Comprehensive Study Guide: Spoken and Written Language Varieties, World Englishes, Text Types, and Business Presentations

Fundamentals of Spoken and Written Language

• Language serves as a foundational tool for both verbal and non-verbal communication. It is constructed through structured words and shared by a community or a nation.

• Language Variety refers to specific linguistic items or speech patterns associated with external social or geographical factors (Wardhaugh, 1986, as cited in Mu'in, 2008).

Contrast Between Spoken and Written Modalities

• Spoken Language:

  • Highly spontaneous and typically structured in the form of a dialogue.
  • Fulfills its communicative purpose momentarily and cannot be detached from the speaker; once the idea is spoken, the physical utterance fades away.
  • Derived directly from speaker attributes such as age, gender, and social class.
  • Characterized by real-time, off-the-top-of-the-head execution, higher ambiguity, and immediate interaction.

• Written Language:

  • Compensates for its lack of physical immediacy by being significantly more organized, explanatory, and deliberate in word choice.
  • Offers permanence: can be revisited, corrected, and analyzed objectively, bearing a higher degree of communicative responsibility.
  • Processed more slowly because it requires preparation, drafting, and referencing at random.

Five Varieties of Language Originating from Spoken Form

• Pidgin:

  • Arises when speakers of mutually unintelligible languages need to communicate for basic purposes but lack a shared common language.
  • Learned as a second language and lacks native speakers.
  • Example: A Spanish-based pidgin emerged in the Philippines among Chinese residents and Filipinos communicating with Spanish colonizers, incorporating vocabulary items such as bueno and señor (Lipski, 2002).

• Creole:

  • Evolves when a pidgin becomes the primary or native language of a speech community, developing fully articulated grammatical structures and expanded vocabulary.
  • Example: Mindanao Chabacano (MC) is a Philippine Creole Spanish spoken by approximately $600,000$ people, shaped over $300$ years of contact between Spanish and Central Philippine languages (Grant, 2011).
  • Native speakers frequently assign localized names to creoles, such as Patwa for Jamaican Creole.

• Regional Dialect:

  • Represents a distinct variety of a language spoken in a specific geographical area rather than an entirely independent language.
  • Example: The Philippines contains over $700$ regional dialects across its archipelago. Tagalog and Cebuano are widely spoken, alongside major regional dialects such as Ilocano, Bicolano, and Waray (Tecson, 2014).

• Minority Dialect:

  • Utilized by a specific minority ethnic group to preserve social and cultural identity.
  • Example: The Negrito populations of the Philippines, who migrated over $20,000$ years ago, speak endangered linguistic varieties collectively designated as Agta, which remain mutually intelligible among neighboring bands (Headland, 2003).

• Indigenized Variety:

  • Forms as a localized second-language variety in former colonial territories.
  • Example: Perceptions of changing English proficiency in the Philippines reflect a broader process of indigenization, yielding a distinct variety conditioned by local culture and linguistic substrata (Malicsi, n.d.).

Mechanics and Functions of Written Language

• Written language involves reading and decoding skills, extending beyond the simple conversion of spoken sounds into written symbols.

• Requires foundational cognitive-linguistic skills including phonological processing (sound decoding), rich vocabulary, and formal syntax.

• Lacks physical, vocal, and non-verbal cues, making textual feedback a deliberate and delayed process.

• Five Core Functions of Written Language (Halliday, 2016):

  • Record-Keeping: Prehistoric cave paintings and tablet engravings served as early records, developing into modern filing and documentation systems.
  • Trade and Business: Codified transactions via written instruments such as contracts, certificates, and commercial receipts, establishing the infrastructure of formal economic systems.
  • Academic Study: Preserved and organized mathematical, scientific, and astronomical knowledge for cumulative intellectual reference.
  • Religious Ceremonies: Formulated religious doctrines, codes, and ritual procedures to maintain standardized practice over time.
  • Literature: Provided a medium for creative expression, allowing written works to be preserved, analyzed, performed, and appreciated across generations.

Comparative Matrix: Spoken vs. Written Language

Linguistic Registers across Spoken and Written Communication

• A Register is a style of language tailored to specific social contexts, physical settings, purposes, and occupational or social groups (Nordquist, 2017; Biber & Conrad, 2012).
• Register variation reflects stylistic choices and distinct levels of formality across different communicative environments.

The Five Formality Registers

• Frozen Register:

  • Static, unchanging language learned and recited by rote.
  • Examples: Biblical passages, the Pledge of Allegiance, legal oaths.

