Teaching speaking skills

Learners sometimes feel that classroom-based speaking practice does not prepare them for the real world. This is why they often highlight listening and speaking as their biggest problems – partly because of the demands of listening and speaking and partly because of the way speaking is often taught. It usually consists of language practice activities (discussions, information-gap activities, etc.) or is used to practise a specific grammar point. Neither teaches patterns of real interaction. So what can we do in the classroom to prepare learners for real interaction?

What do learners need?

• Practice at using L1 (mother tongue) strategies, which they don't automatically transfer.
• An awareness of formal/informal language and practice at choosing appropriate language for different situations.
• The awareness that informal spoken language is less complex than written language. It uses shorter sentences, is less organised and uses more 'vague' or non-specific language.
• Exposure to a variety of spoken text types.
• The ability to cope with different listening situations. Many listening exercises involve learners as 'over-hearers', even though most communication is face-to-face.
• To be competent at both 'message-oriented' or transactional language and interactional language; language for maintaining social relationships.
• To be taught patterns of real interaction.
• To have intelligible pronunciation and be able to cope with streams of speech.
• Rehearsal time. By giving learners guided preparation/rehearsal time, they are more likely to use a wider range of language in a spoken task.

Practical suggestions

• Transferring L1 strategies
  When preparing for a spoken task, make learners aware of any relevant L1 strategies that might help them to perform the task successfully. For example, 'rephrasing' if someone does not understand what they mean.
• Formal/informal language
  Give learners one or more short dialogues where one speaker is either too formal or informal. First, they have to identify the inappropriate language, then try to change it. Also show learners how disorganised informal speech is.
• Vague language
  Using transcripts of informal speech, focus on examples of vague language.
• Different spoken text types
  Draw up a list of spoken text types relevant to the level of your class. Teach the language appropriate for each text type.
• Interactive listening
  Develop interactive listening exercises. Face-to-face listening is the most common and the least practised in course books. Any form of 'live listening' (the teacher or another teaching colleague speaking to the learners) is suitable.
• Transactional and interactional language
  Raise learners' awareness by using a dialogue that contains both. It could be two friends chatting to each other (interactional) and ordering a meal (transactional).
• Real interaction patterns
  Teach real interaction patterns. Introduce the following basic interactional pattern: Initiate, Respond, Follow-up. This is a simplification of Amy Tsui's work. See Tsui (1994). The following interaction could be analysed as follows:
  
  A: What did you do last night? (Initiate)
  B: Went to the cinema (Respond)
  A: Oh really? (Follow-up)
       What did you see? (Initiate)
  B: Lord of the Rings (Respond)
       Have you been yet? (Initiate)
  A: No, it's difficult with the kids (Respond)
  B: Yeah of course (follow-up)
   
• Understanding spoken English
  After a listening exercise give learners the transcript. Using part of it, ask them to mark the stressed words, and put them into groups (tone units). You can use phone numbers to introduce the concept of tone units. The length of a tone unit depends on the type of spoken text. Compare a speech with an informal conversation. In the same lesson or subsequent listening lessons you can focus on reductions in spoken speech, for example, linking, elision and assimilation.
• Preparation and rehearsal
  Before a spoken task, give learners some preparation and rehearsal time. They will need guidance on how to use it. A sheet with simple guidelines is effective.
• Real-life tasks
  Try to use real-life tasks as part of your teaching.

What language should I teach?

Spoken language is both interactional and transactional, but what should teachers focus on in class? Brown and Yule (1983) suggest the following:

• When teaching spoken language, focus on teaching longer transactional turns. This is because native speakers have difficulty with them and because learners need to be able to communicate information efficiently whether in their country or in an English-speaking country.
• Teach interactional language by using an awareness-raising approach. For example, with monolingual classes you can do this by listening to a recorded L1 conversation before a similar L2 recording.
  For recordings of native-speaker interactional and transactional conversations, have a look at 'Exploring Spoken English' by McCarthy and Carter (1997). It not only contains a variety of text types, but each recording comes with analysis. 

How do I get learners to use new language?

Research by Peter Skehan on Task-based learning shows that giving learners preparation time significantly increases the range of language used in the performance of the task, whereas the accuracy of the language is not as influenced. If this is so, then it seems sensible to give learners preparation time when encouraging them to use new language.

• Imagine you have been working on the language that would be useful for the following task: Having a conversation with a stranger on public transport. You have now reached the stage where you want learners to perform the task. Rather than just give them 10 minutes to prepare and rehearse the task, give them guided preparation time. A simple preparation guide for the task could be a few key questions like:

How will you start the conversation?
What topics are you going to talk about?
How are you going to move from one topic to another?
How are you going to end the conversation?

After the preparation stage, learners can give a 'live performance'. This can be in front of the class, or group-to-group in a large class. This increases motivation and adds an element of real-life stress. 

• Another way of encouraging learners to use new language in a communication activity is to make a game out of it. Give them a situation and several key phrases to include. They get points for using the language.

Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in front of each group of 2–4 learners. If a learner uses the language on a particular card appropriately during the discussion, they keep the card. The one with the most cards wins. If they use the language inappropriately, then they can be challenged and have to leave the card on the table.

Further reading

Brown, G. & Yule, G., 1983. Teaching the spoken language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bygate, M., 1987. Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Carter, R. & McCarthy, M., 1997. Exploring spoken English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Skehan, P., 1998. A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tsui, A.B.M., 1994. English conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.