Lexis › Programme › Unit 34 › Lesson 05

Three tokens each

B2 Identity Under Pressure
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Twenty-six minutes of formal discussion in which every marked structure costs you one of three — and an unearned one is taken back by the room.

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01
Warm-up · 4 min

The language of a formal room

Formal discussion moves

Eight things people say in this kind of room. Match each to the move it makes.

Takes the floor without interrupting
Accepts and amends in the same breath
Narrows the claim before anybody attacks a larger version of it
Refuses a version of your position you did not state
Agrees, and then raises
Marks dissent formally without arguing it now
Limits the scope of a claim to one person
Concedes an area to somebody better placed to judge it
02
Input · 7 min

Four people, three marked structures

The induction question

Chair: Ana, you wanted to come back on the induction question.

Ana: I did. And let me be precise about what I am claiming, because the disagreement is narrower than it sounded. I am not saying the department was hostile. Not once in four years did anybody say anything I could have reported — and if that is the bar, then nothing happened.

Marcus: Then what is the claim?

Ana: That the bar is wrong. What I am objecting to is not any single incident; it is that the same explanation was requested of me eleven times and of my colleague never. Nobody planned that. It is still a fact about the year.

Marcus: I take the point, and I would put one part of it differently. Not only was the request repeated, it was repeated by people who each believed they were the first to ask — which is a different problem from indifference, and I think a harder one to fix.

Ana: That is fair, and it is a better version than mine.

Chair: Is there anything either of you would want the department to do?

Ana: One thing. Never again should a reading list go out without a date on it. Which sounds small, and is the only concrete proposal anybody has made all afternoon.

Teacher note The panel and the people are invented. Say so, and then count with the class: three marked structures in the whole exchange — not once did anybody…, not only was the request…, never again should… — plus one cleft doing the locating. Four devices in roughly two hundred and fifty words, in the most formal register the course covers. That ratio is the thing to point at, not the structures.
How it is argued

Three questions.

1. What does Ana do before making her claim?

2. What does Marcus’s inversion add?

3. Why is Ana’s last inversion earned?

03
Focus on Form · 6 min

The four moves

1 · Say what you are not claiming, first. I am not saying the department was hostile. It costs one sentence and it removes the version of your point that is easiest to attack.
2 · Locate the disagreement with a cleft. What I am objecting to is not any single incident; it is that…
3 · Spend an inversion only on a first or on a second-and-larger. Three per person, for the whole discussion. That is more than you will need.
4 · Accept a better version of your own point. That is fair, and it is a better version than mine. This is the rarest move in the room and the one that makes a discussion worth having.

Sentence Reordering

Six lines of one formal contribution, out of order. Put them into the order that builds.

  1. Not once in the eleven years I have been here has that order been the other way round.
  2. Let me be precise, because I think the disagreement here is smaller than it sounds.
  3. And I would want one thing recorded: never again should a consultation close before the paper is circulated.
  4. What I am objecting to is the sequence: the decision was announced and then consulted on.
  5. That is a fact about a process rather than about a person, which is why I am raising it here.
  6. I am not claiming that anybody acted in bad faith, and I would withdraw that if I had said it.
04
Guided Practice · 10 min

Two minutes of assembly

Open Cloze

One word per gap. Eight lines you will need in the next twenty-six minutes.

Let me be about what I am claiming.
I am saying that anybody acted in bad faith.
What I am objecting is the sequence, not the decision.
Not in eleven years has that happened.
Not only the request repeated, it was repeated by people who each thought they were the first.
Never again a consultation close before the paper is circulated.
That is , and it is a better version than mine.
Speaking only myself, I would want that recorded.

Before you speak

Three questions.

1. What is the first thing you say?

2. How many marked structures do you have for the whole discussion?

3. Somebody offers a better version of your own point. What do you do?

05
Communicative Task · 26 min

The formal discussion

How the twenty-six minutes run. Five alone to prepare and allocate your tokens, fifteen in fours for the discussion, six for the one sentence each. Every marked structure costs a token, and the room can take one back.

Stage 1 · Alone · 5 minutes · Prepare and allocate

A question about belonging in an institution you know: a workplace, a university, a school, a club, a city you moved to. Something with a process in it, not only a feeling.

Four lines, and three tokens allocated in advance to the points that will actually carry them.

  • 1 · What you are not claiming. One sentence, written out.
  • 2 · The cleft that locates your actual objection: What I am objecting to is not ___; it is ___.
  • 3 · Your three tokens. Beside each, the structure and the reason it is earned — a genuine first, or a second thing larger than the first, or a proposal worth a never again.
  • 4 · The one concrete thing you would want changed. A document, a step, an order of events.

Stage 2 · Fours · 15 minutes · The discussion

One chair, three speakers, rotating. Formal register throughout, and the token rule running.

Everybody speaks twice. Nobody exceeds three tokens, and unearned ones come back.

  • Open by narrowing: what you are not claiming, then the cleft that locates what you are.
  • Spend a token only where the two-question test passes. Say the structure and mean it.
  • The room may challenge a token with one question — is it really a first? or is the second thing larger? If the speaker cannot answer, the token is returned and the sentence is re-said plainly.
  • Chair: keep the register formal, hand the floor on before anybody has finished being interesting, and take the two rarest moves seriously — accepting a better version, and deferring to somebody better placed.

Stage 3 · Fours · 6 minutes · One sentence each

The best-spent token in the discussion, read aloud and defended in one line.

Ninety seconds each. The sentence, and why it earned the structure.

  • Read your best sentence aloud, with the stress where the content is, not on the fronted adverbial.
  • Say in one line why it earned the structure: which of the two questions it passed.
  • The others say whether they believe it. A structure nobody believes was decoration, however well built.
  • Finish by naming, as a four, the one proposal from the whole discussion you would actually put in writing.
Teacher note The token challenge is the mechanism and it needs to be used early, ideally on a good speaker, or the fours will treat the budget as a target rather than a ceiling. Expect most people to spend one or two rather than three; say plainly that this is the correct outcome. Collect the Stage 3 sentences — they are the assessable output and they are far more informative than any impression of the discussion.
06
Feedback · 4 min

How many you spent

From the discussion

Two questions.

1. How many tokens did you actually spend?

2. Was a token ever challenged and returned?

07
Wrap-up · 3 min

A ceiling, not a target

Exit Check

Two questions. Twenty seconds.

1. What do you say before your claim?

2. What makes a token earned?

Next. The errors — the clause that inverts by mistake, the pair-word that goes missing, and the over-use that is the real risk once you can build these at all.