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B. Factors that might have helped the experimental group students'
progress in overall discourse competence and its s sub- skills:
1- Structuring discourse coherently and cohesively:
Before the program, students' spoken performance was almost characterized
by use of incoherent discourse lacking appropriate logical sequence. It was full of
fragmentary utterances with no references and no use of cohesive devices.
On the posttest, students' spoken discourse was generally more coherent with
clear, logical organization. It contained enough details, appropriate cohesive
devices, references, and inter-sentential connectors. This progress can be attributed to some factors, among them was engaging
students in discourse analysis activities that promoted their organizational skills. The authentic samples, students were exposed to, helped them indirectly improve the organization of their speaking as they could recognize how native speakers (a)
organize discourse through following certain routines so that listeners can easily
follow the sequence of what is said, (b) use grammatical and lexical references
appropriately to refer to people and objects so listeners can keep track of them, (c)
provide enough supporting details, reasons and examples to support the main idea or to justify their opinions, (d) summarize the main idea given in speech and finally (e) move smoothly from one idea to another through the use of adequate discourse
markers signaling cohesion either at the macro level (between main ideas) or at the
micro level (within utterances). Throughout teaching, students could notice discourse markers including those signaling the introduction of a topic, a shift to a new topic and a summary of the topic. Throughout planning, also, students got used to think of the overall organization of their speech before doing the task, which became more automatic with the progress of the program and hence enhanced their spoken performance overall structure.
During the task, students could employ what they had noticed about the
organization of spoken discourse spontaneously and fluently in actual situations.
Although consciousness raising could not fully guarantee error-free performance in
terms of cohesion and coherence, it at least helped students improve the organization of speaking during performance. This was enhanced by the planning executed to present task output which helped students refocus on discourse by thinking of how to present their speech to others in an adequately organized manner. At the post task stage, students' attention was drawn deliberately to discourse when they repeated their performance in front of their peers. Hence, students became again conscious of what they had to take into account to provide a well organized speech. Furthermore, discussions between the students and the teacher, after listening to recorded spontaneous performance, helped students recognize how to start their speech, provide adequate supporting details, provide a comment of their own and move smoothly from one idea to another through the use of adequate discourse markers and references. The self-evaluation checklist helped students also self-revise and become more aware of the gaps in the ogranization of their performance especially when they compared it to a model authentic performance.
With respect to different genres, discourse competence instruction was genrespecific. Each genre (expository, narrative or descriptive) has its own organization that students learned well through analyzing and discussing its predictable sequential stages and then attempted to use it in their speaking. This accounted for the improvement noticed with respect to various genres. 2. Interacting and managing the conversation effectively:
Students' progress on the posttest can be attributed to a number of factors as
follows:
First, analyzing the provided authentic listening tapescripts, before participating
in the task, encouraged students to notice particular features of conversations and
turn taking strategies. In particular, consciousness raising activities helped students
see how native speakers (a) keep conversation going, (b) manage turn-taking in
conversation, (c) relate his/her turn to that of the interlocutor and (d) encourage
others to speak through showing interest, asking further questions, backchanneling
and commenting.
Through teaching, also, students learned the meaning and the use of
conversational discourse markers such as (well, now, anyway…etc) used to
maintain conversational coherence, thus, employing these markers in their speaking as well. Furthermore, instruction given to students helped them organize, notice and understand the way the content of their conversation is conveyed. This included presenting the conversation typical sequence for performing various routines and explaining how each turn is linked to the previous one and inviting the next one.
Students were also given instruction about how to keep the conversation going. Planning for the task enabled students to get used to think consciously of the
overall conversation organization as well as the turns every interlocutor had to take. This planning might have become more fast and spontaneous with the progress of the program. During the task stage, which was mainly interactive, students employed the learned interactional strategies and started to test hypotheses about how the conversation took place in actual situations. Within the course of interaction, they attempted also to try out some phrases noticed before to keep the conversation with their peers going and to check their peers' understanding.
At the post task stage, analyzing students' spontaneous performance, helped
them reflect upon their conversational skills through finding out why their
conversations usually stopped or why it was hard for them to signal their turns or
finish the conversation.They could also analyze deeply the shortage of their use of
backchanneling techniques. This means that students could self-revise their
interactional efficiency, thus depending on themselves as far as possible and
improving their interactional competence simultaneously.
Furthermore, activities presented at the "reflection and consolidation stage"
were effective as students practiced many strategies related to conversation
management. C. Factors that might have helped experimental group students progress
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