Rocío Guzmán, Malena Suasnabar y Andrea Toloza

Teaching by principles – An interactive approach to language pedagogy

H. Douglas Brown

Oral Communication Skills in Pedagogical Research

Current issues:

1. Conversational discourse: when someone asks you “Do you speak

English? they mean: can you carry on a conversation? The standard successful
language acquisition is almost always a demonstration of an ability to accomplish
pragmatic goals through interaction with others. The goals and the techniques for
teaching conversation are diverse, depends on the student, the teacher and the
context of the class.

Recent pedagogical research on teaching conversation has provided some

parameters for developing objectives and techniques; conversation rules for topic
nomination, maintaining a conversation, turn-talking, interruption and termination.
Also, ways of teach sociolinguistic appropriateness, styles of speech, nonverbal
communication and conversational routines (“Great weather today, huh?”).

2. Teaching pronunciation: there is a controversy over the role of

pronunciation, because the majority of adult learners will never acquire an
accent-free command of a foreign language. Now, it is perceived as an essential
matter but in a different way.

3. Accuracy and fluency: language performance centers on the distinction

between them. Accurate (clear, articulate, grammatically and phonologically
correct) and fluent (flowing, natural) language are on of the goals of a speaker. In
the mid-70s, some teacher turned away from accuracy in favour of providing a
great amount of “natural” language activities in their classrooms. The argument
was, that adults 2nd language acquisition should stimulate the child’s 1 st language
learning processes. The result was, a fairly fluent but barely comprehensible
language. Both are important, while fluency may be an initial goal in language
teaching, accuracy is achieved to some extent by allowing students to focus on
the elements of phonology, grammar, and discourse in their spoken output.

Our techniques should be message orientated (teaching language use) as

oppose to language oriented (teaching language usage). Current approaches
lean toward message orientation with language usage offering a supporting role.

4. Affective factors: anxiety is one of the obstacles learners have to

overcome when they are learning, because of the fear of saying something
wrong, stupid or incomprehensible. Our job as teachers is to provide the kind of
warm and embracing climate that encourages students to speak, however halting
or broken their attempts may be.

5. The interaction effect: one of the difficulties that learners might have,
involves the interactive nature of most communication. Conversations are
collaborative as participants engage in a process of negotiation of meaning. So,
 what to say is often eclipsed by conventions of how to say things, when to speak,
and other discourse constrains.

David Nunan, developed a concept called Interlocutor effect, the difficulty of a

speaking task of one interlocutor compared with the skills of the other interlocutor.

Types of spoken language

Most of the efforts of students in oral production come in form of conversation, or

dialogue. A teacher needs to plan and implement techniques in the classroom to
make sure the students can deal with both interpersonal (referred as interactional)
and transactional dialogue, which allows them to converse with a total stranger as
well as someone with whom they are familiar.

What makes speaking difficult?

The following characteristics must be considered in the productive generation of

speech. These characteristics of spoken language can make oral performance easy
as well as difficult.

1. Clustering: fluent speech is phrasal, not word by word. Learners can

organize their output both cognitively and physically.

2. Redundancy: the speaker has an opportunity to make meaning clearer

through redundancy of language. Learners can capitalize on this feature of
spoken language.

3. Reduced forms: contractions, elisions, reduced vowels, etc. all form

problems in teaching spoken English. Students who don not learn colloquial
contractions might develop a stilted, bookish quality of speaking.

4. Performance variables: the process of thinking as you speak allows you

to manifest a certain number of performance hesitations, pauses, backtracking
and corrections. Learners can be taught how to pause and hesitate. In English,
our “thinking time” is not silent, we insert fillers (uh, um, well, etc.) One of the
differences between native and non-native speakers is in their hesitation
phenomena.

5. Colloquial language: make sure your students are well acquainted with
the words, idioms, and phrases of colloquial language and make sure they
practice producing these forms.

6. Rate of delivery: another silent characteristic of fluency is rate of delivery.

One of the teacher’s task is to help learners achieve an acceptable speed in
speech.

7. Stress, rhythm and intonation: the most important characteristic in

English pronunciation. The stress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its
intonation convey important messages.
 8. Interaction: learning to produce language without interlocutors would rob
speaking skill of its richest component: the creativity of conversational
negotiation.

