Task type II

The task that exemplifies Task type II corresponds to Activities 5 and 6 in Subtask 1 of the learning unit Company Organization in ALLES. The task’s title is Describe the structure of your company to a colleague of yours. As we did before, we first present the TAF analysis:

Description The learner is expected to write an email to a colleague of hers (Raymond) explaining him the structure of the (fictive) company they work in.

Focus Meaning.

Outcome An email describing the structure of the company.

Processes Writing relatively formal emails (it is a professional context); de- scribing the structure of a company, with its departments, its delegates and the interrelations.

Input The task provides the learner with the company’s organisation chart and a space to write the email. It includes some expressions the learner can use to describe responsibilities and interrelations in a company. Response type Extended production response: an email.

Teaching goal Between communicative language practice and structured communication.

Assessment Formative.

According to the TAF analysis, this is a writing task that focuses on meaning, that has both a communicative goal and a communicative outcome, and that implies

processes that are comparable to those in real-life. In terms of the response, it requires an extended production response, an email, which is considerably restricted by the input. It is like describing a picture. In terms of assessment, it requires also formative assessment.

Compared to the type I task, the response to the task exemplifying type II tasks is longer and more complex: an email compared to separate one-sentence questions in a questionnaire. Moreover, Activity type I is more restrictive on form. In all other respects, they are very similar, since they both restrict considerably the thematic and linguistic contents of the responses, they both focus on meaning, and they both require formative assessment because it is part of a preparatory task.

7.2.2.2.1 Characterisation of the response in pedagogical and linguistic terms

Table 7.8 shows the application of the RIF to this task. The prompt of the activity requires the learner to send an email to a colleague of hers/his named Raymond, in which s/he is required to describe the structure of the company. It is again a kind of a role-play activity to be performed individually. The learner is put in a setting where someone needs to be introduced to the structure of the company.

The activity’s instructions require the learner to make sure that certain pieces of information are provided. These are included in or inferable from the organi- zation chart of the company, identified as input data in Table 7.8. The instruc- tions also suggest learners use certain linguistic elements that have been intro- duced and practised in previous tasks (cf. Subtask 1 in Company Organization in http://www.iai-sb.de/alles).

In terms of the expected response, the activity presents a moderately broad scope. To complete it learners need to pay attention to the instructions and the input data, which are rather concise. On the basis of that, their texts can expand on the information provided, and the responses to be elaborated are longer and more complex texts, at least in terms of linguistic knowledge.

As for the directness of the relationship, the task presents a dual nature. In terms of thematic content, the information to be provided is directly related to the input data, mainly the chart. In contrast, the expected linguistic content is vaguely restricted in terms of the lexical contents to be used to describe the relations between entities such as the departments and the people in charge of them. Other linguistic aspects such as the email structure or specific ways of linking and wording the expected information are not made explicit and are left open. The learner can decide on her/his own on the linguistic resources to be employed.

The first block in Table 7.9 characterises the thematic content of the response. It shows the expected entities and the relations:

• A reference to the own company

• The number of departments in the company, their names and subdepartments • The person responsible for each department

Company Organisation, Subtask 1, Activities 5 and 6 Prompt Take a look at the chart below. The chart describes the

structure of the company Jamdat Mobile. Pay attention to the number of departments and who reports to whom. Once you have carefully reviewed the chart, click on the arrow in the upper right corner to go to next screen and there you have to send an email to your colleague Ray- mond and describe the structure of Jamdat Mobile. Instruction Hint: Do not forget to describe how many departments

this company has, who is reporting to whom etc. To describe the structure, you can use the expressions such as “to be in charge of”, “to report to”, “to be responsible for”, etc.

Input data

Response From:

To: Subject:

Table 7.8: Application of the RIF to Activities 5 and 6 in Subtask 1 in Company Organisation in ALLES.

• Responsibilities and accountability to third parties for each position

The names of the departments, the people and the relations among them are literally specified in the chart provided as input data. The degree of variation related to the number of entities and relations is delimited by the organisation chart.

