to someone else's words; later, comments and signs next to textsof all sorts of shape and format; "I like this" or "I've seenthis before" or "I don't get this"; later, a comment or two onsome page or story; later, a story... But these details may change and surpriseyou: one child (or more) will write a story right off the bat, on day one, then,later, will write his words next to other people's words!

"Automatic writing" is a genuine phenomenon. It does notdepend on a special talent for spiritualism. We know nothing about spiritsdictating novels... but automatic writing we're referring to is quite simple todemonstrate: "Write down the first word that this makes you think of."It's an eliciting device for automatic writing; a more elaborated version wouldinvolve: "Imagine...[X], then what would you say or do? Write itdown!"; still further activities involve listening to music or watchingleaves move and writing down the spontaneous thoughts evoked by close inspectionof minute changes in patterns, rhythm, vibration. It's natural and engaging.Eventually (or maybe, at first!) the individual can receive dictations fromimaginary voices in their heads. Oh, what a supremely delightful discovery towitness when a person, child or adult, discovers that writing is as spontaneousas talking! Avoid assignments and composition exercises that suggest in any waythat writing is difficult or needs preparation or editing, etc. None of thosedramatizations are helpful.

(D.) Children have the hardest time sustaining an adult's steady gaze.When they talk, they continuously move their heads, look away, fidget, forgetthey're talking to you (or act like it). All that is natural. Now, what you haveto get them to do is to practice adult forms of maintaining contact duringinteractions. Here you must devise all sorts of activities that clearly andforcefully engage their focus of attention: insisting on sustaining line ofregard when "practicing"; don't try to maintain the rule under otherunmarked conditions; it will be distracting and intimidating; giving rapid fireverbal instructions is fun to do and watch; watch how eagerly they try to gofaster, beyond the reasonable competence of the performer; meanwhile: theypractice communicative contact and coordination. That's what counts!

(E.) All kids can scream, but few talk loud enough to be heard whencalled upon to perform in the language class. Rather than make superhumanefforts to catch what they're saying, make them practice talking abnormallyloud; avoid using the rule under unmarked conditions: it's intimidating; thenpractice whisper-talk (or words?); let them produce and imitate all sorts ofoutlandish noises and cries; but do not tolerate abnormal noise under unmarkedconditions: it's annoying.

A summary of the principal directions that should guidethe language teacher in devising activities in the classroom can be rendered inthe following terms:

To make use of these summary hints, read each pair of items using thisprocedure; imagine that the items on the left are pedagogical objectives to bepracticed: they are areas of discourse functioning; exercises you devise fortheir rehearsal and performance are inherently valuable; they are activities oflanguage use; merely doing them is their sole purpose; you can spend 100% ofyour time on it. The items on the right are familiar and reflect contemporarypractice in American public schools; practice of these items is not inherentlyvaluable; instead, they are believed to be instrumental in leading to betterknowledge and higher achievement in language use; or they may representpractices that have evolved in response to other things; At any rate, note thatthe items on the right can be recognized as the traditional instrumentalities ofthe linguistically based approaches to method in language teaching; while theitems on the left represent many of the components of the goal of theseinstrumentalities: namely "liberated expression" and the functionalcontrol of language use. The broken arrows represent the allegeddirectionality of applied linguistics; that is, for example, textbookdialogues (d), practice conversations (c), and artificial rules of classroomtalk (1), are linguistic instrumentalities for the attainment of naturaltranscripts (d), transactional exchanges (c), and natural coordination in talk(1), respectively. Similarly, selected vocabulary lists (k), words and phrases(b), and paraphrases of phrases (h), are artificial linguistic exercises topromote the attainment of conceptual topic domains organizing coherent discourse(k), topic nominals that condition the evocation of discourse units (b), andmaking comments or re-framing (assimilating) what has been read, chunk by chunk(h).

