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

Depending on the aim of communication and the character of interrelations

between sentences the following types of monologues are singled out: description, narration and reflection (solving some problem, persuading somebody). In real communication all the types of monologues are intermingled and occur within one speech act.

Communicative tasks for producing a monologue-narration include:

• Give some factual information (Who? Does what? When? Where? How? What for?) joining sentences in logical sequence;

• Speak about yourself (your friend, school, home town etc) evaluating and expressing your opinion.

Communicative tasks for producing a monologue-description include:

• Describe nature, town, appearance etc using qualitative characteristics.

Communicative tasks for producing a monologue-reflection include:

• Persuade your interlocutor in something;

• Give arguments pro and contra some facts/events/actions;

• Induce your interlocutor to some actions.

There are two approaches to teaching monologues: top-down (monologue utterances are produced on the basis of the text for reading) and bottom-up (skills of monologue speech are developed without text support, on the basis of the topic, problems and learned language material). The former cannot be used for beginners who cannot read at all or read easy and short texts whose content cannot serve as the basis for developing speaking. Besides, application of this approach presupposes that learners have enough background and cross-curricular knowledge, sufficient level of language proficiency etc. So the latter approach may be more effective.

6. Stages of teaching and activities used at them.

There are three stages in teaching monologue speech:

1. Connecting sentences into periods which express one complete idea and perform a certain communicative function (e.g. It’s cold today. It’s not snowing now. The sky is blue. The sun is shining).

2. Producing mini-monologues on the basis of different cues (support): visual (pictures, slides, objects etc), verbal (substitution tables, schemes, mind-maps, key words, plans, printed or recorded texts), or combined.

3. Producing different functional types of monologues on the topics envisaged by the curriculum. At this stage learners develop their skills to express their attitude to some facts or events, critically evaluate and prove the correctness of some facts, include elements of reflection and arguments in their utterances etc. At the same time the length of learners’ monologues increases and the focus is gradually shifted from the form to content.

Activities used at the first stage are semi-controlled productive activities. These are mainly activities like expanding the utterance by adding one more phrase or combining sentences of different types. (e.g. Let’s describe our classroom together. I’ll begin and you will help me. Or: Say in what type of building you live, describe what house or flat you have). At the stage learners also do non-communicative analytical activities to get aware of different cohesive devices, e.g. adverbial modifiers of time (now, then, yesterday, after school etc), referents (here, there, it, they etc).

Activities used at the second stage are communicative productive. Learners’ mini-monologues are motivated by a communicative task. Some support can be given if necessary (substitution tables, schemes, plans, mind maps, key words, visuals etc). Gradually the amount of support decreases. (e.g. You are a Kyivan. In Maidan Nezalezhnosati you meet a foreign tourist. He asks you how to get to Zoloti Vorota railway station. Help him. Have a look at the map. It will help you to be a good guide.)

Activities used at the third stage are communicative productive. Only natural support is provided (e.g. a geographic map). E.g. Topic: Life style. Hobbies. The type of monologue – narration. Task: You are a famous actor. Tell the journalist about your hobby.

Monologues can be spontaneous (produced immediately after receiving the task) and prepared beforehand. Both kinds are used.

Among all activities retelling should be mentioned. It can be used to develop prepared monologues but only if:

• other learners do not know the content of the text and it is interesting for them;

• some new communicative task is given (from another person, as a fairytale, with another end etc);

• a new situation or more context (new data) is to be taken into account;

• the text is transformed, paraphrased, combined with some other text etc (e.g. gossip, retelling telephone talk etc).

So it is not effective to make learners retell the text they have read together or the film they have all seen.