Week 7 - Materials to

Develop Speaking
Skills
Knowledge and skill
TASK 1

• 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?
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?
 Task 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.
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?
Oral skills and interaction
• Motor-perceptive skills involve perceiving, recalling, and
articulating in the correct order sounds and structures of
the language.

• 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.
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.
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?
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.
8. Be able to use the telephone to obtain information about train/plane/bus
times.

If you were to test these language abilities, which would be easiest to

test by asking for one correct answer?
Oral skills: methodological
objectives
In methodology, there are two central questions:
• Firstly, what objectives should materials and methods aim at?
• Secondly, what materials and what classroom action will enable
learners’ skills to develop as intended?
Rivers and Temperley ’s view
(1978)
Task 4
Try applying the terms ‘skill-getting’ and ‘skill-using’ to the activities in a
unit of a coursebook you are familiar with. Can you say whether skill-
getting and skill-using occur:
• in different activities?
• in the same activities?
Are accuracy skills used in interaction?
Where do they appear in the diagram?
Should comprehension skills be developed? Where are they found in
the figure?
two views of language learning
• The progressive development view: ‘ability to speak the language
derives from the systematic study of grammar, phonology and
lexicon’: language use can occur only after the learner has learnt the
grammar and vocabulary of the language.
• The immediate communication view believes ‘that speaking skill is
developed from the [earliest] contact with the language’.
Task 5
Which of the two views {progressive development or immediate
communication) seems to you to be the basis of the following approaches
to teaching and learning languages?
Direct method ESP
Grammar-translation Notional/Functional
Phrase book Communicative
Audio-lingual Your course materials
Situational
What is your view?
Model
for
speech
product
ion
 Table 2.1: Three key features of learners’ speech
Definition Focus
Fluency Speech where the message is communicated coherently Meaning
with few pauses and hesitations, thus causing minimal
comprehension difficulties for the listeners.

Accuracy Speech where the message is communicated using Form

correct grammar. The notion of accuracy can also be
expanded to include correct pronunciation according
to target language norms.

Complexity Speech where the message is communicated precisely. Meaning and form
More advanced grammatical forms are used, such as
subordination and clausal embeddings, which are
appropriate for speech in relation to the social and
cultural context, as well as the roles of, and
relationships with, interlocutors.
principles for teaching speaking
1. Avoid over-taxing learners’ cognitive capacity with activities that
con-currently require their conscious attention simultaneously to
conceptual preparation, formulation, and articulation.
2. Instead, provide learning experiences that focus separately on
different cognitive demands in speaking activities so that learners get a
chance to develop their oral language gradually and in a less stressful
environment.
3. Vary the level of challenge or difficulty of the speaking activities
by providing support during one or more of the cognitive phases
involved in speech production.
principles for teaching speaking
4. Teach learners to use communication and discourse strategies for
buying processing time and negotiating meaning.
5. Recognize that learners’ spoken-language performance will vary
with the type of demands required by each speaking task. Therefore,
be clear about the learning objective for each activity, and assess your
learners’ performance realistically.
6. Plan activities where learners can focus separately on the
expression of meaning and the structuring of the language form, but
find a way of weaving these experiences into a coherent whole.
Speaking competence
Here are the combined views of several language teachers. Which of
the points below do you agree with?
A competent, second language speaker is someone who...
• Has good pronunciation.
• Speaks standard English.
• Can speak fluently and with few or no grammatical mistakes.
• Speaks in a manner indistinguishable from a native speaker.
• Is confident when speaking to a large audience.
• Knows when to say the right things and says them in the most
effective way possible.
Speaking competence
Here are the combined views of several language teachers. Which of
the points below do you agree with?
A competent, second language speaker is someone who...
• Can communicate well with native speakers.
• Can be understood easily by others.
• Can speak effectively and clearly in various situations.
• In bilingual settings, knows how to code-switch from the first to
the second language, according to circumstances.
• Can speak fluently and clearly on a wide range of topics.
Speaking competence
Knowledge of language and
discourse
• Grammatical knowledge.
• Phonological knowledge.
• Lexical knowledge.
• Discourse knowledge.
Core speaking skills
Core speaking skills
Communication strategies
used for two purposes:
• to avoid having to speak too much - reduction strategies, partly
because the scope of communication is reduced.
 face-saving devices, limit the users’ opportunities to speak in the
target language.
• to enable speakers to convey their messages by using whatever
resources they have access to - called achievement strategies.
 help learners maximize opportunities for speaking in the target
language and to achieve their communication goals.
Communication strategies
• Cognitive strategies
• Metacognitive strategies
• Interaction strategies
Principles for planning speaking activities
and lessons
1. Speaking activities should make realistic demands on learners in
terms of the type of linguistic knowledge they need for producing
spoken language. Activities that aim to help learners practice using
specific speaking skills should not tax learners’ linguistic processing
at the same time. Teachers should consider different ways of
providing the language that learners need.
2. Speaking lessons are not just opportunities for practicing speaking.
You should conceptualize them as structured learning experiences
for developing relevant linguistic knowledge. It is important that
learners be guided to notice features of language needed for
various types of interactions and discourse.
Principles for planning speaking activities
and lessons
3. When planning a speaking lesson, you should identify one category of
core speaking skills that learners will focus on through the activities.
Specific skills should be clearly identified as lesson objectives. Based on
these objectives, you can plan procedures for carrying out the activities
that can help learners to develop the skills. You may also need to help
learners focus on the language that is needed for using the skills.
4. The speaking curriculum and the lessons developed need to include
strategy training. The training should involve activities that raise
learners’ awareness about important communication strategies,
provide practice in using the strategies, and teach relevant phrases and
expressions for using some of these interactional strategies.
Task 6
1. Second language speaking competence is articulated differently in different
language syllabi and language teaching frameworks. For example, the Common
European Framework (2001: 251) focuses on what learners are able to do with
speech at the end of different levels of proficiency and stages of learning:

• Lowest level: Learners are able to participate in simple factual conversations on

a predictable topic.
• Highest level: Learners can advise on or talk about complex sensitive issues.

a. Discuss the benefits of articulating speaking competence in terms of broad

communication objectives like those in the Common European Framework. What
limitations are there?
Task 6
• Lowest level: Learners are able to participate in simple factual conversations
on a predictable topic.
• Highest level: Learners can advise on or talk about complex sensitive issues.

b. Identify the types of linguistic knowledge and core speaking skills that are
necessary for attaining the competence at the lowest and highest levels
mentioned above.
c. Imagine you have to teach a low-proficiency class on how to engage in
factual conversations on a predictable topic. How would you translate this
broad objective into specific instructional objectives for your speaking
lessons?
Task 6
2. Consider the following learning objectives for spoken English taken
from a syllabus for a four-year language program in high schools.
• What feature of speaking competence does each objective relate to:
knowledge of language and discourse, core speaking skills, or
communication strategies?
• Do you think the syllabus has provided a balanced coverage of all
important components of speaking competence?