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• trying to amuse the audience by emphasising existing divisions.

On this last point, while it’s gratifying to make an audience laugh and it can be easy to

achieve this – for example, if talking to a group of mental health nurses it is relatively easy to
get them on side by throwing into the mix jokes about psychiatrists – as consumers, it’s

important to resist this urge. Deepening these divisions is in no one’s interests. Doing so

simply reinforces the very reasons why clinicians often fail to communicate when they are
expected to work in multi-disciplinary teams. It also simplifies genuinely complex problems

(making it seem like ‘the problem’ is just ‘those people’).

There are also two particularly unhelpful ways that consumers sometimes position

themselves in relation to other consumers, which we suggest you be wary of:

• “Once, I too used to ‘behave like that’/‘act out like that’/‘not be compliant’/‘resist the help I
was being kindly offered’, but now I have seen the light, …” or

• “Once, I too was trapped within the mental health system which kept me dependent and
taught me to see myself as a diagnosis instead of a full human being. It taught me to be

compliant and unable to take charge of my life. But now I have broken away from the
dangerous medical model and you will, too, when you think hard enough.”

Both these approaches position the storyteller as better than other consumers and presume
that other consumers should follow the same path as them.

We think it’s important that when we tell our own stories we are mindful of the broader

consequences of what we are saying and how we are saying it
3. The summarize
4. Formative test

Key answers

References

1. Everyday Conversation: Learning American English by Michael Jay Friedman
2. Speaking I by Dra.Hj.Kimtafsirah, MA.

3. Bowler, B and Cunningham, S. (1990). Headway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Brown, W.H. (1994). Teaching by Principles. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents.
5. Department of Education. (2003). Kurikulum 2004. Jakarta.

6. Howard, L., Kelfner, A. and Lee, F. (1991). English or Adult Competency.
7. Mulyana, K. (2002). Teaching Speaking Teaching as the Productive Skill to Students

of Junior High School.

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