WRITING

➔ INTRODUCTION

It is the responsibility of the writing teacher to help novice writers develop into experienced writers. A skilled writer
also finds the writing process difficult.

● Personal writing strategies

● preferences
● techniques

characterize each individual writer. Some writers begin the composing process by drawing up outlines; others design
flow charts or make lists of questions to be addressed; while others simply sit down, experience a natural flow of
creativity and start writing. They use different strategies for different types of writing.

Teachers do not teach how to write but about creating the best context and the most suitable conditions to
encourage a person to write.

Novice writers need to experience in any language:

● becoming aware of the composing process.

● learning about oneself as a writer
● relating to written texts
● potential audiences of such texts

Language and writing teachers need to become aware of the individual differences that their learners exhibit and of
the variety of texts that can be created. When writing is viewed as a communicative act, producing a successful
written text is a complex task that requires simultaneous control over a number of language systems.

➔ WRITING AS COMMUNICATION

The Interactive Approach

Writing, when viewed as a language skill used for communication, has much in common with speaking and reading.
Writing is the production of the written word that results in a text, but the text must be read and comprehended in
order for communication to take place. The writer communicates his/her ideas in the form of a written text from
which a known or unknown reader will extract the ideas and their meanings. Sometimes, writers write texts for
themselves to read, such as shopping lists or personal diaries. Here, the initial intention is for the person who writes
to be also the sole reader of these texts later.

Most of the time, we write so that someone else can read and comprehend the message; the relationship that
holds between reading and writing is obvious: it’s the relationship between the production and reception ends of
the continuum.

The relationship of writing to the speaking skill is different: both of these skills are productive language skills that
enable a language user to express ideas and communicate them to others.

Various rationales have been suggested for the relationship between speech and writing, with 2 conflicting
positions:

1. that writing is different from speech, and

2. that writing is similar to speech
1. The former view reflects the observation that speaking is related to the “here” and “now” of a given speaker and
is therefore “context-bound”. The real listener present in the communicative setting provides continuous feedback
and interaction that becomes an integral part of speaking. Also, the speaker and listener can switch roles at any time
and the interaction allows for clarification, negotiation and co-construction of meaning.
In this approach, writing is viewed as a more decontextualized production process, in which the writer needs to
consider and accommodate an absent reader-audience to his or her ideas. A writer can’t rely on the context to
provide support for the interpretation. According to this view, writing competence develops as a gradual liberation
from a dependence on context for meaning. This “liberation” is achieved through skillful mastery of the potential
linguistic repertoire, matched with effective use of conventional rhetoric, with the revision process leading to the
final written text.

Successful adult academic writing is the result of the writer’s autonomous and decontextualized production process
which results in texts that are self-contained and potentially communicative to readers who are removed in place and
time from the writing process itself.

2. The second school of thought takes a more social view of the writing process and perceives it as similar to speech.
It often compares writing to speech events that need to adhere to specific writing conventions. This social
interactionist view perceives conversational dialog to be as important for the development of writing competence as
it’s for the development of spoken discourse. Perhaps the strongest relation between speech and writing was
expressed by Vygotsky, who viewed writing as monologic speech based on socialized dialog speech.

Figure 8.1 Writing: written text production framework

In reading and writing processing frameworks, the language user begins with prior knowledge and experience with
written texts, combining this with discourse knowledge of writing conventions and with assessment of the purpose
and intent related either to reading or writing, as the case may be.

Language knowledge is important for bottom-up processing whether we are interpreting a written text or editing
our written product. The main difference is that the reading process is receptive while the writing process is
productive. Furthermore, metacognition plays a crucial role in both types of processing: in the writing process,
metacognition is most significant in revision and editing of the written product.

The most significant similarity between the writing process and speech production is a concern with bridging the gap
between producer and receiver. While the speaker needs to take the listener’s context into account, the writer has to
consider the potential reader audience.

Bereiter and Scardamalia emphasized the need to develop a “reader-based approach” to writing, to ensure the
communicative power of the text. This approach places special focus on the connection between reading and writing
and views writing as aiming to produce a text that can be “read successfully”. So, the writer has the responsibility of
creating a text which accommodates to the potential readers. The writer needs to use language, content and
conventions of writing in a way that enables the reader to extract the intended meaning effectively, even though the
act of reading will be carried out at a time and place removed from and independent of the act of writing.

➔ WRITING FOR A READER - MATCHING THE WRITER’S AND READER’S SCHEMATA

One normally becomes a literate writer in one's language by being exposed to and reading a great variety of texts in
one`s first language. a child often reaches school with some basic knowledge of the letters of the alphabet. It is
actually through schooling and personal development throughout our lifetime that we expand our use of writing.

Society tends to assume and require much greater language proficiency for writing than for any of the other language
skills, and this is specially a mixture of personal inclination and social expectations of proficiency.

The school environment is the first and most dominant situation in which young people are expected to partake in
writing tasks. developing a more expanded notion of reader audience is part of becoming a good communicator in
writing: being able to anticipate the reader's needs when they read a text. Novice writers usually have trouble
deciding how much has to be said on a particular topic or issue and how to stay on the same topic without boring the
reader. experienced writers, on the other hand, are sensitive to the reader, and thus are able to use elaboration skills
to create a text that is comprehensible and communicative in nature.

Research in writing has found that training in elaboration skills is important not only for the young writers but also for
college students.

Having a good foundation inwriting in the first language helps one to become a good writer in the second language.

Approaches to writing:

● Berlin: he says that there are four components that are highly relevant for writing:

1. the writer (knower),

2. the audience(reader),
3. the reality (context)
4. and the language

● The expressivist approach views writing as an act which leads to and encourages “self-discovery” and is
therefore crucial in the development of an educated person. Various leaders of this movement have
emphasized fluency and power over the writing, and they encourage writers to write about themselves,
personal journals, both in english and in their mother tongue.
 ● The cognitivist approach: says that writing is a problem solving activity, and therefore emphasizes thinking
and process in writing. writing involves working with higher-order thinking skills. the writer makes plans,
considers the context, chooses and generates alternatives, presents arguments, and arrives at a well
supported conclusion. all of this is part of the problem solving process that is then translated into writing.
such a composing process is complex and very individual in nature. This process reflects recursivity: we write
a first version, we make changes, we rewrite and reformule. ech new version is a more careful presentation
of the message. the revisions require careful interaction between top-down and bottom up productions

● The expressivists, the cognitivists, as well as the interactionists, have had an impact on writing in second
language contexts. The first ones led to the development of the use of journals and individual rewriting in the
ESL classroom and the C. to the important work on the process of ESL writing, which includes responder to
peer or teacher feedback. the I. have developed interactive perspectives on the writing process. Another
interactive view of writing that has also influenced second language teachers draws on Bakthin`s work. He
focuses on intertextuality, that is to say, the relation of any text to other texts. Both the reader and writer
develop a deeper understanding of the process through shared experience with various texts. A cycle of
activities that represent this approach consists of:

❏ a preparatory stage prior to the actual writing process

❏ the creation of a first draft
❏ the evaluative dialogs that can be done either with a peer or writing partner who provides feedback
❏ a rewriting of the text
❏ an editing process which renders the text ready for use.

