Author: Elaine Kirn
Suitable for: Secondary Students, Young Adults, Adults
What It Is: A 102-page WorkText created out of practical necessity in community-college courses in Oral Language Skills
Why You Need It: Despite famous folks' apparent preference for only telling their own stories, there really are other types of language that come up again and again in real people's lives, work, and pursuit of happiness. Yet so many of our attempts to listen and speak seem to result in counter-productive time-wasting that ends in non- or mis-communication. To optimize our efforts to cope, learn, communicate, and succeed, we all need to recognize and understand these kinds of talk--and to use them to reach our own well-thought out, optimistic, constructive, compassionate goals.
What It Does:
starts by setting the tone with "Getting Acquainted" activities typical of the many interactive, self-motivating, purposeful yet fun varieties to follow
offers eight (8) Parts, each focused on a different but common type of talk in school, work, and everyday life:
• Short Talk, Not Small Talk (Social Conversation) • Problem-Solving • Talking About Any Subject • Conflict Resolution • Instructional Speech (Explanation or Process) • Narration (Story-Telling) • Persuasive Speech ("Selling") • Debate
sequences material to progress naturally from receptive to active, and from practice to actually getting it done. Each Part contains:
• pedagogical info to explain salient features of each kind of talk and suggest how to use them well
- presentations called "Sample Conversations" or "Sample Speeches"--available also in MP3 download--for learners to understand, analyze, and gain insight from
- oral-practice material that gives text-users language and speech tools that will help develop their own abilities
- instructions for culminating "Mini-Speeches" that show what listeners and speakers have learned and can do with that knowledge and those skills
English
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