Abstract
Spontaneous spoken language is very different in form and function from written language. A discourse analysis approach enables us to analyse and state some of these differences and to see the implications for teaching students to understand spontaneous speech. Understanding spontaneous speech as it flashes past is a very difficult task for many foreign students. It is not sufficient to present them with texts taken out of context and followed by a series of questions which test their of the text. Rather, they must be taught to use all the ethnographic cues available to enable them to predict what the likely content of a text will be. And they must predict not only the factual content of spoken language but also, crucially, the interactional structuring. Understanding, then, is seen as a process of prediction and sampling rather than a desperate attempt to keep up with the words flashing past. And the notion of the correct understanding of a text is replaced by the more humane and attainable notion of reasonable interpretation.
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