Microskills of Oral Communication

One implication is the importance of focusing on both the forms of language and the
functions of language. In teaching oral communication, we don’t limit students’
attention to the whole picture, even though that whole picture is important. We also
help students to see the pieces - right down to the small parts - of language that
make up the whole. Just as you would instruct a novice artist in composition, the
effect of colour hues, shading, and brush stroke techniques, so language students
need to be shown the details of how to convey and negotiate the ever-elusive
meanings of language.

Types of Classroom Speaking Performance

1. Imitative: Classroom speaking time may be spent on “human tape recorder”

where, for example, learners practise intonation. Imitation is carried out not for the
purpose of meaningful interaction, but focusing on some particular element of
language form.

2. Intensive: Intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any
speaking performance that is designed to practise some phonological or grammatical
aspect of language. It can be, for example, pair work activity, where learners are
“going over” certain forms of language.

3. Responsive: It refers to short replies to teacher- or student-initiated questions or

comments. These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues.
Such speech can be meaningful and authentic.

4. Transactional (dialogue): Carried out for the purpose of conveying or

exchanging specific information, transactional language is an extended form of
responsive language.Conversations, for example, may have more of a negotiative
nature to them than does responsive speech.

5. Interpersonal (dialogue): The other form of conversation is interpersonal

dialogue, carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for
the transmission of facts and information. These conversations are trickier because
of the following factors: colloquial language, slang, ellipsis, sarcasm, etc.

6. Extensive (monologue): It refers to giving extended monologues in the form of

oral reports, summaries, or short speeches to students at intermediate to advanced
levels. Here the register is more formal and deliberative. These can be planned or
impromptu.

Principles for Designing Techniques

1) Use techniques that cover the spectrum of learner needs, from language based
focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency:
When we do a jigsaw technique, play a game, etc. make sure that your tasks include
techniques designed to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of
language. At the same time, don’t bore them with repetitive drills. So, make any
drilling you do as meaningful as possible.

2) Provide intrinsically motivating techniques: Try to appeal to students' ultimate

goals and interests, to their need for knowledge, for status, for achieving
competence and autonomy. Help them to see how the activity will benefit them, even
if they don’t know why we ask them to do it.

3) Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts: It is not easy to

keep coming up with meaningful interaction since it takes energy and creativity to
devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction, but with the help of material it
can be done. Even drills can be structured to provide a sense of authenticity.

4) Provide appropriate feedback and correction: Students are totally dependent on

the teacher for useful linguistic feedback. They may get such feedback out of the
classroom, but even then you are in a position to be of great benefit, to inject the
kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment.

5) Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening: As you are perhaps
focusing on speaking goals, listening goals may naturally coincide, and the two skills
can reinforce each other. Skills in producing language are often initiated through
comprehension.

6) Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication: A good deal of typical

classroom interaction is characterised by teacher initiation of language. We ask
questions, give directions, and provide information. Part of oral communication
competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to nominate topics, to ask
questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject.

7) Encourage the development of speaking strategies: The concept of strategic

competence is one that few beginning language students are aware of. They simply
have not thought about developing their own personal strategies for accomplishing
oral communicative purposes. Your classroom can be one in which students become
aware of, and have a chance to practise, such strategies as
● asking for clarification (What?)
● asking someone to repeat something (Huh? Excuse me?)
● using fillers (Uh, I mean, Well) in order to gain time to process.
● getting someone’s attention (Hey, So)
● using mime and nonverbal expressions to convey meaning.

Teaching Conversation

Two major approaches characterize current teaching of conversation, an indirect

approach, in which learners are more or less set loose to engage in interaction and a
direct approach, that involves planning a conversation program around the specific
micro-skills, strategies and processes that are involved in fluent conversation. The
indirect approach implies that students acquire conversational competence by
engaging in meaningful tasks. A direct approach calls students’ attention to
conversational rules, conventions and strategies.

It is clear, upon scanning current English language textbooks, that the prevailing
approach

Teaching conversation includes the learner's inductive involvement in meaningful

tasks as well as consciousness-raising elements of focus on form.