The second block in Table 7.9 describes the linguistic content of the response. In terms of functional content, the activity aims to elicit from the learner linguistic expressions to describe a company, its departments and its names: X is divided in Y departments, X has Y departments, namely, P, Q, R.. It has to include the depart- ment heads and their interrelations: Department X is led by Y, who is in charge of P and Q. The corresponding exponents of function would be used to describe depen- dencies between departments and people, people’s responsibilities, or the greeting and the closing sections in the email.

As for syntactic content, learners are expected to use the present simple to de- scribe states of affairs, passive and active structures as part of descriptive texts, subordinates, coordinates and juxtapositions to express dependencies or department or peoples properties, and the functional words – prepositions, conjunctions – re- quired by the verbs, nouns, adjectives or subordinates relevant for task goals.

Thematic content of the expected response Entities – Company name: Jamdat Mobile, Jamdat.

– Company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO): Donald Wagner.

– Top-level departments: Customer Service, Marketing and Product Distribution

– Second-level departments: Customer Relationship Management, Brand Development, Asia Pacific Distri- bution Hub and Europe Distribution Hub

– Personnel: Jane Levin, Charles Fillmore, Elisabeth Yang, Debbie McCune, Rob Lowe, Lee Zenshou and Laura Calzolari.

– The email’s addressee: Raymond

Table 7.9: Application of the RIF analysis to Activities 5 and 6 in Subtask 1 in the unit Company Organization in ALLES (continues).

Relations – The company has three departments

– The company has a Chief Executive Officer – The Chief Executive Officer is Donald Wagner – Customer Service is led by Jane Levin

– Marketing is led by Charles Fillmore

– Product Distribution is led by Elisabeth Yang

– Jane Levin, Charles Fillmore and Elisabeth Yang report to the CEO.

– Brand Development is led by Debbie McCune – McCune reports to Charles Fillmore

– Customer Relationship Management is led by Rob Lowe

– Rob Lowe reports to Jane Levin

– Asia Pacific Distribution Hub is led by Lee Zenshou – Europe Distribution Hub is led by Laura Calzolari – L. Zenshou and L. Calzolari report to Elisabeth Yang Linguistic content of the expected response

Functional – Describe the structure of a company – Describe departments in a company Our company has X departments. – Name the departments in a company The departments are: X, Y and Z.

– Name the managers of each department in a company The department of X is lead by Y.

– Describe dependencies between departments/people The department of X has X subdepartments: (...) – Describe people’s responsibilities in a company – Greeting, closing and signing in formal emails. Syntactic – Present simple

– Passive and active structures – Use of subordinates

– Prepositions governed by relevant verbs

Lexical – to be in charge of, to report to, to be responsible for, to coordinate, to have ... departments, to depend on, to delegate to, department, head, subdepartment, area, ... Pragmatics – Description structure: either bottom-up or top-down,

but coherently structured

– Use adequate discourse markers and pronouns to glider the text

– Email structure: greeting, body, complimentary close, signature

Table 7.9: Application of the RIF analysis to Activities 5 and 6 in Subtask 1 in the unit Company Organization in ALLES (continues).

Graphology – Observe grammar and spelling required in private pro- fessional contexts

Table 7.9: Application of the RIF analysis to Activities 5 and 6 in Subtask 1 in the unit Company Organization in ALLES.

In terms of lexical content, learners are expected to produce expressions within the semantic field of companies. To express inclusion or composition relations they can use expressions such as X has Y, X consists of Y ..., there are X ... in Y. To express dependencies between departments or people they can use expressions such as department X has Y subdepartments, department X depends on department Y, X delegates to Y part of his/her work, X reports to Y, Y is reported to by X, X coordinates Y. In this respect, instructions encourage (“you can use ...”) the learners to use expressions such as to be in charge of, to report to, or to be responsible for, but there is some room for creativity.

At the pragmatic level, learners are required to provide their (fictive) email ad- dress, the email address of their colleague (Raymond) and the subject of the email. These are all parts of an email in a standard professional communicative setting. As for the email itself, it should contain (i) a greeting, (ii) the body of the mes- sage containing the expected information, (iii) a complimentary close, and (iv) a signature.