Thus, the writer becomes fully aware of the complexity of the writing process and relates it to other experiences with
reading or writing texts, but the most important aspect of this approach is the fact that a communicative text must
be composed with an interactive perspective in mind.

TOP DOWN CONSIDERATIONS WHEN WRITING:

● Writer: creator, designer, reformulator of the text.

● The audience has to be taken into account. the audience has to be imagined by the writer.
● the writer has to take into account the reality in which he or she is writing.

Grice's Maxims can also be taken into account at the moment of writing (they are universal, but they vary from
culture to culture):

1. quantity: the writer should consider the amount of information that he/she is going to impart. the
appropriate quantity depends on cultural norms. Some cultures require the writer to be very detailed, in
others to have brevity.
2. quality: required the writer to provide enough support and justification for his or her position, in order to
make the text accurate and valid. In some cultures, evidence is very important, in academic writing, for
example, references are highly important because they support one`s claim.
3. relevance: requires the writer to create a text that makes sense within the context in which it will be read.
4. manner: be clear, use good language.

➔ WRITING AS PROCESS

Creating coherence in a text

A writer is faced with the need to organise his/her thoughts into a sequence which makes sense. The writing process
is a personally adapted creative process that varies from person to person. So, these are some different ways in
which writers approach writing:
 ● to start writing by scribbling down ideas at random, while doing that, the organisation features of the text
emerge.
● to first plan the overall outline in varying degrees of detail and then start writing.
● to write an introduction, that then serves as an abstract, a basis for the whole text.
The organisation of a text crystallizes only during the writing process. Therefore, a writer goes through a number of
revisions of the text.
If the writer is experienced and proficient in these planning steps, the resulting text will contain ideas, concepts and
propositions, i.e. a coherent text.

Contrastive rhetoric

In teaching ESL/EFL we often come across the difficulty that students encounter when reading or writing expository
texts if they come from a cultural background where coherence conventions are different from those in Western
rhetorical tradition. Problems of this are dealt with contrastive rhetoric (the subfield of written discourse). It is
attributed to Robert Kaplan.

Whorfian hypothesis (Whorf): proposes that the language a given person speaks accounts in large part for the way
they think, these thought patterns in turn are reflected in the way they speak and write.

Contrastive rhetoric researchers agree on a weak version of Whorf's hypothesis, i.e., users of each language with a
literate tradition may develop and codify over time culturally based and linguistically specific rhetorical patterns as
follows:

● macrostructures for formal exposition and other genres.

● specific conventions for achieving cohesion (reference, conjunction,etc.) at the microdiscourse level.

Hartmann and others have emphasized the need to use parallel texts when carrying out any comparative analysis so
that the genre, topic and register of the texts are controlled. Eg: to compare essays in different languages on many
levels.
(There is an example of Japanese compared with English.)
Language and writing teachers should be aware of cultural differences that may cause their students difficulties in
English writing.

Strategies and steps in creating coherence

Coherence is important for the proper interpretation of a text. Although the reader creates his/her own coherent
version of the text, this happens most easily if the text has been carefully planned by the writer. It is the responsibility
of the writing teacher to help learners develop strategies to produce a coherent text. Strategies:

➔ Extratextual features: relate to the background knowledge the reader is likely to bring to the reading of the
text.
➔ Intratextual features: the writer must build into the text in order to ensure coherence.

On page 150 examples of activities to make students aware of the importance of coherence:

● To change the order of the sentences and add 2 or 3 additional sentences

● Different versions of the passage, focusing on similarities and differences (they are working on coherence)
● A CLOZE TASK-Fill the blank with 1 word (a paragraph)

The choice of genre and rhetorical format is important in the creation of coherence in a text. (Related to the purpose
of writing) At the most general level we distinguish between the narrative genre and factual or expository writing.
McCarthy and Carter refer to these as the 2 prototype genres:
 ❏ NARRATIVE TEXT: is structured around a chronological development of events and is centered around a
person or hero. Consequently, it is usually personalized and individualized and tells about the event related
to the person/s involved.
❏ EXPOSITORY TEXT: has no chronological organization but rather a logical one and is usually objective and
factual in nature.

In writing a narrative one may simply want to tell a story, teach a lesson through analogy,etc. Although in all of these
cases the rhetorical format would be the narrative, different subgenres of narrative would present different
conventions and constraints for fables, folktales, novels, etc. Furthermore, the expected readers would be different,
and so the place where the written text might appear. All these facts are important to consider when a text is being
written and coherence is being created.
The writing classroom must provide learners with experience in writing various text types according to learners´
interests and needs.

In writing an expository text the purpose and the audience become of crucial importance. Eg: the latest
developments in Biology. Each of these text types adhere to certain writing conventions:

● the purpose is to impart information to the public at large. (in a popular magazine)
● the text is intended for students who are just being introduced to the subject area. (in a biology textbook)
● the third audience consists of scientists who know the field quite well. ( in a scientific journal)

Coherence needs to be created differently for each of these audiences because of their different background
knowledge.
Lautamatti makes an important distinction between:

➔ PROPOSITIONAL COHERENCE: the semantic property of texts, creates a logical progression within the text.
On the basis of this progression, comprehension of the text can be established in the mind of the readers
who perceives a connecting thread among the propositions presented in the text, and relates it to his/her
knowledge of the world. This type of coherence is reflected in the COHESIVE FEATURES of the text such as
appropriate use of:
-referential ties
-lexical chains
-conjunctions or transitional expressions.

➔ INTERACTIONAL COHERENCE: it is more prominent in spoken discourse, it may also apply to more personal
or intimate types of writing such as personal letters. The more academic and informative type of writing that
most writers are involved in requires greater attention to PROPOSITIONAL COHERENCE in order to
compensate for the lack of interactional coherence. Some ways of creating coherence in a written text:
-planning ahead.
-organizing the ideas and propositions.
-providing connections and support.
-constantly revisiting the text to make it more “reader-based”.

SO, WRITING IS ALWAYS A CONSCIOUS AND CAREFULLY THOUGHT OUT PROCESS.