But the broken arrows are broken, and they apparently leave dormant muchof the literacy they promise. The more appropriate direction is given bythe unbroken arrows. That is, if the exercises and activities in the languageclassroom are those on the left, not only are they then inherently valuable, butthey in turn now serve as an instrumentality for promoting the attainment oflinguistic skills; thus, school language vocabulary (k), artificial timing (l;m;), skills in paraphrasing (h) and test taking (n; o;) are the needed skills ofthe school achiever, which are now promoted by exercises on building topicdomains (k) on maintaining natural coordination rhythms in talk (l; m;), and byinvolving students in the task of constructing ways of testing and showing whatthey know (n; o;).

Now we can understand the paradoxical actuality whereby languagelearning is a problem only in the language teaching classroom; everywhere else,people, children, immigrants, parrots, and chimpanzees seem to do it withoutlinguistics and its instrumentalities.

Are we ready to tell our legislators to discard their reliance onnational norms, and, for indices of accountability, to look instead at theprogram sheets and classroom productions of the activities generated therein bythe imaginative use of transactional engineering and discourse technology? Also,are we ready to tell our publishers and their representatives that now we haveturned to our own business and will be generating our own topic glossaries? Ifwe are ready, then let us do it. 

  		THE    END

OUTLINE



1 . Teaching as Conversation

1.1. The medium in which formal education is transacted is theconversational mode.

1.2. To teach is to tell; to learn is to listen.

1.3. Talk is much more than communication.

1.4. To teach is to talk.



2 . The Transactional Model ofTalk

2.1. Conditions for transacting in talk.

2.2. Organizational structure.

2.3. Types of transactions in talk.

2.4. Code book of the conversational ritual the rules of talk.




3. The Empirical Investigation of
the Transactional Code

3.1. Basis of empirical adequacy for "made-up" illustrations oftalk as data.

3.2. Conversational competence has three components:

3.3. Transactional code: levels of realization




4. Engineering Authentic Transactions
in the Classroom

4.1. TE Workshops: Transactional Engineering Workshops.

4.2. Self-Analytic Objective Reporting ofOn-Going Authentic Transactions: SAOROGAT.

4.3. Types of learning




5. Educational Psycholinguistics: Teaching as
Telling -- Learning as Listening

5.1. Educational Psycholinguistics investigates the teaching-learningprocess through a transactional analysis of the organization of conversationalinteraction.

5.2. The teaching-learning process is a joint interactional functionof the teacher's reporting competence and the pupil's listening competence.

5.3. The ideal teacher is the perpetual student.

Paraphrasing: note that p. involves a desocs transformation. In general,textual reading and note learning involve transforms that retain the same levelof pedagogic ambiguities or the original. Higher level transforms retaindifferent levels of p.a. and add or eliminate to the original. (Also see section6)(p. 40, top)



6. Pedagogic Ambiguities and Levels of
Insight in the Instructional Register

6.1. How to tell effectively: Analysis of desocs.

6.2. Pedagogic ambiguities of the instructional transactions proposed by the desocs: their number and generiticity determine the quality of thedesocs.

6.3. Pedagogic responsiveness of the desocs: how well it addressesitself to pedagogic ambiguities of particular Individual students

6.4. How to listen effectively: goals for and strategies in learning.




7. Authenticity and the Teaching --
Learning Process

7.1. What is authenticity?

7.2. Desocs for teaching "authenticity"

7.3. The Register of Objective Reporting

7.4. Corroboration




8. Disagreeing: An InauthenticTransaction

8.1. Fake disagreements (negative collusion)

8.2. Genuine disagreements are always inauthentic transactions

8.3. Inauthentic teaching



9. Authentic Teaching

9.1. Authentic teaching transcends the basic manipulative aspect of theinstructional transaction.

9.2. Antidotes to Disagreements: Repairing activities in the face of

9.3. Legitimizing in the instructional register of authenticteaching

9.4. The inauthentic vs. the authentic register

9.5. The Teacher Paradox

9.6. The Authentic Teacher's Profile


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