Should English language teachers expect students to be able to produce type of ideal model

sentence when native speakers do not do themselves? Elaborate.

One of the reasons why teachers expect students to do so is the impact of scripted
dialogues. The model of spoken English on tapes does not let both students and teachers consider
the actual norm for unscripted speech. As the dialogues on tapes are not realistic, they encourage
the learners not to take risk making an utterance and make the learners to be silent in unexpected
real situation.

Corrective Exercises in Fluency

Fluency involves the ability to be imprecise and to talk around a subject and the ability to
use expressions like ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, with the name of an object which approximates to the
actual word.

There are some ways to deal with student’s errors or mistakes in spoken utterances:

 Do not correct the error immediately.

 Note those errors and correct them later.
 Note the errors which needed to be re-taught.

Generally, it is a build-up of errors that often blocks communication. The more the
possible meanings of an utterance, the more difficult for the learner to identify a speaker’s
intentions. To help solve this, a teacher can create a game or role-play for learner where he
himself will be able to judge whether or not his meaning has been understood.

As it is necessary to remember the students’ errors, the teacher should list the language
points involved in activity such as tenses, adjective order, or points of pronunciation. Then she
can tick the error or mistake while listening to them. Some spaces should be left to write further
remarks.

Pronunciation

Teachers sometimes find it difficult in teaching their classes certain sounds especially if
the sounds do not exist in the mother tongue or if it could be confused or substituted by sound in
mother tongue which seem similar. Students need to put much concentration and practice these
sounds for successful production.

Researches had shown that learners who learn language after the age of puberty have
problem with mastering a grammatical system including sound system, the phonology.
Therefore, adult learners have difficulty to overcome the barrier of certain pronunciations.
Younger leaners, on the other hand, can frequently become indistinguishable from native
speakers. Although language learning after puberty is a failure to master the entire system, adult
learners could still progress up to a point where successful communication can take place.

Pedagogical Norms

According to Albert Valdman (1975), in terms of pronunciation, students should be

taught the sounds which belong to a dialect of the target language but probably not to the
standard. Moreover, students are learning to produce the sounds but not to comprehend them. In
some cases, the context will make it clear which word is being referred to. For example, in the
question, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’, it is clear that the speaker is asking a type of
container to hold coffee, but not something to wear on his head. The difference between the
sound of the learner’s speech and that of the native speaker’s speech do not lead to the learner’s
failure in comprehension.

Intonation and stress

The ‘suprasegmentals’ such as intonation and stress are important in spoken language.
Intonation patterns are notoriously difficult to describe and teach. It appears when native
speakers misunderstand learners of their language. The transfer of intonation patterns from the
mother tongue to the target language can produce unintentional overtones of meaning. According
to practical advice of Stevick (1976), English students learning another language should attempt
to imitate native speakers of that target language speaking English.

Syllable and stress timing

One point of pronunciation which can lead to a breakdown in communication is the

changing of stress patterns. English is a ‘stressed-timed’ language. It is difficult for the speaker
of the ‘syllable-timed’ language to understand normal English pronunciation. To emerge from
this, it is important for students of English to hear examples of normal everyday speech with the
carefully produced and modulated tones for language learning. Another way of overcoming this
problem of teaching stress patterns is by using the ‘limerick’.

The Listener’s Role

The process of comprehension of spoken language is a matter of constant negotiation

between speaker and listener. The process of negotiation is a common feature of speech between
native speakers. It becomes more necessary when a speaker or listener is using a second
language or foreign language.

In a conversation between two native speakers, not every feature of speech is essential for
the message to be clear. However, if the speaker is a learner of the language, he may make the
mistakes. If the listener is not a native speaker, his role is harder because he cannot miss any
other carriers of meanings to understand the gist of what is said to him. Students need practice to
gain confidence to undertake this form of negotiation.

The teacher’s attitude to the learner’s errors and manner of treating them during this time
is of crucial importance. The classroom teacher needs to encourage a participatory role in
language activities in his students so that they will be motivated to speak and to listen in the
classroom.

There are a number of activities that can stimulate the desire to participate in sharing
information and opinions. These activities involve sharing information activity which can be
done by separating the students into groups and asking them to find out the pieces of information
about a particular topic. For the students at a lower level, jigsaw listening activities can be used.

To sum up, fluency should not simply be seen as producing grammatically perfect
sentences but as saying what the speaker wishes to say while forming the utterance as he goes
along. It is important that the sounds taught should be sufficiently differentiated from each other
not to cause confusion, and learners need to hear as wide a variety as possible of different native
speakers’ voices and accents. Moreover, negotiation plays a vital role in every conversation and
for that, both speaker and listener should be actively participating. Therefore, it is a
responsibility of a teacher to create opportunities for the students to practice listening and
speaking as well as to encourage a participatory role and confidence in them.