➔ CREATING A WELL-WRITTEN TEXT

A well written text has to conform to local and specific features of the text, such as choosing proper lexical items,
appropriate use of cohesive devices and using proper punctuation. These relate to bottom up strategies in creating a
text.

One of the most important features of a well written text is the unity and connectedness that make the individual
sentences in the text “hang” together and relate to each other. This unity and relationship is a result of coherent
organization of the propositions (sentences) and ideas in the passage, but it also depends on the painstaking process
carried out by the writer to create formal and grammatical cohesion among paragraphs and sentences. thys, by
employing various linguistic devices, the writer can strengthen the coherence, create global and local unity and
render the passage in a manner that conforms to the expectations of experienced readers.

The overall coherence of a longer passage depends on the COHERENCE within each paragraph. Each sentence in such
a piece of writing is related to both the previous and the following sentences, and creates at the same time, the basis
for the connection with the following one.

Harris, investigated the organizational functions fulfilled by opening sentences of paragraphs in scientific writing: he
classified sentences into five different groups:

1. sentences that announce or identify the topic

2. sentences that state a fact or give a definition of the main topic
3. sentences that show similarities or differences related to the main scientific element discussed.
4. sentences that identify an important natural or scientific event in the past
5. sentences that point put a false assumption or the lack of evidence for understanding some phenomenon.
all these types have an organizational function in the paragraph.

Bardovi-Harlig, analyses discourse pragmatics at the sentence level. According to him, a sentence within a passage
has three levels:
● the syntactic
● the semantic
● the pragmatic
in order to understand his definition we have to look at:

TOPIC is an entity of discourse that connects one part of the discourse to other parts through given information. (Lisa
is a girl. She is twenty.) “Lisa” is the entity that is connected to “she”.
COMMENT is what is said about the topic and if it is new or added information. In each of the sentences, some
information is added, developing the process of advancing the discourse according to the writer`s intentions. For
example, the fact that Lisa is twenty is added information.

In teaching writing , it is important to expose students to different styles of the same text to understand that
messages can be understood better in some styles than others.

in order to create the thread that holds the text together and creates unity and interest, an experienced writer will
use the cohesive elements in the language in order to establish a clear sequence of anaphoric reference. Thus, the
writer manages to maintain the reader's focus on the topic while distributing new information in consecutive
sentences. The skill to do this is developed over time.

As a conclusion, it can be said that creating a well written text is a process that requires many conscious decisions
along the way, especially prior to writing.
Successful writing is usually achieved through revision and rewriting.

Some steps that professionals follow to write:

1) plan the overall structure of the text

2) each paragraph is structured so as to create coherence
 3) within each paragraph both the opening and closing sentence should be clearly composed
4) within each paragraph, there should be coherence between each sentence, to ensure reference
backwards and forwards.

➔ WRITING INSTRUCTION

Breaking the initial barrier

Writing is a solitary creative task that not everybody feels comfortable with. One of the initial steps in writing
instruction must involve breaking the barrier and reducing the anxiety which may accompany the writing task. This
anxiety stems from the student’s fear of failure: not being able to think of what to write about, not knowing how to
express it properly,not being able to compose successfully, and feeling incompetent. The teacher’s first goal must be
to convince students that everybody can write successfully for some purpose, even if the resulting writing products
are quite different.

The most important barrier to break is the feeling that “I have nothing to write about”. Preparatory work prior to
writing is crucial, such as brainstorming activities, discussions and oral interactions of different types, such as
role-play activities through which students can discover they have a lot to say about the subject can be most helpful.

On the other hand, there is no way to break the barriers to writing than through writing itself. So, another good
technique is to encourage students to write about anything at all. Personal writing can be a good starting point; this
is a good time to start a self-awareness program with respect to writing:

➢ How do I feel about the writing experience that I have just had?
➢ What hindered my fluency in writing?
➢ What made it easier and what made it more difficult?

These self-directed questions help the student become more aware of the writing process and of him/herself as a
writer.
These steps to breaking barriers to writing are relevant for all writers, especially for writers in their L1. With L2
writers, we are faced with the fact that second or foreign language writers may never have developed into
independent writers in their L1, and therefore, L2 difficulties are added to general anxiety about writing. In such a
case, the second or foreign language teacher must cope with two different problems:

1. writing anxiety in general

2. the challenge of writing in a second or foreing language

At the initial stage, even students who are experienced writers in their L1 may feel that they will never be able to
reach fluency and ease in writing in another language, and therefore, they have the additional “barrier” of language.
These students need to find out that there is a lot of effective and practical writing that they can do in the new
language quite easily. A sequence of easy writing tasks needs to be developed in the form of games, role-play
activities and other non threatening writing opportunities.

Choosing a topic and choosing the genre

To create a communicative written message, the writer needs to be motivated to write and to impart information of
some type. The major success of a writing teacher may stem from his/her ability to develop writing tasks that suit the
students’ needs and interests. So, writing in a second or foreign language has to be motivated.
Choosing a topic or a theme for writing is an important initial step for classroom writing. Once the students as a
group, or individuals on their own, have identified the topic on which they want to write, the next step would be to
think of the reader or the audience to whom the written product would be addressed. The identification of the
intended reader leads to a whole list of considerations that need to be thought out prior to the actual writing task.
A series of basic questions could be very helpful in this regard:

❖ What is the reader likely to know about the subject?

❖ What will the reader want to know about the subject?
❖ How should I organize the information I have so that it is easily understood by the reader?
❖ Can I use some special gimmick (a trick or device intended to attract attention) to make the written
passage more interesting and more appealing to the reader?

Once these questions have been considered, there is often room for the choice of genre as well. Sometimes, we are
writing in a situation in which the genre is given and the audience is well defined. Other times, we can make these
decisions when we engage in the writing process. In most classrooms, writing is perceived as being addressed to the
teacher.

But most of the time, teachers assign writing as a learning activity without creating a specific communicative context,
and students make the mistake of thinking that they are writing to the teacher. This often results in the kind of
context-embedded, unelaborated writing that is not rated highly by the teacher herself since she expects
decontextualized but coherent academic writing to be produced in response to the assignment.

Tactics for planning the writing process

Silva reports on 72 different studies related to L2 writing and concludes that L2 writing is quite different from L1
writing, although the general composing process is quite similar. L2 writers seem to do less planning and have more
difficulty setting up goals and organizing the written materials to meet these goals, in comparison to L1 writers. She
emphasizes that L2 writers have special needs that are not always met in their writing classes. It is important to
provide L2 learners with effective writing instruction.

