11.Teaching Speaking

• Knowledge on spoken language

1. Identifying different types of speaking according to the functional analysis of speaking performed by Bygate (1987) - see Fig.1.

Expository: description, instruction, comparison

Information routines

Evaluative: explanation, justification, prediction, decision

Routines

Service: job interview

Interaction routines

Social: dinner party

Negotiation of meaning

Negotiations

Management of interaction

Fig.1 Characterizing oral interaction

2. D. Nunan’s three-dimensional grid as a planning device for designing a syllabus for speaking and oral interaction - see Fig.2

	Information		Negotiation of meaning Management of interaction
	Expository	Evaluative
	narrate describe instruct compare	explain justify predict
Interaction Service: job interview booking a restaurant etc.
Social: dinner party coffee break theatre queue etc.

Fig.2 A planning grid for speaking and oral interaction

3. Predictability and unpredictability: Communication involves the reduction of uncertainty through a process of negotiation.

3.1 Transactional encounters contain highly predictable patterns

3.2 Interpersonal encounters (the focus being on the maintenance of social relationships) will be unpredictable or less predictable

4. Strategies for accomplishing the vertical expansion (extending messages vertically, i.e. discoursally), according to Ellis (1984):

4.1 Imitating another speaker’s utterance and adding to it.

4.2 Building on one’s own previous utterance.

4.3 Juxtaposing two formulaic utterances.

5. Spoken communication as negotiation of turn-taking, topic, message, seeking clarification, and expansion, repeating or summarizing.

• Knowledge about Teaching Speaking

Aim: mastering the art of speaking as the most important aspect of learning a foreign language (i.e. the ability to carry out a conversation in the foreign language)

1. Skills involved in successful oral communication:

1.1 The ability to articulate phonological features of the language comprehensively;

1.2 Mastery of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns;

1.3 Transactional and interpersonal skills;

1.4 Skills in taking short and long speaking turns;

1.5 Skills in the management of interaction;

1.6 Skills in negotiating meaning (as part of what Canale and Swain (1980) call strategic competence) involve the ability to:

1.6.1 initiate 1.6.2 maintains 1.6.3 interrupt 1.6.4 restore 1.6.5 repair/terminate the interaction;

1.7 Conversational listening skills;

1.8 Skills in knowing about and negotiating purposes for conversations;

1.9 Using appropriate conversational formulae and fillers;

2. The difficulty of speaking tasks: the interlocutor effect (Brown and Yule, 1983,1984)

3. The degree of ascending difficulty of speaking tasks from: static tasksdynamic tasksabstract tasks.

All three task types involve learners in exploiting basic information-transferring skills.

NB The ability to reflect critically on one’s performance as a language user is an important skill, which should be incorporated into any language programme.

4. ‘Top-down’ approach to speaking - see Fig.2 on handout.

5. A nine-point scale Yardstick for evaluating speaking - see Carroll & West, 1989 on handout.

6. Consider what is involved in real-life communication - in any language.

Complete the diagram below with your ideas.

We want to communicate

REAL-LIFE

ORAL

COMMUNICATION

We choose our own language We focus on message

7. Consider how these features of real-life communication can be replicated in the classroom.

8. Interaction activities: see Penny Ur (1981)

E.g. Information Gap Activities: describe and draw

describe and arrange

describe and perform

describe and identify

picture sequencing

picture differences

Opinion Gap Activities: open-ended discussions

priority discussions

problem-solving tasks

picture/text interpretation

CLASSROOM OBSERVATION: SKILLS LESSON: SPEAKING

NB:

It may be an integrated skills lesson e.g. listening leading to speaking.

1. Try to ascertain if the skills lesson is being used to reinforce language that has recently been introduced.
2. You may find it helpful to note down the stages of the lesson and approximate time length of each stage.

SPEAKING SKILL

1. What type of speaking skill e.g. dialogue building, role-play, discussion, narrative building? What was the degree of control, i.e. controlled/less controlled/freer?
2. How was the lesson set up?
3. What instructions were given and were they clear?
4. Was the task realistic/appropriate/challenging etc…?
5. How did the teacher deal with correction e.g. did the teacher correct during the activity or at the end?
6. Comment on how successful you feel the lesson was? What factors contributed to this?

• CLASSROOM OBSERVATION: TEACHER TALKING TIME (TTT)

Answer the questions by making notes of your thoughts and with any specific examples.

1. Did the T. talk more than necessary to explain a point – or not enough?
2. Did the T. talk when the students could have been doing the talking?
3. Did the T. speak too quickly/slowly?
4. Was the level of language about right?
5. Did the language sound authentic and natural?
6. In which activities was student talking time more than TTT?
7. Did the T. create enough opportunities for student talking time?
8. Were instructions clear? Was what the trainee/teacher had to say interesting, informative, useful etc.?
9. If/when TTT was high, was there a good reason for this?

• Reflection as Exercise:

1. If you agree that language tasks must have a degree of ascending difficulty covering such scale: static task > dynamic task> abstract task, and must involve learners in exploiting basic information-transferring skills, then mention what other very important skill has to be developed in any language programme.
2. This is how Carroll and West (1989) appreciate as highest speaking performance:

‘Handles all general speech situations, as well as those in own specialist areas, with confidence and competence similar to those in mother tongue. An exceptional level of speaking. Message required is completely conveyed with total relevance and interest. Message fully adjusted to listener’s knowledge of topic and language. Spoken text is coherently organized with suitable use of sequencing and cohesion. Total control of fluency in interaction without undue hesitations. Style effectively matched to context. Language control complete, allowing for high-level interaction. Complete accuracy apart from occasional ‘slips of tongue’. Little L1 accent and appropriate use of idiom contribute to overall impression.’ Can you identify the three main criteria at the basis of this near-perfect speaker portrait?

3. Reading aloud used to be a common test of speaking. Contrast this with a more recent technique – problem-solving working in pairs. Tick off features of each technique when appropriate. (purposive; spontaneous; interactive; planned language; message bearing; real-world task)
4. The oral interview is open to several criticisms. What are these?
5. Can you predict three objections to linguistic tests of speaking?
6. The traditional one-to-one arrangement (learner-assessor interaction) has three main disadvantages. Can you predict what these are?
7. The ‘guided instructions’ technique evolved from the Lego brick-building task described by Allwright (1977). One learner is asked to give a set of instructions to either another learner or an interlocutor. There are several possibilities: ‘describe and arrange’; ‘describe and draw’; ‘pathfinding’. Mention two major advantages of the technique.
8. Check any two textbooks available for how the speaking session is organized. Compare and contrast: types of materials, assignments, difficulty parameters, sociolinguistic competence occurrences.
9. Choose one topic from one current textbook. Edit a scenario to give students practice in speaking on the respective topic/language function. You can compare your scenario with the one below, inspired by a video-lesson illustrating the communicative approach.
10. In Book 12, English Horizons, authors have included in each unit an assessment form for presentations (oral/written) that the students can use for themselves and for their peers and with which to organize their own learning. What might have been the authors’ hidden agenda in so doing?