In terms of information structure, also at the pragmatic level, one would expect coherence and cohesion in the description. As shown in the last block in Table 7.9, one possibility is to start the description at the lower level departments and end with the upper level departments. It would be unusual, probably unacceptable, to describe things in a mixed order.

Since the task emulates a professional context, even if the email is sent to a colleague, it has to comply with certain formal requirements. The context features allow us to predict that there should be sentences such us “Dear X”, or “Dear Mr. X”, as required in professional communication, even if private. Formulaic expressions such as “Sincerely yours” or “Sincerely” as a complimentary close, and a proper name in the signature, are also expected. The instructions do not specify it, but one could expect to find contact details after the signature, or even a legal note on the confidentiality of the information.

7.2.2.2.2 Assessment

The criteria for correctness for this task can now be specified. For a response to be correct it should include:

• An email containing addressee, subject and text • The text email should contain:

– Body, including all the information reflected in the picture (number of departments, names of the heads, Chief Executive Officer in the company, etc.)

– Complimentary close – Signature

• In terms of language knowledge the response has to include:

– The appropriate expressions to describe relations between company depart- ments, company colleagues, etc.

– Use the appropriate syntactic structures in accordance with the lexical choices

– Structure the text in a coherent and cohesive manner 7.2.2.2.3 A RIF-based list of predictable responses

With this information we can build a set of possible correct responses. However, for this response this task is much more difficult, given its length and the amount of thematic and linguistic content to be included. Even though three out of the four parts of the email (greeting, complimentary close and signature) are very restricted in form and content, the fourth one, the body of the email is fairly open. The body of the email is restricted in terms of thematic content, but it requires a large number of entities and relations to be expressed. The corresponding different ways of wording each of these entities and relations are relatively open.

To show that it can be done, however, we provide in (8) a sample response, which was produced by one of the content designers of the ALLES materials.

(8) Dear Raymond,

I am going to describe how the structure in Jamdat works. From top to bottom, the CEO is Donald Wagner, who coordinates three areas: Customer Service, Marketing, and Product Distribution. The person in charge of Cus- tomer Service is Jane Levin. She reports to Mr. Wagner about clients and she delegates to Rob Lowe, who is responsible for Customer Relationship Management. Charles Fillmore is the Marketing Manager. The department of Brand Development is managed by Debbie McCune, who reports to Mr. Fillmore. The head of Product Distribution is Elizabeth Yang, who is re- ported to by Lee Zenshou, for the Asian-Pacific area, and Laura Calzolari, for Europe. I hope this summary is clear for you.

Best regards, Signature

In this sample response, we observe linguistic characteristics that are not reflected, or at least not explicitly, in the RIF analysis. For instance, there is a sentence introducing the topic of the text and the writer’s goal at the same time: I am going to describe how the structure in Jamdat works. An introductory sentence as such is very common in letters and emails to introduce the topic of the message to the

addressee – e.g., I am dropping a line to tell you ..., In response to your email, I ..., or Following our conversation from this morning ... As a consequence, a relation such as “the author expresses the reason for writing an email to the addressee” should, or could, be part of the RIF analysis in terms of the thematic content of the response. In terms of text structure, the description of the company’s structure is presented top-down, which is even made explicit in the response sample, and left-to-right, only implicit. It could certainly be presented in different orders, some of which might be correct, others not.

In terms of lexical content, the word areas is used to describe the higher rank departments, those that present a straightforward dependence from the CEO. In addition, the word department is used for the departments under any of those three. Finally, the word area is used to describe what in the chart is labelled as hub – e.g., Asia Pacific Distribution Hub – to describe the subdepartments in the Product Distribution department.

Still at the level of lexical content, the text in (8) presents lexical choices whose meaning is close to the choices in the activity’s prompt – be in charge of or be responsible for. This is the case for coordinates, which is not in the task instructions, but suggested in Table 7.9. It is also the case for is managed by, or the head of X is Y. The sample response uses also verb forms such as delegates, and is reported to by, which present a meaning symmetrical to report to in terms of the expressed relation. By analysing the sample response an expansion of the RIF definition is possible. This expansion mainly determines possible alternative correct responses.