Discussion Style
- Our primary discussion style was what is known as “Basketball Style” conversation in which we focused on rhythm, format, and conversation rules used by English speakers from the United States, Canada, the U.K., and New Zealand.
- Our approach was adapted from the work of Susan Steinback in Fluent American English Part 1, Understanding Conversational Styles, around the Globe. The Seabright Group, 1996.
- The Rt. 66 Restaurant conversation video shown below was part of the final exam. Students created spontaneous conversation. In the video we see students having “basketball style” conversation.
Procedure
- Group members were selected randomly from the 4 study groups.
- Each student represented the 2 states he/she had studied with his or her main study group. (students had not been in the same groups and did not know each other very well)
- A randomly selected group went into a separate room to have conversation where a camera was set up on tripod, set to run automatically
- Conversation duration was 1 minute for each group member (6 members = 6 minutes)
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Download some of our reading and discussion worksheets.