Richards offered the following list of features of conversation that can

receive specific focus in classroom instruction:

● how to use conversation for both transactional and interactional purposes

● how to produce both short and long turns in conversation
● strategies for managing turn-taking in conversation, including taking a turn,
holding a turn, and relinquishing a turn
● strategies for opening and closing conversations
● how to initiate and respond to talk on a broad range of topics, and how to
develop and maintain talk on these topics
● how to use both a casual style of speaking and a neutral or more formal style
● how to use conversation in different social settings and for different kinds of
social encounters, such as on the telephone and in informal and formal social
gatherings
● strategies for repairing trouble spots in conversation, including communication
breakdown and comprehension problems
● how to maintain fluency in conversation through avoiding excessive pausing,
breakdowns, and errors of grammar or pronunciation
● how to produce talk in a conversational mode, using a conversational register
and syntax
● how to use conversational fillers and small talk
● how to use conversational routines

Teaching Pronunciation

For current approaches to pronunciation, the most relevant features are stress,
rhythm, and intonation. Instead of teaching only the role of articulation within words,
or at best, phrases, we teach its role in a whole stream of discourse. This puts all
aspects of English pronunciation into the perspective of a communicative,
interactive, whole language view of human speech.

Our goals as teachers of English should be more realistic and focused on clear,
comprehensible pronunciation. At the beginning levels, we want learners to surpass
that point beneath which pronunciation detracts from their ability to communicate.
And at advanced levels, goals can focus on elements that enhance communication:
intonation features that go beyond basic patterns, voice quality, phonetic distinctions
between registers and other important elements.

These are the factors that affect learner’s pronunciation and how we can deal with
them:

1. Native language: clearly, this is the most influential factor affecting a

learner´s pronunciation. If you are familiar with the sound system of a learner´s
native language you will be better able to diagnose student difficulties.

2. Age: children under the age of puberty stand an excellent chance of

sounding like a native if they have continued exposure. While adults beyond the
age of puberty will surely maintain a foreign accent. There is no other particular
advantage attributed to age.

3. Exposure: Research seems to support the notion that the quality and
intensity of exposure are more important than mere length of time. If class time
spent focusing on pronunciation demands the full attention and interest of your
students, then they stand a good chance of reaching their goals.

4. Innate phonetic ability: Often referred to as having an "ear" for

language, some people manifest a phonetic coding ability that others do not.
Nevertheless, some elements of learning are a matter of an awareness of your
own limitations combined with a conscious focus on doing something to
compensate for those limitations. Therefore, if pronunciation seems to be
naturally difficult for some students; with some effort and concentration, they can
improve their competence.

5. Identity and language ego: Learners need to be reminded of the

importance of positive attitudes toward the people who speak the language (if
such a target is identifiable), and students need to become aware of—and not
afraid of—the second identity that may be emerging within them.

6. Motivation and concern for good pronunciation: If the motivation and

concern are high, then the necessary effort will be expended in pursuit of goals.
You can help learners to perceive or develop that motivation by showing, among
other things, how clarity of speech is significant in shaping their self-image and,
ultimately, in reaching some of their higher goals.

These are three techniques for teaching different aspects of

English pronunciation:
● Intonation- Listening to Pitch Changes using
records of dialogues and conversations.
● Stress-Contrasting Nouns. Level Elementary to
Intermediate.
 ● Meaningful Minimal Pairs.

A Model for Correction of Speech Errors

One of the most frequently posed questions by teachers who are new to the trade
is: When and how should I correct the speech errors of learners in my classroom?

One of the keys, but not the only key, to successful second language learning lies in
the feedback that a learner receives from others.

Having noticed an error, the first (and, I would argue, crucial) decision the teacher
makes is whether or not to treat it at all. In order to make the decision the teacher
may have recourse to factors with immediate, temporary bearing, such as the
importance of the error to the current pedagogical focus on the lesson, the teacher's
perception of the chance of eliciting correct performance from the student if negative
feedback is given, and so on. Consideration of these ephemeral factors may be
preempted, however, by the teacher's beliefs (conscious or unconscious) as to what
a language is and how a new one is learned. These beliefs may have been formed
years before the lesson in question.

I think we can safely conclude that a sensitive and perceptive language teacher
should make the language classroom a happy optimum between some of the over-
politeness of the real world and the expectations that learners bring with them to the
classroom.

I think we can safely conclude that a sensitive and perceptive language teacher
should make the language classroom a happy optimum between some of the over-
politeness of the real world and the expectations that learners bring with them to the
classroom.

Error treatment options can be classified in a number of possible ways, but one
useful taxonomy was recommended by Kathleen Bailey.