Many ways of planning for the writing activity have been suggested in literature. One of the best known is that of
preparing an outline for the text that one is going to write. Another common and more intricate planning technique
is preparation of a flowchart (a diagram of the sequence of movements or actions of people or things involved in a
complex system or activity).
Both approaches provide the writer with a system for mapping out the main ideas to be presented in a logical way, so
it can serve as a basis for determining the rhetorical structure of the passage.

Let's assume that a brainstorming activity led to 3 major topics that students want to write about:
1. describe the town you live in
2. consider the advantages and disadvantages of a new communication system within your school
3. personal perspectives in music

The whole class can now engage in working with possible flowcharts for each topic that will enable every student to
make his/her final choice of topic. Alternatively, each student could make his/her own choice of one topic and work
on his/her flowchart.
Once the flowchart is agreed upon though brainstorming or class discussion, each student or group may choose their
particular organization of the whole passage. Elements of cohesion and coherence can be discussed in the larger
setting so that all students are aware of these considerations in their writing efforts.

The planning stage is also important in breaking the writing barrier since it helps writers realize that there is a lot
they have to say about the topic. Since different writers prefer different types of planning, it is best to create an
instructional procedure in which all students try out different ways and finally choose what they feel is most
appropriate for them. Experimenting with different planning formats helps to develop the students’ awareness of
content schemata.

Reading as a model for writing

Many writing courses and most autodidactic strategies in writing involve using well-written passages from literature,
or passages written by others, as models for one’s own writing. Such paragraphs serve as stimuli for writing by
providing content people want to react to. So, many writing classes begin with reading texts, analyzing them, looking
at them from both the reader’s and writer’s perspective, and using them as models for writing or as a piece of
communication to respond to.

Wu reports on a study that focused on a reading-to-write task carried out with native and nonnative speakers with
different writing abilities. The aim of the study was to find out to what extent such a task might have different effects
on native vs nonnative writers in terms of their use of lexical items as well as prepositions, which appeared in the
given reading text (the prompt).

His findings indicate that the nonnative groups, both the high and low ability groups, although they exhibited
strategically different patterns of borrowing from the prompt, they differed greatly from the native speakers with
high writing ability in terms of the much larger quantity of vocabulary they borrowed from the source text. On the
other hand, lower proficiency native group differed from the other 3 groups since they paid too little attention to
what was provided in the prompt and took no advantage of it.

In academic work, an important writing task is summarizing. It’s a reading-writing activity which resembles part of
the task given to the writers in Wu’s study. In many cases, a summary is done for the writer’s use. Individuals who are
good readers, good learners and experienced writers develop effective personal ways of summarizing. However,
summarizing is an important assignment that is often required as part of an academic course.

Summaries may have at least 2 types of audiences:

➢ the instructor who uses them to find out if the students have understood the material, or
➢ fellow students who share their readings through summaries of the articles they have read.

The second goal in summary writing is much more motivating and communicative, since learners can share their
points of view. So, this type of motivation turns this activity into a meaningful communicative task.

Summarizing can be perceived as a writing activity within a content class. The reading of an article or chapter in a
book is never out of context in a content course, since the course provides the metastructure for the subject at hand.
The content schemata develop within the course of study. Furthermore, the formal schemata are directed by the
subject matter and the type of readings assigned in the particular course, so that students can be more familiar with
what is expected than if they are simply writing “summaries” in an English writing course.
In an academic world, summarizing is:

★ a study aid
★ an aid to research
★ a way to retain information
★ a way to communicate ideas with others

It’s easy to motivate and engage students in the development of the metacognitive skills needed for summarizing. So,
they can overcome some constraints or difficulties, such as properly understanding the original article in order to be
able to report the gist of it and evaluate it by critiquing it.

Summarizing requires mastery of writing conventions and a sound grasp of the content and objective of the text that
is being summarized. Then, this needs to be paired up with the purpose for writing the summary in order to help the
writer decide how detailed or how concise the summary is going to be.

The summaries can be written in a history class, or in any other subject area. So, it’s obvious that the style and genre
in which each subject is usually written in textbooks, will affect the summaries.

The Portfolio

It’s an ongoing collection of different writing assignments kept by the student in a folder or workbook. It has
become an important concept in developing writing skills and in giving teachers a fairer and more perceptive way to
evaluate. Each student writes and rewrites assignments, personal messages, essays, letters, summaries and any other
kind of writing done for class.

All drafts and versions of these are kept in the portfolio. Once in a while, individual students meet with the teacher to
discuss certain writing activities. For a final evaluation, the students can select a present number of items they
consider best or more representative, and the evaluation can be done on those items only, for example, on the
portfolio.

A portfolio is also useful in preparing a longer writing project that involves collecting information and a variety of
data on a topic before the actual writing is done. So, students have an opportunity to go through various types of
writing tasks within the larger project:

● they write down notes

● they prepare summaries in the library
● they access to the internet
● they make lists and plans of action
● they write letters to authorities or key people in the community, and so forth

All these activities need guidance and advice from the teacher or an older and more experienced tutor, but they are
all authentic writing tasks that led in the end, to a larger and complete writing project. The students spend time
coordinating all the various bits of information and creating a coherent presentation ensuring cohesion and unity
within the final presentation. The various individual tasks are kept in the portfolio and become an integral part of the
writing project.

Writing and Rewriting

One of the most important things a writing class should aim at is bringing the students to the point where they are
willing to revise and feel comfortable about revising what they have written. Two major techniques are helpful in this
context:

➔ peer review/feedback
 ➔ self-questioning

Various approaches to peer review use an adapted role-play technique where the reader (a peer) takes the written
text and tries to understand it. She/he reacts to the text and asks questions about it. The writer of the text copes
orally while clarifying the written text, answering the questions considering the problems of interpretation that
arose, and then rewrites the passages to make it more “reader-based”. Since students act as writers and readers,
there is a very useful interaction between reading-writing development here for all students involved.

However, this approach to revising requires very careful preparation on the part of the students:

● they must learn to respect each other’s work,

● they need to learn how to offer and accept constructive criticism,
● they have to learn how to identify problematic features of the text.

Working in pairs or groups of 3 can help students prepare themselves for such peer evaluations. The teacher has to
be willing to relinquish her own total control of the process and allow students to interact freely and take advantage
of each other’s suggestions and feedback.

