BASIC CONVERSATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIDACTIC CORPUS OF SPOKEN ENGLISH FOR SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS (EFL, GERMANY)

This dissertation addresses the problem of low achievement in EFL classes in a country (Germany) where the target language is not spoken outside the school. It is assumed in the study that the most suitable productive objective for normal learners should be the ability to carry on a simple conversation. The history of English teaching in Germany reveals that conversation has not been taken seriously as a primary FLT objective right up to the present day.Lexical, structural and functional comparisons revealed that this material is closer to authentic spoken English than the Council of Europe lists or the language of popular textbooks, while at the same time covering a wider range of language use. This has been achieved with a more limited range of grammatical structures than is commonly taught in Germany. If the ability to carry on a simple conversation were to be taken seriously as an EFL objective, it would be logical to modify first English courses in the following ways: (1) a large number of collocations would be taught (2) speech and discourse functions would be introduced from the beginning (3) information would be given about the structures, strategies, topics and principles of conversation, and on finding the right fillers for the right slots.The quantity of speech material to be learnt would be broadly comparable with what is covered at present. The relevance of the material for spoken language use outside school would be greater.A series of foundation dialogues was written, in which the author has attempted to include the elements of spoken English which a learner actually requires in order to deal with everyday situations. He has drawn on relevant publications concerned with language selection, communicative language teaching, discourse analysis and language acquisition. British native speaker checks were carried out to confirm the acceptability of the material. The comments of American native speakers, textbook authors and German English teachers were also taken into account. The dialogues and the lists of language elements based on them provide a contextualised selection of material which could be consulted by textbook authors.