• Formal Register:

  • Impersonal, rule-bound, complete syntactic structures avoiding slang.
  • Utilizes technical or academic terminology common in scholarly publications and official debates.

• Consultative Register:

  • Standard professional communication used in expert-client interactions.
  • Employs precise terminology and formal titles of address.
  • Examples: Interactions between doctor and patient, or professor and student.

• Casual Register:

  • Informal, conversational language utilized among peers and social acquaintances.
  • Features colloquial vocabulary, contractions, and relaxed grammar.

• Intimate Register:

  • Highly private communication reserved for close personal relationships or lovers.
  • Relies on non-verbal shorthand, private codes, and personal terms of endearment; inappropriate for professional contexts.

Spoken Registers: Situational and Linguistic Features

• Spoken registers can be dialogic (involving two or more interactive speakers) or monologic (a single speaker delivering an address, whether impromptu or prepared).

Written Registers

• Written registers communicate information using explicit references and abstract ideas across formal textual formats.
• Key Varieties of Written Registers:
  • News Reports: Objective narrative of events utilizing precise temporal, locational, and procedural adverbials.
  • News Editorials: Persuasive stance-taking that evaluates current events and recommends policy or social actions.
  • Research Articles: Academic prose authored by subject experts for professional peers to present and validate new empirical knowledge.
  • Textbooks: Instructional prose written by experts for novice learners to codify established disciplinary knowledge.

World Englishes and Intercultural Competence

Historical Evolution and Globalization of English

• Globalization has transformed English from a language owned exclusively by native-speaking nations into an international medium belonging to diverse global speech communities (Kachru, 1990).

• Philippine English History:

  • Rooted in the $1898$ American intervention and the post-Philippine-American War period.
  • In $1921$, American Thomasites systematically trained Filipino educators to teach English across the public school system.
  • By $1918$, census records indicated that approximately $47\%$ of the population spoke English, and $55.6\%$ could read and write it (Bautista & Bolton, 2008).

• Contact Dynamics:

  • Englishisation: The process wherein local native languages are structurally influenced by English vocabulary and syntax.
  • Nativization: The process wherein English integrates local cultural and linguistic features, establishing a distinct, institutionalized variety.

Kachru's Three Concentric Circles of English

• The Inner Circle:

  • Represents native English-speaking countries where English is the primary first language ($L1$).
  • Countries: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

• The Outer Circle:

  • Represents post-colonial nations where English plays an institutionalized second-language ($L2$) role across government, education, and commerce.
  • Countries: Philippines, India, Singapore, Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Zambia.

• The Expanding Circle:

  • Represents countries where English is learned as a Foreign Language ($EFL$) for international communication.
  • Countries: China, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Egypt, Israel, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South America, Taiwan, CIS, Caribbean Countries, Zimbabwe.

Evaluation of the Concentric Circles Model

• Propositions / Strengths:

  1. Promotes explicit awareness of English varieties, challenging traditional views that English belongs exclusively to native-speaking countries.
  2. Shifts negative perceptions surrounding non-Inner Circle varieties.
  3. Represents real-world communication, establishing that differing varieties do not inherently cause unintelligibility or indicate linguistic deficiency.
  4. Concept of Worldliness: Enables multicultural users to express their perspective and disperse knowledge globally.

• Limitations / Critiques:

  1. The practical roles and functions of English vary vastly within individual countries listed in the same circle.
  2. Globalized mobility blurs the boundaries separating Expanding, Outer, and Inner circles.
  3. Simplistically assumes that all populations within a given nation speak the same uniform variety.
  4. The inherent sense of segregation created by the circle metaphor can be counterproductive, perpetuating hierarchical language attitudes.

Linguistic Features and Varieties of Philippine English

• Phonological Features:

  • Devoicing of voiced sibilant consonants: Words like beige, pleasure, seize, bees, cities are frequently articulated with an unvoiced $[s]$.
  • Substitution of interdental fricatives: The th sounds ($\theta, \eth$) are rendered as stops $[t]$ or $[d]$ (e.g., this pronounced as $[dis]$, thin as $[tin]$).
  • Vowel merging: Loss of distinction between long and short vowel pairs (e.g., sheep/ship, full/fool, boat/bought), leading to a reduced overall vowel inventory.

