Communicative environments

• Visiting a farm: If any of your students visit a farm they will hear people negotiating prices for goods, land or labour (employed/subcontracted), etc. - In this communicative environment speakers need to negotiate prices of land, vehicles, wool, wheat, livestock, fencing materials or feed for stock. They need to be able to hire and fire subcontractors, e.g., for shearing or haycarting. They need language to negotiate, organise, explain contractral arrangements, to organise the delivery of fertilizer or the collection of lifestock to be taken to the sale yards, etc.

• Visiting the hairdresser: When your students visit the hairdresser they need the language skills to describe what they want done to their hair. They may even need to negotiate a particular style and whether it suits them or not. - In skilled/trade communicative environments like hairdressing, speakers probably do not need to use formal speech very often in their day to day work, but they must be able to interact socially using appropriate language with a range of people of different ages. This skill will be fundamental to their success as a hairdresser. This means expressing an interest in customers' lives, speaking with one's employer and with work mates as well as with other professionals in the hairdressing industry. Other communicative environments of this type might be when one of your students wants a surf board made or fixed at a surf shop, or needs to get their bike fixed at the bike shop. People in these businesses need to discuss prospective work with their clients, to explain designs and technical difficulties, and ask questions to check understanding.

• Communication with government services: Sometimes your students may need to communicate with people in government services, such as when they are doing some research at the local library. They may need to explain what their project is about, listen to instructions on where to find relevant materials, and ask for further information if they don't understand. - In this communicative environment speakers need oral language skills to explain to customers where to find information, how the catalogue system works or the rules for using the internet. They might need to identify and explain related areas of information if the library doesn't have anything specific on a subject.

• Communicating in entertainment venues: Most of your students will have communicated with staff at an entertainment centre. They would have asked for a ticket, negotiated the choice of food with their friends and bought pop corn etc, before seeing a movie. They may have visited a TimeZone and had to report that a pinball machine wasn't working to the manager. They may have been to McDonald's and placed an order with the counter hand. - In this communicative environment speakers need to be able to ask customers for information, tell them the prices, relay the information to other staff members, such as kitchen hands. They might have to ask people to repeat themselves because of the noise of the crowd or the kitchen, etc. Sometimes they might have to use polite language even when people are rude to them.

• Shopping: All your students will have experience at shopping. They may visit supermarkets where very little interaction takes place because they select their own goods, they may go to small shops where they have to ask for what they want or they may go to local markets where it is sometimes possible to negotiate prices. - In this communicative environment speakers need good communication skills . They need to organise stock purchasing, handle telephone enquiries, oversee sales staff or be salespersons themselves. They also need to build good relationships with customers and handle difficult customers tactfully and this requires good oral language skills.

• Visiting the doctor or dentist: Most of your students will have experience at talking to their doctor or dentist. They will have had to explain what is wrong with their body or with their teeth. They would have had to answer questions about the severity of the problem, etc. - In this communicative environment speakers need to ask questions, first general questions and then more specific questions, in order to pin point the specific health problem. They may ask a patient to recall at activity where an injury happened or they may try and define the cause of an illness with questions about life at home and at school, etc. These professionals also have to advise on taking medicine and warn of side-effects.

• Talking to the police: A number of your students may have communicated with the police. Oral interaction in these situations can influence opinions about the students. - In this communicative environment speakers need to answer questions about where they come from, what they are doing in a particular place and how they are getting home. They might be asked by the police to explain their actions or whereabouts at a particular time.

• Going to the bank: Many students will have bank accounts and will have already communicated with bank tellers. They would have needed specific vocabulary to do this, e.g., account, interest, withdrawal, deposit, etc. - In this communicative environment speakers need to have special communication patterns, they need to ask you your needs, i.e., if you are depositing or withdrawing money, if you want a special account with withdrawal restrictions and special interest rates. They also need to concentrate on correctly carrying out transactions for their customers so sometimes they are silent and you have to wait for them to finish entering data on the computer. Bank tellers are also expected to maintain good relationships with staff by greeting them, etc.

• Taking part in community activities: Students are often members of local community groups, such as a church group or a football, soccer, basketball or netball team. They will use specific language when participating in these activities. - In this communicative environment speakers will develop a particular way of talking about the activity which they are performing. Within a sports club there will be special terms for strategies used when playing, there will be nicknames used within the group, etc. Other community activities, such as church services, have their own language and language behaviours. These are also relevant if one is attending a funeral or a wedding where particular types of language are used.

• Cultural participation: Some of your students may contribute to a particular ethnic community, such as being part of an Aboriginal, Vietnamese, Irish, or Greek community. Here appropriate language may be required for interacting within the cultural group and observing respect with community elders. - In this communicative environment speakers need to know how to communicate appropriately within their cultural community (e.g., there may be restrictions on who they can speak to and when, and who owns specific knowledge and who does not). These same protocols have to be understood and observed by people joining the group.

• Visiting a friend's house: Your students will interact socially with particular groups such as in friendship groups and within families (nuclear and extended). In social groups, your students will have to negotiate who does what, when and with whom, they might need to ask to borrow something, or invite someone to their home. - In this communicative environment speakers need different language behaviours from those they use at home. They have to talk to non-familiar adults, ask where things are, they are expected to thank their hosts and ask permission to do some things. Negotiation might also take place in terms of when people are dropped off or picked up.

• Entering secondary or further education: Some students may have an interview for entry into a particular school or university course. They will need good communication skills and will need to be able to talk comfortably with non-familiar adults such as primary-secondary liaison officers. - In this communicative environment speakers need good speaking and listening skills. You need to be able to respond to specific questions, provide further information if requested and to make enquiries about particular courses and units of study.

• Communicating in a secondary school: When your students move onto secondary school, they will move into a very different communicative environment. When in primary school, they will have listened to the one teacher a lot of the time. They would be used to his/her range of words and sentence structures, but once they move into secondary school they have to accommodate the speech of a range of different teachers in different classrooms. - The students will have to learn new vocabulary for every class that they are in. Some of this will be the terminology of a specific learning area, eg, that for biology, and some of this be the Latin based words of English that we use to talk about ideas, processes and texts, eg, demonstrates, suggests, investigates, etc.

• Talking to the Principal: Some of your students may have to go to the Principal's office. This is another communicative environment which is outside the classroom and requires communication with a non-familiar adult. - In this communicative environment speakers may be required to explain themselves, to give reasons or motives for a particular action and to listen to responses to these.
  An example of language in a particular communicative setting
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