Basic Options Possible Features

1. To treat or to ignore 1. Fact of error indicated

2. To treat immediately or to delay 2. Location indicated

3. To transfer treatment (to, say, 3. Opportunity for new attemp given

other learners) or not

4. To transfer to another individual, 4. Model provided

a subgroup, or the whole class

5.To return, or not, to the original 5. Error type indicated.

error maker, after treatment. 6. Remedy indicated.

6. To permit other learners to 7. Improvement indicated

initiate treatment.

7. To test for the efficacy of the 8. Praise indicated

treatment.

All of the basic options and features within each option arc viable modes of error
correction in the classroom. The teacher needs to develop the intuition, through
experience and established theoretical foundations, for ascertaining which option or
combination of options is appropriate at given moments. Principles of optimal
affective and cognitive feedback, of reinforcement theory, and of communicative
language teaching all combine to form those intuitions.
 Essential teacher knowledge

Jeremy Harmer

The reasons for speaking activities

There are a number of reasons why we ask students to do speaking activities in
class:
● We want to get our students to speak so that they have to retrieve and use
the language that they know. Retrieval and use is one of the ways in which
students are helped to remember language.
● In genuinely communicative speaking activities , we want to give the students
a real desire to speak and a communicative purpose for doing so. The content
of the communication- and the achievement of the speaking task- are as
important, in a way, as the language they use.
● We will not tell the students exactly what language to use because we don’t
want them to focus on specific language items in the same way as we do for
practice activities.
● Speaking activities give the teacher and the students a good idea of how well
everyone is doing.
We should take care to match the speaking task with the level of the students.

Building the speaking habits

The following activities (mostly game-like) aim to make students relaxed and
enthusiastic about speaking.
❖ We can dictate sentences to the class, such as “One of the most beautiful
things I have ever seen is…” The students have to complete the sentence
with a word or phrase. Then, they read their sentences out.
❖ We can write topics on pieces of paper and put them in a hat or bowl. The
students take turns to pick out a piece and have to say at least one sentence
(instantly) about the topic they have chosen.
❖ The students have a dice and they choose one topic for each of the numbers
1-6. One student throws the dice and has to speak immediately (one or more
sentences) about the topic for the number that occurs.
❖ The students have to talk about a topic, such as What I did yesterday. Every
time they say a sentence, they can pick up a counter. Who has the most
counters at the end of the discussion? Every time they say a sentence, they
can put a counter into a bowl. Who finishes their counter first?
❖ We can choose two or three students. They have to construct an instant
“letter” to a writer, thinker, artist, musician or celebrity of their choice. But they
have to speak their letter one-student-one-word at a time. For example,
Student A: Dear
Student B: President,
Student C: I
Student A: am
Student B: writing…
 When they have finished their letter, three other students have to reply in the
same way.

Interviews
We can use interviews to practise specific language items, but we can use them for
more communicative speaking activities.

Example 1: the hot seat

➢ The students have to prepare short statements about what they did last
weekend or their favourite sport or holiday, etc.
➢ One student now sits in the hot seat and delivers a statement. The other
students ask as many questions as they can about it.
➢ When the students runs out of things to say, someone else goes to the hot
seat.

Example 2: interview the picture

➢ The students look at a picture which shows several people- perhaps a famous
work of art or a photograph. They have to write questions for the people in it.
➢ Several students come to the front and pretend to be the people in the picture.
The rest of the class ask their questions and the students at the front have to
imagine how the characters might answer.

Turning on the inner voice

The INNER VOICE, is the voice we all use in real life when we imagine
conversations, we

could have or could have had. For example,

● We can tell our students to imagine that they are going to an English-
speaking doctor and have to explain what is wrong with them. They
can imagine that they meet their favourite film actor by accident. What
will their conversation be?
● We can encourage them to think about what they are going to say
(using their inner voice) before we ask them to speak out loud in a
DISCUSSION or a SIMULATION (or ROLEPLAY) This will give them a
better chance of speaking success.
● We can set inner-voice tasks for students to do on their own. For
example, they could imagine that they have a blind person sitting next
to them and they must describe everything that they see, they could
imagine how they would introduce themselves and the conversation
that they could have with that person.

Discussions

When DISCUSSIONS are organized well, they can be highly motivating and
successful.