However, the teacher is the one who reacts to students’ writing by responding to the textual and content features of
the writing. Zamel claims that most ESL teachers react to every student assignment as if it were a final draft. Their
comments are usually vague and prescriptive and don’t encourage or motivate the students to carry out a
reformulation of the text. They give students a very limited view of the writing process and the expected outcome.
It’s very important for teachers to consider their students’ writing as work in progress.
Conferencing with students seems to be a more appealing way to respond to students’ work. This is becoming a
more acceptable way of working on revision in writing class, thanks to the use of portfolios. The conferencing doesn’t
always have to take place between teacher and student; it can also be done by two students, each of them playing
the role of the writer once and then the role of the “evaluator”, who is perceived more as a potential reader. This
reader will have been trained to ask relevant questions and will focus on what is clear and makes sense to the reader
and what needs to be elaborated on, since it’s not clear enough. Such feedback can be most helpful to students
engaged in rewriting and reformulating.

Leki reports on a study of writing tasks across the curriculum. The study involved 5 foreign students at a university in
the USA who develop writing strategies as part of the subject matter for the classes they take in English.
An important feature in improving their writing was the positive and constructive feedback these students received
on their writing tasks in their disciplinary courses. This feedback allowed the students to shift strategies when
necessary. In the ESL class, Leki suggests we make use of such successful experiences with useful feedback on
writing. Students can also be directed to recall past experiences and become aware of their own writing strengths
and weaknesses.

Computers have enabled teachers of writing to develop new ways of training students in writing tasks and have
allowed ESL students to practice and develop better writing skills. Using texts as models of writing is one technique
that can easily be adapted to computer activities: a short text is given and students are asked to alter, expand,
shorten or elaborate on this text. Then, the results can be compared to a peer’s product. The computer enables the
students to choose from a bank of texts, work on any given text directly by making editorial changes in the original
text, and retain the possibility of comparing new versions with the original one.

“Self-questioning” is another technique that can be used in computer courseware, by which a student-writer tries to
answer the questions a potential audience might raise as well as getting the learners to engage in a self-evaluation
sequence. This technique can lead to useful rewriting and careful reconsiderations of the text. The main advantage of
the computer is that students can work on their texts individually or in pairs, and rewrite or readjust the texts easily.
The use of the computer also facilitates ongoing feedback and evaluation by the teacher, who can monitor the
progress of students on-line and provide constant feedback.

A Top-Down or Bottom-Up Approach?

● Top-down approach to writing: places more emphasis on the content, the organization and the structure of
the written passage rather than its linguistic form.

However, we maintain that in the long run, in order to ensure that the written passage has communicative power
and long-lasting effect, it also needs to be well written in terms of the proper choice of words and use of cohesive
devices, grammatical structures, spelling and punctuation.

These bottom-up features should be focused on later in the writing process, when the initial barriers have been
removed and the student is willing to engage in the creative process of communication through writing.

As students feel more comfortable with writing, they can be made aware of the need to use proper morphology and
grammar, make appropriate vocabulary choices and pay attention to the way in which the text is presented.
Eventually, students will learn to choose the proper register and organize their ideas in a way that can easily be
understood by their readers.

Conclusion

The composing process has been presented as an interactive communicative activity. Here, the focus is on the
writer’s decision-making processes and on the ongoing evaluation process, which are integral parts of the composing
act. The evolving written product is viewed as discourse constantly changing to suit the writer’s goals and the
writer’s need to accommodate potential readers.

The writing skill is often perceived as the most difficult language skill, since it requires a higher level of productive
language control than the other skills. It requires careful planning and revision, processes which in themselves, worry
students and create anxiety.

The ultimate aim of teaching writing in a second language program is to encourage students to develop techniques
and self-evaluation strategies that will enable them to write according to their personal needs. Language classrooms
should provide students with a variety of writing opportunities. Teamwork and collaborative writing projects can be
effective activities in the second language classroom.
SPEAKING

➔ INTRODUCTION
to do normal activities in a foreign language and a new culture requires knowledge on both the language and the
culture, and also some experience as a participant in such interactions (going to the doctor, going to the
supermarket, etc. In general, immigrants are in a difficult and frustrating situation since they have to cope with a
whole world of new and unfamiliar elements.
The success of tourists, immigrants, second language speakers, finally depends on how well they could communicate
with the local people. The most challenging speakers are the students, since they have to study academically and
communicate with teachers, headmasters, clerks, etc.
In general, all these people, depending on their situation, need to make themselves understood in the other
language. They need to be able to speak in the second language.
Speaking, isc considered the most difficult skill to acquire, since it requires both the listening comprehension and the
speech production subskills (vocabulary retrieval, pronunciation, choice of grammatical pattern). Also, it is
unpredictable, and it happens in unplanned situations.
On the other hand, speaking can be seen as the easier skill, since one can use body language, gestures, repetitions,
demonstrations, and various other strategies to be understood.

➔ MAKING ONESELF UNDERSTOOD IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

Message and Medium In Oral Communication

The simple statement “I am hungry” has a literal meaning that can easily be interpreted by anyone who knows the
meaning of the words of this statement and something about the syntax and the sound system of English. This is the
locutionary meaning of this sentence, but we can easily imagine any number of situations in which this statement
takes on various illocutionary forces.

To interpret any spoken message, we need to have a wealth of information beyond the linguistic elements appearing
in any statement produced in the oral medium or channel. Sometimes, this distinction between speaking and writing
is referred to as modality.

Mismatches and misunderstanding in oral communication can be the result of any of the following problems or
conditions:

❖ the speaker doesn’t have full command of the target linguistic knowledge and produces an unacceptable or
unintelligible form (in terms of phonology, grammar or lexical choice).
❖ the necessary background knowledge (content, prepositions) is not shared by the speaker and the hearer,
and they bring a different set of expectations to the spoken interaction.
❖ the speaker and the hearer don’t share sociocultural rules of appropriacy, so the speaker may have violated
such a rule from the hearer’s point of view due to pragmatic transfer from the first language.

The basic assumption in any oral interaction is that the speaker wants to communicate ideas, feelings, attitudes and
information to the hearer or wants to employ speech that relates to the situation. The objective of the speaker is to
be understood and for the message to be properly interpreted by the hearers. It’s the speaker’s intention that
needs to be communicated to the hearer. However, a “faulty” production in any of the above 3 areas might create a
piece of spoken discourse that gets misunderstood.

To ensure proper interpretation by the hearer, the speaker has to be concerned with factors of form (specific to the
oral medium), which are linguistically controlled, as well as factors of appropriacy, which are pragmatically
controlled by the speech situation and by the prevailing cultural and social norms.

Factors of form or medium relate to the speaker’s linguistic competence as well as to the possibility of faulty delivery
of the spoken utterance.