• Lexical and Syntactic Features:

  • Spanish borrowings (despedida, estafa, scandal, querida) and direct Tagalog loanwords.
  • Loan translations (e.g., open/close the light/radio instead of "turn on/off the light/radio"; joke only for "I'm teasing you").
  • Local coinages (e.g., carnap, highblood, hold-upper, topnotcher).
  • Preservation of archaic late $19^{\text{th}}$-century American English terms (e.g., comfort room / CR, solon, viand).

• Sub-Varieties of Philippine English:

  • Acrolectal: Spoken by academics, bilinguals from English-speaking households, and English language scholars; closest to standard international benchmarks.
  • Mesolectal: Spoken by middle-class professionals who are non-English majors; features a distinct Philippine accent while remaining standard in grammar.
  • Basilectal: Displays significant structural deviations in pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary; features copula deletion, do-deletion in direct questions, and heavy colloquialisms spoken by working-class populations.

Intercultural Competence Framework

• Intercultural Competence is the ability to develop targeted knowledge, skills, and attitudes that lead to effective and appropriate communication in intercultural interactions (Deardorff, 2006).

• Constituent Elements:

  • Knowledge: Cultural self-awareness, culture-specific knowledge (history, values, beliefs, practices), sociolinguistic awareness, and grasp of global trends.
  • Skills: Active listening, observing, evaluating to minimize ethnocentrism, comparative analysis, interpretation, and critical thinking.
  • Attitudes: Respect for cultural diversity, openness (suspending judgment), curiosity, and willingness to tolerate ambiguity.

• Process & Overlap with World Englishes (Houghton, 2009):

  • Intercultural competence is a lifelong reflective process.
  • Both fields actively combat prejudice—World Englishes targets linguistic discrimination, while intercultural competence targets cultural otherness.
  • Promotes democratic citizenship and equality by valuing diverse speech varieties and cultural perspectives.

Typology of Written Texts

• Writing is categorized into Fictional (non-factual, culturally situated texts such as poetry and narrative) and Non-Fictional (factual and persuasive texts) (Paltridge, 2017).

Factual Text Types

Persuasive Text Types

Literary Text Types

Textual Literacy and Metacognitive Reading Strategies

• Textual Literacy involves understanding, evaluating, and synthesizing information across literary, academic, and historical documents, reflecting that knowledge through writing (Styslinger et al., 2017).
• Metacognition refers to self-monitoring and self-regulating cognitive strategies employed before, during, and after reading to ensure comprehension (Pressley & Harris, 2006).

Seven Core Metacognitive Reading Strategies

• Ask Questions:

  • Active questioning before, during, and after reading.
  • Focuses on: (1) Unfamiliar words/confusing concepts, (2) Direct text-based answers, (3) Inferred text answers, and (4) Unanswered questions requiring outside research.

• Determine Text Importance:

  • Distinguishes core themes from interesting side details.
  • Activates prior knowledge, uses text features (captions, bullets, bold words), takes margin notes, and identifies author perspective.

• Fix-Up Monitoring:

  • Repairs broken comprehension.
  • Strategies include stopping to reread, reading ahead, talking through confusion, or writing explanatory notes.

• Make Connections:

  • Links text content to prior experience across three levels:
  1. Text-to-Self: Personal connections.
  2. Text-to-Text: Connections to previously read texts.
  3. Text-to-World: Connections to broader global events.

• Make Inferences:

  • Combines textual evidence with prior knowledge to deduce unstated meanings, character motives, and underlying themes.

• Summarize and Synthesize:

  • Synthesizing puts text components together to construct a new perspective (the structural opposite of analyzing, which takes text apart).
  • Combines main ideas, forms generalizations, ranks idea importance, and digests content before moving forward.

• Visualize:

  • Constructs internal sensory mental pictures using vivid action verbs, descriptive adjectives, graphic aids, figurative language (similes/metaphors), and sensory imagery.

Ten Text Comprehension Strategies

1. Analyze Character: Deduce character traits and motivations using dialogue, descriptions, thoughts, and actions.
2. Analyze Story Elements: Evaluate the interaction between plot, setting, and characters.
3. Compare and Contrast: Explicitly identify structural and thematic similarities and differences between two concepts.
4. Draw Conclusions: Formulate overarching judgements during and after reading based on at least three ($3+$) distinct pieces of textual evidence.
5. Evaluate Author's Purpose: Identify whether the text aims to entertain, inform, or persuade.
6. Identify Sequence of Events: Trace the exact chronological order of plot points or factual processes.
7. Make Inferences: Deduce implied meaning using one or two ($1-2$) textual clues.
8. Make Judgments: Synthesize textual facts with existing personal beliefs to evaluate character actions or author stances.
9. Make Predictions: Forecast logical future events in a text based on current narrative clues.
10. Summarize Information: Condense lengthy prose into a brief restatement of main ideas, excluding minor details.

