The activity - section three: record your discussion
Bring your recording equipment to class and sit around a table with the people in your group.
Two of you will talk; the remaining members of the group are time-keepers, observers and note-takers.
Your module tutor may tell you what to talk about. Perhaps your discussion will be part of a regular seminar. If you are not told what to discuss, you should choose your own topic. It doesn't really matter what the topic is, as long as everyone in the group has something to contribute to the discussion. Trying to agree on the top three best and worst things about your university or the town/city where it's located is always a productive topic!
The group members who are not talking will observe the discussion very carefully, keep time and note down any interesting features of the way the two speakers talk to each other. When they hear anything interesting, the note-takers should briefly write down what the feature was, what the topic was, and the number of minutes from the start time. Remember that you are mainly listening for how the speakers are talking, not for what they are saying. Note-takers, for examples of what features might be interesting, go to section five of the activity by clicking here.
Put your recording device on the table in the middle of the group, turn it on and record a few seconds of talk as a test. If it's working OK, the note-takers should write down the start time and the speakers can begin the discussion.
After about 20 minutes of discussion, turn off your recording equipment. The note-takers should share their ideas about where in the discussion they heard anything interesting. Hopefully, they can tell their group what it was they think they heard, what topic was being discussed, perhaps some of the words that were used during the interesting bit, and after how many seconds from the start it occurred.
As a group, decide on which bit (about 30 seconds in length) of the discussion you are all going to transcribe. Make a note of which bit it is. You could, for example, agree to transcribe the 30 seconds after (or before) the first long pause in the discussion (after which A or B said something about...). Or you could agree to transcribe the 30 seconds after (or before) the first bit of overlapping talk in the discussion (while both A or B were trying to say something about...). Or you could agree to transcribe 30 seconds of the extended question asked by A (on the topic of...) or the first/second/third misunderstanding about...and so on.
You should also look at the five questions here. After you have done your transcription, you can start to think about your answers to these questions. Everyone should do question A. You could agree to do one, several or all of the remaining questions, B to E. It's up to your group whether you want to decide now which questions you will consider, or whether everyone in your group is allowed to choose which questions interest them, after having finished their transcription.
Finally, decide how to share the audio file. If you have all used your own recording equipment, obviously this won't be a problem! If you do need to share your audio file and have recorded in Mp3 format, you just need to save the file onto a computer and then copy onto memory sticks or CDs. If you are not sure what to do, ask your Module Tutor for help.
Agree on the day and time of your next meeting and be ready to compare your transcripts and talk through the questions (A + one, or all, of B - E) when you next meet.