(example of a host and a guest on page 166)

For the speaker to be able to produce utterances that communicate his intended message, all 3 conditions need to
be met at least partially:

1. the linguistic form should enable the hearer to make propositional identification
2. the physical context: shared world knowledge
 3. sociocultural norms should enable the hearer to come up with an interpretation of the intended message

The Interactive Perspective Of Oral Communication

The speaker brings to the interpersonal communicative act a set of presuppositions about the situation, the
participants in the exchange and the expected outcome of the exchange. Knowledge of the sociocultural rules of
appropriacy and the focus on the intended message with respect to the listener’s situation guide the speaker in
making choices that form the spoken product. Thus, the speaker initiates the interaction with a communicative
intention that is to be realized through verbal utterances that make use of the speaker’s language knowledge and
repertoire of speaking skills and communication strategies. The hearer, on the other hand, brings his or her own set
of presuppositions and expectations to the interaction, to interpret the speaker’s message, and later, react to it by
changing roles and becoming the speaker.

Figure 9.1
Speaking: speech
production
framework

In many ways,
speaking and
writing are similar
as both are
concerned with
the production of
discourse. Hatch
recognized the
similarities
between these 2
skills but identified
3 parameters that
can differentiate
between the
production of
spoken and written
discourse:

➢ planning
➢ contextualization
➢ formality

Although speech production relies on presuppositions, sociocultural rules and speaker intention, it’s usually less
planned than writing, more contextualized and more informal. Maybe, the main reasons for these differences is that
speech is produced on-line and that it’s prototypically reciprocal in nature. The reciprocity develops during the
ongoing negotiation of meaning between the speaker and listener, producing a joint construction of communication.
This is the case in interactions in the L1, but many L2 researchers see oral production as an opportunity for learners
to establish collaborative co-construction of discourse, and formulate meanings mutually understood while
developing their interlanguage interactively.

Although the communication model works for spoken and written interaction, the distinctions above mentioned play
an important role in acquiring and activating the 2 modalities. As noted, spoken communication is unplanned and
usually develops through sequential steps in oral interaction, as hearers and speakers interact and take turns to talk.
Also, much spoken communication occurs when the interactants see each other, so, they share time and space during
the interaction and can rely on contextual and situational clues. Spoken communication tends to rely on the
immediate context and on information shared by the speaker and the hearer and is much more context-embedded
than written discourse.

In real life situations, there is a continuum of oral communication that ranges from the immediate and familiar
environment to more formal and decontextualized situations.

Choosing The Linguistic Features

In producing spoken discourse, speakers use their grammatical competence to produce linguistically acceptable
utterances in the target language.

● the ability to choose lexical items and use them in their morphological form,
● the ability to arrange the lexical items in an acceptable word order, and
● the ability to pronounce the words in an intelligible fashion,
all contribute to the linguistic realization of the utterance.

For this verbal product to become a meaningful piece of discourse, it must relate to the context in which the
interaction is carried out through the use of clues that reflect cohesion and coherence.

Levelt identified 3 important contextual factors in speech production:

❏ demand, which refers to the amount of processing required by a task. Ideally, the response to the task
matches the demand of the task, but in many situations, the demand is too high or too low, creating some
kind of malfunction and miscommunication. This is evident in foreign o L2 language interaction, where the
speaker may have a hard time adjusting to the demands of the task.
❏ arousal, which refers to the speaker’s emotional and cognitive response to a task and relates to the
importance that the individual attaches to the communicative interaction.
❏ feedback, which the speaker receives from the listener or the wider environment affecting the performance.
In a L2 context, it’s important for learners and language users to be attentive to feedback and
back-channeling during conversation. The speaking and communication strategies of learners need to take
into account the value of feedback, and when such feeling is lacking, students should be able to elicit it.

The linguistic features or the code complexity may have a serious impact on successful production of spoken
discourse. Mastering question formation, using appropriate word order, placing proper stress on multisyllabic words,
and so forth might facilitate conversation or obstruct it when these features are lacking.

Sociocultural norms may play a more significant role in successful interaction.Thus, consideration of politeness and
ways to save face are often realized through specific choices made by speakers using their linguistic repertoires. In
English, for instance, it’s normally not considered polite to express disagreement in a direct manner. When we prefer
to maintain a more harmonious social interaction with a professional colleague, we look for indirect representations
of disagreement.
In the process of speech production, language ability needs to be combined with sociocultural considerations.

One difficulty for freign language learners who acquire the target language only in instructional settings is that
normal, colloquial speech has some unique language features. So, the spoken language, as McCarthy and Carter
demonstrate, has many grammatical features that function quite differently from those found in written language,
which is what most current descriptive grammars use as their standard. They have identified several grammatical
features of spoken English, emphasizing the following:

➔ pervasive ellipsis of subjects, predicates, and auxiliary verbs

➔ an initial slot to frame or introduce topics
➔ tails or final slots for amplification or extension
➔ reporting verbs with past continuous tense

To be able to make such choices in spoken discourse, the learner needs to have acquired a wide repertoire of
language resources and to have developed some sensitivity to differences between the spoken and written language.

Different speech production tasks require language users to recruit their various types of knowledge, together with
their performance skills and communication strategies. An excellent opportunity for the overall process of speech
production is story retelling.
For example, Upshur and Turner use story retelling as an evaluation technique for oral production ability and show
how evaluation scales could be developed for this process. The communicative effectiveness of this speech
production task requires, at least, the following subtasks:

● coherent organization of the story and inclusion of all the important prepositions
● cohesion created by using appropriate connector, and
● appropriate choice of lexical items

An evaluation of the production of the natural flow of speech, requires the consideration of the degree of hesitation
and overall fluency, which relate to the processing features of speaking. But this type of activity doesn’t assess
pragmatic knowledge or contextualization.

Adhering To Rules Of Appropriacy

Sociocultural rules of appropriacy are viewed as an integral part of a person’s communicative competence. The field
of pragmatics can be viewed as the study of the relations holding between the use and meaning of linguistic
utterances and the social situations within which they are produced.

Leech perceives general pragmatics as consisting of 2 subfields:

➢ pragmalinguistics: related to use of language in context, for example, linguistics

➢ sociopragmatics: related to societal rules of behavior, for example, sociology

Sociolinguistic competence consists of the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic rules of the target language that
need to be acquired, and this competence enables the speaker to produce that are linguistically and pragmatically
appropriate.
These rules of any language are concerned with:
 1. characteristics of the individuals, who take part in the communicative exchange
2. features of the situation in which this exchange takes place
3. the goal of the exchange
4. features of the communicative medium through which the exchange is carried out

Individual characteristics related to sex, age, social status, social distance and the specific roles the participants play
within the interaction may have a significant efect on the realization of any instance of spoken discourse. Learners of
L2 have to adjust to the rules of speaking in their new language, rules that may be quite different from the ones
functioning in their L1.

