Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. Larisa Conner
Cultural Reference
2. Anonymous
This works as a conversation facilitator. The use of spoken sayings, like ‘sounds
good, ‘then’ and ‘all to myself’ might be helpful. Also I used a greeting other than
‘hello’ which could be used when starting a conversation with a friend. Classroom
topics of other informal greetings like ‘long time, no see’ could follow. Also, more
dialogues for movies/movie theaters could be made. From this could stem a project
of talking/writing about a movie the student has seen, since movies are a big part of
the American social seene.
3. Heather Caylor
L = Librarian
S = Student
4. Tonya Mutel
Chris: Hey, Tonya, I have a question for you. Why is it that you think Americans
always overplan evenings together?
T: Look, I just mean that I am used to getting an invitation, and then going and
visiting people, not planning to meet next Tuesday two weeks from now at 7:30. If
you are welcome at someone’s house, you should be welcome whenever you show
up.
C: But what do you do if they’re busy, or out, or… I guess I just don’t understand
how you have so much free time to be visiting each other all the time. What about
the rest of your life?
T: Visiting friends is our life. People find things that are important to them. The
friends we are talking about are people we have known since childhood or college,
and we only have two or three people that we can call friends in our lifetime.
Spending time drinking tea with our friends and sharing our lives is a major thread
that runs all the way through our life.
T: Just because you don’t have any friends doesn’t mean no one else does! I’m sure
culture influences us, but we always make our own decisions.
C: I guess. With our family, it’s hard to imagine having enough time to have a deep
friendship with a dog, much less someone outside our immediate circle. Maybe this
is the classic individual versus the group difference?
T: You know, it is not just Russians that think Americans always think first of
themselves. Maybe we are used to thinking of what’s best for the group instead of
just ourselves. On the other hand, I sure know plenty of selfish people at home. I
think that ultimately it is up to everyone to work hard to make the life they dream of.
5. Michael Bortscheller
B: I left at 5:00.
This dialogue concerns words with irregular past tense forms and would be geared
towards lower-level students. It also shows how to address questions in the past tense
with the word “did” and a bare form of the verb. A dialogue like this could be
expanded almost indefinitely to include other vocabulary words. It could also tie in
with a discussion of birthday celebrations.
6. Anonymous
Asking Directions
*Note: this dialog is good for intermediate learners because some f the expressions
are very specific to directions, and they may not have heard of them before.
However, because B does most of the talking, that role should be giving to a more
advanced student or the teacher.
7. Robyn Groth
Dialogue
Employee: Welcome to Burger World. Would you like a Super Burger combo?
Customer: No thank you. I would like a grilled chicken sandwich with just mayo,
tomato and lettuce.
Customer: Pepsi
Employee: Okay that’s $5.65. Please pull around to the first window.
Employee: $5.65
(Customer gives money to the employee)
Customer: Thanks.
In this dialogue I included ‘Would you like…’ and “…you want’ and also ‘Thank
you ‘ and ‘Thanks’. I also included phrases that are not whole sentences that you
would typically hear a fast food restaurant, and elsewhere like ‘What kind of pop?’
and ‘Anything else?’. This dialogue could be recreational, but also helps with
conversation facilitation because it uses incomplete sentences.
This dialogue is of the conversation facilitation type. In this dialogue, we find a very
common situation. A person goes to a restaurant and needs to order the meal. In my
opinion, this dialogue would be very useful for ESL students, who are living in an
English Speaking country and that do not have too much experience yet. This
dialogue can be used in the classroom to work in pronunciation. It is also full of
common expressions that the student is going to find very often around him. Also,
the instructor can use the dialogue to talk about some constructions, such as will +
verb, subject + be + going to + verb, which talk about the future. The instructor
could show the different situations where a person uses one or the other.
Nevertheless, the main goal of this dialogue is to teach how to behave, what you are
supposed to say in a situation like this. That is why it would be appropriate to use
this dialogue in role plays, and have the students read it aloud in class and finally act
it out.
9. Maria N. Fruit
Scene: A customer intends to pay for gas inside the store after the gas has been
pumped. Upon entering store, the customer also decides to purchase a cup of coffee.
SOUTHEASTERN
SPEAKER STANDARD ENGLISH
DIALECT
Clerk: Hi, how are you? Hey there, how ya doin?
Fine, thank you. And Fine, thanks. How are you
Customer:
you? doin?
Good, thanks. What Just fine, sir (ma’am). What
Clerk:
pump? Pump were ya on today?
Customer: Pump 7. Pump 7.
And is that going to be Okay, and is that gonna be it
Clerk:
all for you today? for ya?
Customer: No, I also have a coffee. No, I also have a coffee.
And is that coffee or Is that coffee or cappuccino
Clerk:
cappuccino? ya got there?
Customer: It’s coffee. It’s coffee.
Alright then, gas and
Alrighty, your total’s gonna
Clerk: coffee? Your total is
be $27.32, sir (ma’am).
$27.32.
(hands clerk a debit
Customer: (hands clerk a debit card)
card)
Would you like cash How about some cash back
Clerk:
back today? for ya today?
Customer: No, thank you. No, thank you, though.
(returns card to
customer) (returns card to customer)
Clerk: Here’s your card and Thanks for comin by today.
your receipt. Have a You have a nice one now.
nice day.
Customer: Thank you , you too. Thanks, same to you.
.*Points of discussion:
• Variable use of fine and good and well in response to ‘How are you?’
• Finding and knowing you pump number; what to do/say if you don’t know
you pump number while paying for gas inside the store
• Southeastern dialect:
• regular use of sir and ma’am
• reductions; ya, doin, gonna, bout, comin; slang: alrighty
• How might this same dialogue be said with other words?
• How might a person purchase gas at the pump and not inside the store?
• How might this dialogue be different if the customer were purchasing gas
inside the store before the gas had been pumped?
Christian: 319-245-2626
Bill: Ok, and did you want the large or the small order of sesame
chicken?
Christian: The small order, please, and I would also like an order of crab
Rangoon.
Restaurant Dialogue
Purpose: To practice casual, rapid speech. (Conversation facilitation)
2. X: Sure. Yuh go a few blocks east and then go one block north.
6. Y: OK. So, after two blocks that way I turn to the left?
The purpose of this conversation is to demonstrate the use of ellipsis and pragmatics
in an informal conversation. Some information is not stated explicitly and some
information presupposes that the listener is familiar with the cardinal directions. The
listener should be aware of the different meaning of the word “right” and know when
it means a certain direction, when it means “correct” and when it is used as a degree
word as in “right there.” This would be a dialog used in an advanced EFL language
course for students that already are familiar with such situations. I have attempted to
make the conversation natural, at least for the Midwest, and have made vocabulary
redundant, reducing the scope of the conversation to the immediate task of
transmitting directions from Speaker X to Speaker Y.
Extension Exercise: Practice giving directions using this dialog as a model for other
buildings around the town you live in.