This course is designed to explore some of the primary ways of analyzing discourse derived from Michael McCarthy’s Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers and Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics (to develop students’ awareness and knowledge of the contextual influences which affect English language in use) and Deborah Schiffrin’s Approaches to Discourse (overview of the six approaches to be compared: speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation analysis, variation analysis). Underlying these explorations will be an examination of these approaches in terms of their relevance and applicability to the practice of TESOL and research in discourse analysis.