Besides, speakers will have to make choices with respect to register: in any language, speakers use more than one
register on a regular basis:

● a more intimate and casual register is used in immediate and familiar contexts
● a more formal register is used in occupational or everyday situations with interactants that the speaker
doesn’t know well.

Maxims Of Oral Interaction

The relationship between utterances and their function in social interaction is the concern of Speech Act Theory. A
speech act is realized when a verbal utterance functions as a social act.

In normal spoken communication, people use talk as a social tool. The cooperative principle proposed by Grice is
strong in maintaining the flow of exchange between speaker and hearer. Grice suggests a set of 4 maxims that apply
when natural conversation functions effectively:

1. the maxim of quantity: relates to the provision of information by the speaker for the hearer’s benefit. It’s the
speaker’s evaluation of what the hearer knows (old information) as opposed to what the hearer needs to find
out (new information) about the content of the communicative interaction to interpret the message. It refers
to the effective speaker making the right decision with respect to the amount of information imparted.
2. the maxim of quality: refers to the speaker’s conviction and belief that she/he is stating the truth. The
cooperative assumption between speaker and hearer is such that the hearer accepts the utterances made by
the speaker as statements of “the way things are” from the speaker’s point of view.
3. the maxim of relevance: refers to the fact that the speaker needs to make sure that the hearer sees the
relevance of what is being said to what she/he knows about the situation and the goal of the interaction. If
for some reason the speaker suddenly decides to change the topic or interrupt the normal flow of the
conversation, it will be expected that she/he explains the reason for this change.
4. the maxim of manner: refers to the delivery of the message. The speaker is expected to produce a coherent,
well-presented utterance that doesn’t make it difficult for the hearer to carry out the interpretation process.
It is the speaker’s responsibility, therefore, in case of a faulty start or an ambiguous outcome to clarify and
adjust the utterance, so that it abides (follows/obeys) by the maxim of manner and is accessible for
interpretation.

The cooperative principle’s assumption is that speakers want to be understood and interpreted correctly and hearers
want to be effective decoders of the messages they receive. They are perceived as constructing meaning during
communicative interaction. However, a nonnative speaker is someone who doesn’t have full command of the target
language, and it’s often concerned with his/her linguistic performance, and can’t always concern him/herself with
these maxims.
Although these maxims exist in every human language, they can function differently from language to language with
respect to the value of any given maxim.
For example, the maxim of quantity functions differently across cultures. A group of students taking a class in
discourse analysis at Tel Aviv University went out into the streets of a suburb, where many speakers of Hebrew,
American English and of South African English live.
The students wanted to find out how the various residents would respond to a request for information regarding
directions: the students asked “Is this the right way to the main bank?”, and they expected a confirmation.

➢ Hebrew speakers reacted to this with an affirmative utterance, consisting of one single word translatable as:
”Right”, “Correct”, “True”.
➢ American speakers had two moves, such as “Yes, you’ll see the bank after you cross the intersection”.
➢ South African speakers usually had 3 moves or more: “Yes, you’re right. You should cross the next
intersection first and then walk for another 300 meters. The bank will be on your right”.

We can see that the 3 different cultural groups perceive quantity as being important in expressing a confirmation,
but they perceive it in different ways.

➔ PARTICIPATING IN ORAL INTERACTION

Maintaining The Flow Of Speech

Observing a one-time unique interaction: one feels amazed at the smooth way in which the roles are switched
between the speaker and the hearer and at the way ideas keep being transferred from one interactant to the other.
Turn-taking rules make it possible for the S and H to change roles constantly and construct shared meaning by
maintaining the flow of talk with relatively little overlap between the 2 and very brief pauses between turns.
Members of a speech community know how to participate in this type of exchange by:
★ adhering to the turn-taking rules that are appropriate in their community.
★ allowing overlap to occur between utterances.
★ using pauses lengths that are compatible with their particular sociocultural norms.
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS, Levinson describes the sequences that are developed and the sequential constraints that
are characteristic of the natural flow of conversation.
★ A native speaker knows how to function at the transition points. (Both by reacting appropriately when there
is a pause in the flow and by using a variety of signals to “get the flow” or to “close a conversation”)
❏ Speakers know how the 2 parts of an adjacency pair fit together. (such as a question and its answer, a
greeting and its response, etc)
❏ The compatibility that is required within adjacency pairs (i.e. interlocutor exchanges that occur in sequence
and are directly related to each other) is LINGUISTICALLY, SEMANTICALLY, and PRAGMATICALLY conditioned.
Learners of a new language have to recognize and develop new rules of behaviour since the rules of applying to
conversation can be different in different languages. There are differences in the length of pauses that are “tolerable”
within the conversational flow.
 In order to be an effective communicator, learners should have the linguistic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge to
function successfully and appropriately in terms of the conversational turn-taking system of the new language.

Accommodating The Hearer(s)

❏ The initiating speaker in a communicative interaction has: controlling power over:
❖ the flow
❖ content
❖ manner of interaction.
❏ Based on the cooperative principle the speaker needs to accommodate the hearer and facilitate the interpretation
of the spoken message.
❏ But beyond adhering to the 4 maxims and the rules of sociocultural appropriacy, the speaker also needs to maintain
eye contact and to pay careful attention to the hearer´s body language and overall reaction, in order to be prepared
to carry out repair in case anything goes wrong in the exchange.
❏ Nonnative speakers need to expend much greater effort and exert more attention in order to maintain the flow of
the interaction. Nononnative speakers often turn some of these tasks over to native speakers/hearers who become
more active and responsible.
❏ A second language learner needs to develop STRATEGIES in the new language that will enable him/her to recruit
the help of interlocutors in an evaluation process regarding whether the 2 interactants understand each other.
Interacting as a speaker in a new language requires:
★ self-awareness and self-evaluation
★ a considerable amount of tolerance and accommodation, both for one´s limitation in production and
for the reactions of interlocutors.
❏ SL learners need to be exposed to a variety of situations in which such exchanges take place. BUT, nonative speakers
need to possess communication strategies that can facilitate and make adjustments in incomplete or failing
interactions.
❏ Bongaerts and Poulisse found SIMILARITIES in the use of communication strategies in L1 and L2 when they were
defined in terms of CONCEPTUAL strategies rather than compensatory strategies (of nonnative speakers).
Nonnative speakers´strategies VS native s.s. in terms of FREQUENCY and FORMULATION types rather than mental
processes.

Can strategy-based instruction improve speaking ability in a second or foreign language?

