REFLECTION 1- THE LANGUAGE OF ACADEMIC DISCOURSE (TSL754) My class began with a wonderful introduction of the course by Dr. Kharathi.

The concept of discourse community is of kind that I can relate to my teaching situation. A discourse community can be defined as a group of communicators with a common goal or interest that adopts certain preferred ways of participating in public discussion. These preferred ways of discussion are called discursive practices. Generally, these discursive practices involve various genres such as academic papers, books, lectures, debates, TV and radio programming. It requires the mastery of certain special terminology or jargon. Generally, "membership" in a discourse community requires a certain level of expertise in the common goal; the more "expert" one is considered, the more influence one has over the preferred discursive practices. Most people join frequently in several different discourse communities. Before I read the articles by Swales, I had not even the slightest idea what a discourse community was, but the idea, once known, is quite simple. A discourse community, according to Swales, has six defining characteristics. First, a discourse community must have a common set of public goals. The community must also have methods of communication between its members. Primarily, these methods are used to provide information and feedback to its members. Throughout these communications, specific lexis is used to help describe anything in the discourse community. The last point Swales stresses states A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a sustainable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise, (473). Although it may seem to be a large criteria to meet, hundreds of discourse communities can be found in the average citizens daily life. Anything from a sports team to a small business could be considered a discourse community as long as it fit the list Swales imposed. For this assignment, I chose to follow a soccer team midway through their season to find out just how good of a discourse community a soccer team was. To me, a debate team is one of the example of a discourse community. In a debate team the communication with coaches is limited as well as with other group members. For a debate team to perform well, each debater must know their responsibilities during the competition. Swales first point states the discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals, (471). The common goals of a debate team is to defeat the opponents. As soon as possession is lost to the opponent, the team switches to a defensive mentality. In this ever-changing game, debaters must constantly be aware of their surroundings. Every debater knows their own duties and how to perform them the best. This is because every person on the competition is there to win, and the smallest mistake can quickly transform into a goal for the opposition, which is not one of the goals of the team.

To stop mistakes from happening, a fluent member of the discourse community is chosen to act as the leader of the team. Having a leader is a necessity of a team. With no team leader, there is no leadership during the competition that could help the team to win. They have acquired the most knowledge and experience and can teach the team how to reach their goals and minimize mistakes. Then, newcomers to the discourse community have mentors to learn the necessary lexis and knowledge of the community from.