Speaking language teaching a scheme for teacher education

SECTION ONE Understanding speaking 1 Speaking as a skill 1.1 Knowledge and skill One of the basic problems in foreign-language teaching is to prepare learners to be able to use the language. How this preparation is done, and how successful it is, depends very much on how we as teachers understand our aims. For instance, it is obvious that in order to be able to speak a foreign language, it is necessary to know a certain amount of grammar and vocabulary. Part of a language course is therefore generally devoted to this objective. But there are other things involved in speaking, and it is important to know what these might be, so that they too can be included in our teaching. For instance, to test whether learners can speak, it is necessary to get them to actually say something. To do this they must act on a knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. By giving learners ‘speaking practice’ and ‘oral exams’ we recognize that there is a difference between knowledge about a language, and skill in using it. This distinction between knowledge and skill is crucial in the teaching of speaking. An analogy with the driver of a car may be helpful. What knowledge does a car driver need? Clearly he or she needs to know the names of the controls; where they are; what they do and how they are operated (you move the pedals with your feet, not with your hands). However, the driver also needs the skill to be able to use the controls to guide the car along a road without hitting the various objects that tend to get in the way; you have to be able to do this at a normal speed (you can fail your driving test in Britain for driving too slowly or hesitantly); you have to drive smoothly and without getting too close to any dangerous obstacles. And it is not enough to drive in a straight line: the driver also has to be able to manage the variations in road conditions safely. In a way, the job we do when we speak is similar. We do not merely know how to assemble sentences in the abstract: we have to produce them and adapt them to the circumstances. This means making decisions rapidly, implementing them smoothly, and adjusting our conversation as unex­ pected problems appear in our path. Understanding speaking ► TASK 1 Knowledge itself is not enough: knowledge has to be used in action. This is true not only of using language but of any other activity. Here are some examples. Are the statements true or false? 1 It is possible to know the rules of football but not be much good at playing. 2 It is possible to be a good cook but not know many recipes. 3 If you explain to someone just how to ride a bicycle, then they ought to be able to get straight on to one and ride away. 4 You can be sure that if a learner omits the third person -s on the verb it is because he or she does not know it. 5 All you need to be a good teacher is to know your subject well. Can you find any evidence—from your experience or from common knowledge—which will help you decide whether these statements are true or false? Can you think of two other examples of activities where knowledge is not enough for successful performance? If we think about how we use our first language, then it is obvious that we spend most of our time using sentences, and very little of our time reviewing our knowledge or trying to compose perfect sentences. We would find it most difficult to describe and explain all the decisions we take when we speak. So knowledge is only a part of the affair: we also need skill. What is the difference between knowledge and skill? A fundamental difference is that while both can be understood and memorized, only a skill can be imitated and practised. ► TASK 2 This can be illustrated. There are various ways of helping a learner: explanation, memorization, demonstration, and practice. 1 Which tactic would you use if you thought that the learner: a. had not understood a point; b. had completely forgotten something; c. did not know of the existence of a rule or word; d. was not used to doing the activity; e. panicked? 2 Below is a list of difficulties a learner might encounter in a variety of activities. In each case decide what sort of remedies would be useful: a. When changing gear, a friend learning to drive a car produces a horrible grating sound. b. A child is learning to break an egg, but smashes the shell into little bits, losing half the egg on the table and missing the bowl. Speaking as a skill 5 c. Your friend says she is no good at jigsaw puzzles. d. You are trying to help someone learn to read. e. Someone says that he is no good at remembering names at parties, and that it is getting embarrassing. In any of the above situations, did you find that practice was irrelevant? So one of the main reasons for clarifying the distinction between knowledge and skill is that problems in each area may require different pedagogical actions. We will now look more closely at what we mean by ‘skill’. 1.2 Oral skills and interaction There are two basic ways in which something we do can be seen as a skill. First there are motor-perceptive skills. But in addition to this there are also interaction skills. Let us see the difference between the two. First the motor-perceptive skills. Motor-perceptive skills involve perceiving, recalling, and articulating in the correct order sounds and structures of the language. This is the relatively superficial aspect of skill which is a bit like learning how to manipulate the controls of a car on a deserted piece of road far from the flow of normal traffic. It is the context-free kind of skill, the kind which has been recognized in language teaching for many years in the rationale of the audio-lingual approach to language teaching. For example, twenty years ago, W. F. Mackey summarized oral expression as follows: Oral expression involves not only [. . .] the use of the right sounds in the right patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning. (1965: 266) Notice how much importance Mackey gives to doing things ‘right’ in order to be any good at speaking: choosing the right forms; putting them in the correct order; sounding like a native speaker; even producing the right meanings. (Is this how people learn to handle the clutch and gear lever?) This view of language skill influences the list of exercises which Mackey discusses: model dialogues, pattern practice, oral drill tables, look-and-say exercises, and oral composition. However, this is a bit like learning to drive without ever going out on the road. Ten years later, during which time this approach to teaching oral skills had been widely adopted, David Wilkins pointed out there were some learning problems that exercises like these did not solve. An important one is that of ensuring a satisfactory transition from supervised learning in the classroom to real-life use of the skill. This transition is often called the ‘transfer of Understanding speaking skills’. As Wilkins points out, if all language produced in the classroom is determined by the teacher, ‘we are protecting [the learner] from the additional burden of having to make his own choices’. He continues: As with everything else he will only learn what falls within his experience. If all his language production is controlled from outside, he will hardly be competent to control his own language production. He will not be able to transfer his knowledge from a language-learning situation to a language-using situation. (1975:76, my italics) Nor, presumably, will the learner be able to transfer much of any motor-perceptive skill to a ‘language-using situation’. The point is that in addition to the motor-perceptive skills there are other skills to be developed, which, as Wilkins says, are those of ‘controlling one’s own language production’ and ‘having to make one’s own choices’. This kind of skill we will call interaction skill. This is the skill of using knowledge and basic motor-perception skills to achieve communication. Let us look at what interaction skills basically involve. Interaction skills involve making decisions about communication, such as: what to say, how to say it, and whether to develop it, in accordance with one’s intentions, while maintaining the desired relations with others. Note that our notions of what is right or wrong now depend on such things as what we have decided to say, how successful we have been so far, whether it is useful to continue the point, what our intentions are, and what sorts of relations we intend to establish or maintain with our interlocutors. This of course is true of all communication, in speech or in writing. ► TASK 3 Here is a list of things that we tend to teach and test in language courses. Which are only examples of motor-perceptive skills and which are also examples of interaction skills? 1 Show an ability to produce at least 35 of the 40 phonemes in British English. 2 Form the perfect tense correctly with have followed by the past participle of the lexical verb. 3 Be able to ask someone the time. 4 Have the ability to introduce yourself to someone you have never met. 5 Be able to use at correctly with expressions of time and place. 6 Show an ability to describe your flat or home clearly to a decorator or estate agent. 7 Be able to use correctly the three finite forms of lexical verbs.