Principles and Delivery of Public Speaking

• Public Speaking is an oral communication form considered an art due to its specialized techniques and delivery styles. It serves to inform, entertain, persuade, or instruct.
• Classroom training activities, such as lip-reading mimicry games timed strictly to two ($2$) minutes per group, illustrate the challenges of decoding non-verbal visual cues without auditory support.

The Seven Essential Elements of Public Speech Delivery

• Voice and Articulation:

  • Requires audibility, pleasing tone, clear pronunciation, and proper breath support.
  • Volume must be calibrated based on audience size, room proximity, venue acoustics, and topic context.

• Gestures:

  • Purposeful hand movements that align with the spoken message.
  • Pointing finger: Signals physical or conceptual location.
  • Supine hands (palms up): Signals a welcoming or open posture.
  • Prone hands (palms down): Signals calming or lowering intensity.
  • Additional gestures convey describing, dividing, receiving, and giving.

• Posture:

  • Maintaining a straight spine projects confidence and professional composure.
  • Speakers must avoid slouching, leaning on podiums, or adopting a rigid "ramrod" posture.

• Body Movement:

  • Moving purposefully across physical space engages the audience.
  • Speakers must avoid staying completely static, as well as awkward swaying, pacing, or stiff movement.

• Facial Expressions:

  • Visual expressions must match emotional tone to reinforce the message.
  • Avoid a blank "poker face," exaggerated contortions, or artificial mugging.

• Eye Contact:

  • Establishing direct eye contact conveys sincerity, authority, and confidence, fostering a personal connection with listeners.

• Diction:

  • Involves precise word selection, proper grammatical structure, acceptable pronunciation, and verbal fluency.

Business Presentations and Supporting Materials

Five Core Components of Business Presentation Objectives

1. Selection of speech purpose and identification of presentation type.
2. Development of a comprehensive audience profile (evaluating needs, expectations, prior history, and decision-making authority).
3. Creation of target result projections.
4. Management of speaker credibility (demonstrated through educational background, expertise, enthusiasm, and professional appearance).
5. Formulation of explicit success criteria.

Types of Business Presentations

• Informative Presentation:

  • Explains, describes, or clarifies objective facts to educate an audience.
  • Example: Professional training sessions heavily supported by slides or physical handouts.

• Persuasive Presentation:

  • Designed to convince the audience to adopt a stance or take a specific action.
  • Relies on logical ($logos$), emotional ($pathos$), or credibility-based ($ethos$) appeals.

Thirteen Graphic Organizers for Presentation Support

• Descriptive or Thematic Map: Connects a central main idea to surrounding subordinate ideas and supporting details.   

• Network Tree: Displays hierarchical relationships branching downward from a core concept.   

• Spider Map: Radiates central topics outward into thematic sub-clusters.   

• Problem and Solution Map: Maps underlying influences leading into a cause, its resulting effect, and the target solution.   

• Problem-Solution Outline: Structures the problem (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How), lists attempted solutions and their results, and details final outcomes.   

• Sequential Episodic Map: Traces cause-and-effect chains chronologically across multiple sequential episodes.   

• Fishbone Map: Displays a main problem stem with diagonal bones representing contributing factors and possible solutions.   

• Comparative and Contrastive Map: Compares two concepts across specific dimensions, highlighting distinct and shared features.   

• Compare-Contrast Matrix: Tabulates attributes across two or more entities to analyze similarities and differences.   

• Continuum Scale: Linear scale ($\text{Low}$ to $\text{High}$) used for timelines, historical ages, Likert scales, or achievement ratings.   

• Series of Events Chain: Vertical linear process flow detailing sequential causes and final results.   

• Human Interaction Outline: Maps reciprocal actions and reactions occurring between two interacting social groups.   

• Cycle: Closed circular flowchart mapping continuous, repeating processes.   

Academic Writing vs. Workplace Writing

Practice and Delivery Execution

• Delivering an effective business presentation requires multiple rehearsal sessions.
• Performance quality is heavily conditioned by prior speech experience, presentation skills, topic familiarity, audience knowledge, personal confidence, and context formality (Goddall & Schiefelbein, 2010).
• Fluency ensures smooth delivery of ideas, while authentic enthusiasm and nonverbal competence project professional authority.