According to Cohen´s results of investigation: such instruction is worthwhile and suggests that an integration of
strategy training with the regular language instruction taking place in the classroom can improve learners´ability to
communicate through spoken discourse.
Learners´ awareness of strategies and the choices they make before and during speaking may:
★ lower anxiety
★ increase self-confidence
★ provide learners with ways in which to evaluate their own performance.
The discourse processing features of the speaking skill and the resulting spoken discourse (i.e. the product) require
the language user´s focus on special communication strategies, but which often require the user to combine all areas
of knowledge and processing skills in order to interact successfully.

➔ SOME PREREQUISITES FOR SPEAKING IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

It is usually not necessary to reach a perfect level of competence and control. In fact, people can communicate orally
with very little linguistic knowledge when they make good use of pragmatic and sociocultural factors. But in order to
become a truly effective oral communicator in another language, there are some requisites. The linguistic,
sociocultural and discourse competencies needed to ensure better oral communication include the following areas
(part of discourse knowledge):
1. knowing the vocabulary relevant to the situation.
2. ability to use discourse connectors such as well, oh, I see, okay.
ability to use suitable “opening phrases” and “closing phrases” such as excuse me or thank you for your help.
ability to use and comprehend reduced forms. (reducing vowel sounds)
knowing the syntax for producing basic clauses in the language.
ability to use the basic intonation or tone patterns of the language.
ability to use proper rhythm and stress, and to make proper pauses.
3. awareness of how to apply Grice's maxims in the new language.
4. knowing how to use the interlocutor´s reactions and input.
5. awareness of the various conversational rules that facilitate the flow of talk.
PRODUCTION OF SPEECH ACTS BY EFL learners:
Cohen and Olshtain found that learners are fully aware of their linguistic difficulties while engaged in communicative
interaction.In verbal reports they can actually explain what coping strategies they employed at certain points of
difficulty.
★ Sometimes they abandon the message or omit an utterance that they would have liked to say because they
are not sure of some grammatical features.
★ at other times, they realize that they have to be satisfied with only a partial delivery of a thought.
★ in some cases, they even opt to deliver a different thought from the one they originally intended because
they can´t remember a word or an expression.
Beyond the linguistic competence learners need to have, they also need to develop COMPENSATORY STRATEGIES in
order to overcome difficulties. Such strategies should be included within a more general strategy-based type of
instruction. The compensatory s. would consist of:
❏ paraphrasing when vocabulary items are missing
❏ appealing for help when a concept or notion cannot easily be communicated
❏ using examples and explanations to clarify one´s intention, etc.
These strategies can be best developed by ample exposure to authentic speech in the classroom and by participating
in a large variety of oral practice activities. Such activities should include both spontaneous conversations and brief
preplanned oral presentations.
Such instances of strategy use (adjusting the message, coining words, paraphrasing, etc.) need to be encountered in
class via communicative activities.
An example of compensatory strategy: learners´ descriptions of some faces-guessing intelligity, using synonyms,
generating a reasonable topic. Such activities are then added to more global speaking activities such as, story telling,
descriptions,etc.

Young reports (conversational style), advanced learners were found to speak faster and with fewer pauses or
hesitations, persist on the topic longer, and take more initiative with respect to their participation in the
conversation. These are some features that speaking courses can encourage learners to develop while being engaged
in useful communicative activities in the language classroom.

➔ SPEAKING IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Speaking activities and speaking practice in the classroom should enable students to gain experience using all the
“prerequisites” for effective oral communication that have been mentioned.

The most important feature of classroom speaking activity is to provide an authentic opportunity for the students to
get individual meanings, and use every area of knowledge they have. they should have the opportunity and be
encouraged to become flexible users of their knowledge, always keeping the communicative goal in mind.

Speaking activities, like listening ones, can be presented on a continuum form, from easier to more difficult tasks. For
young or beginning learners, the teacher may begin with guessing games that require only one word answers and
gradually increase the complexity so that learners have the opportunity to express themselves using longer discourse
units.

Speaking Activities:

★ Role play is an excellent way in which to stimulate real communication. in this activity, students have an
opportunity to use their knowledge of vocabulary, narration, speech acts, discourse fillers, turn taking,
pauses, etc. however it can be a difficult task if students do not have sufficient language about the
participants, the situation or the background information.
★ Group discussions: they are effective because students have the opportunity to do brainstorming first, and
then speak about what they said. participate by producing a word, an expression, or a clause.
★ Using target language outside the classroom can be a very useful requirement in homework assignments.
For example, they can be asked to collect information about restaurants, museums, offices, and other public
establishments and then report about them in class. thus, it is a multipurpose task: students use the
language naturally outside the classroom for data collection and then they give a report in the classroom as a
planned oral presentation.
★ Using learner`s input: this is done to create meaningful speaking activities because they make the activity
relevant for the student`s world. for example, making friends is very common for adolescents.
★ Feedback: it is important to encourage learners to develop a variety of communication skills needed for
successful oral communication. it is important that teachers provide supportive feedback on speaking
 ★ Looking at authentic speech: in the form of written transcripts. students can think of the features of oral
discourse that they may not be aware of. The transcripts may provide examples of useful expressions,
connectors, feedback techniques.
★ Peerfeedback: it can be done in paris, in groups or in planned deliveries in front of the whole class. it is
important to develop a positive and encouraging atmosphere so that such feedback is helpful and
constructive, not damaging.
★ Self evaluation and self analysis: students can record themselves, and then listen to it and try to improve
themselves.

BURNS, provides some important elements needed to develop useful spoken interactions in the classroom. She
presents TYPOLOGIES of such interactions that combine interpersonal intent with pragmatic considerations. a special
emphasis is placed on a variety of spoken genres to which learners can be exposed in a variety of forms. For example,
a casual conversation between two friends, or a conversation between a teacher and a student. students should have
the opportunity to be exposed to both of them, and to discuss the key features of both of them, compare and
contrast. This will help them to develop pragmatic and interactional competence.

COMPUTER CONFERENCING: students participate in a discussion followed by an individual writing activity. students
are typing instead of speaking, but they are interacting and using a variety of speech acts such as disagreeing,
challenging. they chatt, or send messages.

➔ CONCLUSION

The teaching of spoken language in the language classroom is often perceived as a very difficult task for both the
teacher and the students. Most of the teaching materials claim to present real communication in authentic
situations. The teaching of speaking from a discourse perspective implies taking a pedagogical shift from focusing on
linguistic performance to focusing on a more pragmatic perspective. contextual and situational features of spoken
interaction must become an integral part of classroom activities and personal considerations.