LECTURE 8-9

TEACHING SPEAKING

1. Competence in speaking. Monologue and dialogue as two forms of speaking.

2. Difficulties in speaking and ways to tackle them.

3. Types of dialogues and approaches to developing competence in dialogue speech

4. Stages of teaching and activities used at them. Role-plays.

5. Types of monologues and approaches to developing competence in monologue speech

6. Stages of teaching and activities used at them.

1. Competence in speaking. Monologue and dialogue as two forms of speaking.

Speaking is a communicative skill of sending an oral message. It is an

integral part of oral conversation. It is a productive skill and the produced message is directed at one or more interlocutors. As any other kind of activity, any speech act always has some aim, a motive based on a certain need; a definite topic – the ideas of the speaker; some product – dialogue or monologue and a certain result – verbal or non-verbal reaction to the utterance.

To most people, mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a foreign language, and the success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out the conversation in the language. Perhaps more than any other skill (with the exception of writing), for learners to speak in the foreign language they have to want to speak or be motivated to do so. This seems an obvious statement but one that unfortunately is not often put into practice.

The aim of teaching speaking is to teach learners to express their thoughts orally, i.e. to give messages (spontaneous or prepared beforehand), to react adequately to the interlocutor’s remarks, to start conversations and take part in them. The most important characteristics of speaking are accuracy and fluency which often contradict each other in teaching. If the focus is always on accuracy, on correct use of language means, it presupposes ongoing correction and constant interruptions of learners’ speech. If, however, the main focus is on fluent use of the material learned before, learners try to keep going, to get the message across wit whatever recourses and abilities they have got regardless of any mistakes. Normally learners are not interrupted and corrected during a speech act, though a teacher may comment upon typical mistakes in the feedback session.

Competence in speaking includes knowledge (linguistic, sociolinguisic, sociocultural, pragmatic, background etc), skills (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, special communicative skills) and communicative abilities. The composition of skills depends on the form of speaking – dialogue or monologue.

In his functional analysis of speaking, Bygate (1987) suggests that oral interactions can be characterized in terms of conventional routines that are either focused on information or interaction. Information routines can either be expository (description, narration, instruction, comparison) or evaluative (explanation, persuasion, justification, prediction), that is, they include different types of monologues. Interaction routines include different types of dialogues (exchange of information, exchange of opinion, specification and explanation etc).

Dialogue speech skills include:

• to be able to start and to round up conversations;

• to maintain conversations within the topics envisaged by the curriculum;

• to expand the interlocutor’s utterance using the same topic;

• to switch to another topic;

• to use contracted forms and speech clichés characteristic of dialogues;

• to express one’s remarks emotionally using proper intonation, gestures, miming, exclamations;

• to combine utterances according to the communicative intention;

• to ask for information;

• to adequately react to the interlocutor’s remarks;

• to demonstrate patterns of speech behavior characteristic of native speakers.

Besides, learners should develop some intellectual skills: prediction (to be able to predict the next remark of the interlocutor or the end of the remark; to process the received information (analyse, classify and critically evaluate it) in order to react adequately; to use factual information and one’s own opinion etc. Compensational skills are very important: to guess the meaning of the interlocutor’s remark using context, paralinguistic means etc; to turn back to the previous remarks; to ask clarifying questions; to ask the interlocutor to repeat or rephrase their remarks; to render the meaning using synonyms, antonyms, periphrasis instead of a word one can’t recall; to use non-verbal means of communication; to use pause-fillers etc.

Monologue speech skills include:

• to speak according to the aim and situation adequately covering its main aspects;

• to be able to combine some speech patterns in their logical development;

• to speak coherently and cohesively (using cohesive devices);

• to word utterances correctly using appropriate language material typical for the register and demonstrating a range of grammar structures and vocabulary units;

• to use adequate paralinguistic means to get the message through;

• to make use of learning and life experience, cross-curricular knowledge etc.

Besides, learners should develop some intellectual skills: skills of planning

and programming; skills to observe cause and result sequences; skills to use strategies of persuasion, agreeing and polite disagreeing, supporting your views with illustrative examples etc. Compensational skills are very important: skills to come back to the previous phrase and begin it again; to paraphrase one’s utterance using other means instead of the forgotten word or using a simpler structure instead of a more complicated one; to use pause-fillers adequately etc.

As in real life communication dialogues prevail, this form of speaking also dominates in the learning and teaching process, moreover, we proceed from teaching dialogues to producing longer monologues by expanding dialogue remarks, combining several utterances etc.