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From the beginning of the spoken English course, knowing about the requirement of
obtaining real data and transcribing them in the first assignment, I, personally, felt
both excited and nervous about how to collect the data that can really fit my purpose.
Things started to fall in place as the course went by with more concepts and
instructions introduced. The linear theories and instances about turn-taking,
attributable silence, preference etc. had certainly attracted my interest on the subject
and gradually shaping my direction on the recordings pattern.
At first, I was mostly focusing on the pre-reading before every lesson since I
personally loved to see what was coming next in the module. Additionally, I certainly
hope the more ideas I got from pre-readings, the more options I could have to start
thinking beforehand about the recording, transcription and analytical approach which
I want to practice in my assignment. As Liddicoat (2007) emphasized the need of
naturally occurring talk for conversation analysis, my main concern was how to
obtain authentic recordings, which embrace interesting features to analyse, without
causing any ethical issues.
To prepare for the recording, I had registered and borrowed a Sony IC recorder from
the recourse room. According to Richards (2003), a successful recording depends not
only on the device you have, more importantly, is how familiar the device is to you.
Thus, immediately after having the recorder, I tried to familiarize myself with each
buttons function, the sound quality and noise of the device. As I could see a
promising opportunity for the recording to happen, I had prepared myself a bit about
different environments I could take granted to attain numerous recordings for later
selections. A friend of mine, who lives in Cambridge, planned to visit my house at the
weekend where I am sharing with my boyfriend. We are close so it was easy for me to
ask for their permission. However, it was obvious that my asking had raised my
friends curiosity since they asked about the purpose of my recording before giving
me the permission. The total number of recordings that I made is 16 including various
circumstances, such as at the living room, having dinner, watching a movie, driving
car to the supermarket and shopping in Birmingham city. The reason that lies under
these numbers of recordings was, simply, to maximum my chances to work with
different circumstances and to help me approach to variegated casual talk patterns.
After spending time sorting through, I selected a recording that was taped in the living
room where a casual conversation took place.
overlap in the transcription and the sudden realization of which I was attempting to
speck the pause, the cut-offs or overlaps in my daily conversations with friends.
More radically, as Schiffrin put it the ethnography of communication in it
concerns with human knowledgeand its belief that no detail of conversation (or
interaction) can be neglected a priori as unimportant (1994:232). It was challenging
for me as a transcriber to assure that all the details of the talk are captured. The
complication a transcription process is obvious when I realized how new the
information appeared to me. In some cases, I even could not catch what I was saying.
Furthermore, distinguishing what to put down between overlap and latched utterance
or cut-off and pauses has caused me much confusion. However, from this stage, I
came to realize how easy people are, to miss such important minute things in our
daily information exchange and my indeed appreciation for the works of many
researchers to get to the essence of conversation analysis.
Transcript from (1:43 3:12) Recording taken on 19/10/2013 in the living room
Participants: Masu (M); Anish (A) and me Rose (R)
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References
Jefferson, G. 1989. Preliminary notes on a possible metric which provides for a
standard maximum silence of approximately one second in conversation in D.
Roger and P. Bull (eds), Conversation: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Liddicoat, A., J. 2007. An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. London:
Continuum.
Richards, K. 2003. Qualitative inquiry in TESOL. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schiffrin, D. 1994. Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
ten Have, P. 1999. Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage.
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
CENTRE FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS
SELF-EVALUATION COVER SHEET
Student ID Number: 1364112
Module: ET959
Title of assignment: Conversation transcript and some discussions of the procedures of
collecting data, choosing the equipment and interesting matter during the whole process.
B. As you were working on this assignment what kinds of things did you do, e.g. skim the
literature, talk to friends, search the net, think?
I tried to collect as much literature as possible so that I could have a full picture of the area I
wanted to focus on. Also, I am very grateful for the help and support from my friends on
format, reference
D. From your experience of writing this assignment, what might you do differently next time,
e.g. make an outline, start writing earlier, read less or more, talk to friends etc.?
Leaning from my mistake, I would try to be more critical on any point that I make. Additionally,
with a better outline next time, I hope the logic of my assignment would be significant
improved.