Examples:
1- Buzz groups: At almost any stage we can put the students into Buzz groups,
where they can quickly speak, discuss anything from what they are going to read
about to what they want to do next. Buzz groups are normal events in the life of a
classroom.

2- From sentence to discussion: We can give the students a topic, and they have
to write three sentences in favor of the topic. Then one student reads out a sentence
and another student has to either agree or disagree.

3- Prompt cards: We can give the students prompt cards, each with a point of view
about a topic. We then give the students time to think about what they can say to
support the points of view on their cards before we start the discussion.

4- Formal debate: We can decide on a motion (an idea, a proposition) for a debate.
We divide the class into two groups, one for the motion, one against. Each group has
to prepare arguments for their position and think of three questions for the other side.
Each group then chooses someone to speak first and someone to speak second.
The others (from both groups) are the audience. The debate sequence is Team A
speaker 1 followed by Team B speaker 1 . Then the audience can speak and ask
questions. Then Team B speaker 2 makes concluding remarks and Team A speaker
2 makes concluding remarks. The audience votes. Who won the debate?

5- Panel discussions: We can set up a panel discussion about any topic - or

replicate the kinds of 'contemporary issue' panel debates that are common on
television. Students may feel easier if we give them ROLEs to 'hide behind' so that
they are not judged on their own opinions.

Although successful discussions are frequently prepared in the ways we have

discussed,

some happen quite by accident, in the middle of a lesson. When this happens, we
have to

take an instant decision about whether to let the discussion continue (often a very
good

idea) or whether to stop it because there are other things we have to do.

Reaching a consensus

Consensus-reaching activities work because the students have to speak in order to

reach a decision.

We can give the students a situation and five options about what they could do. The
students reach a CONCENSUS on the best option.

We can guide the conversation by giving each student a ROLE CARD, telling them
which option they should argue for. Any decision-making activity is good for this kind
of discussion.

In PYRAMID DISCUSSIONS, we start by putting students in pairs to decide.

 The teacher’s roles in speaking activities

When students are trying to express themselves in speech, we should do everything

we can to make this work.

● Prompter: pushing students forward, suggesting things and helping them out
of difficulties. Encourage them to speak English rather than using their first
language.
● Participant: this will help to keep the conversation going from within, without
dominating the activity.
● Feedback: show what errors may or may not have occurred, also tell what
was successful and commenting on the content of the speaking activity.

Turn-taking

We can help our students to be good at knowing when we can speak in

conversations. We can teach them expressions such as: could I just say something
here? / you may have a point, but on the other hand…

Telling stories

Storytelling is good for speaking, not only because it encourages the students to use
a lot of language, but also because we tell stories all the time in real life.

Examples:

● Reconstructing a story: in this activity we can put the students in groups,

each group is given a set of pictures that tell a story. After they studied the
pictures, we take the pictures away. Now, we form new groups and aske them
to tell each other what was in their pictures and try to work out a story that
connects them all. When they have finished the stories will have to be
compared.
● String things together: we give the students pictures off 4 items and ask
them to work out a story which connects them.
● What happens next?: show the class a video and stop it half way through.
The students have to imagine what happens next. Once they tell their
suggestions we show them the whole video.
● Taking time away: a student tells a story based on any topic. They have
time limit to tell the whole story. The next student has to tell the same story
but the time limit is shorter.
● Truth and lies: in groups of 3, the students prepare 3 stories. One of them is
true, the other two are false. They tell their stories to the class so the rest of
the class can guess which is true.

Making oral presentations

When the students make an oral presentation, we should give them time to prepare
what to say. We need to find the right tasks for the students who are listening to the
presentations.

● Give the students a topic to choose and questions to guide their

presentations.
● Help them to research their topics
● Encourage them to use a presentation software or internet
● Show the students model presentations and discuss how to introduce and
develop a topic
● Set poster presentations sessions. The students prepare a talk and create a
poster to back it up.
● Ask them to write questions as they listen to others’ presentations.

Situation and roleplay

● Simulations: we give the students a chance to rehearse real-life encounters.

For example, a station office with a ticket window.
● Role-play: the students are given a role. For example, one is a passenger
and the other is a driver. We can use a role-card that says: “you want to buy
a ticket to Boston. You are very nervous and you are in a great hurry because
the police are chasing you”.
● Students will find role-playing very liberating.
● Some of these simulations can involve considerable preparation and time.