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Teaching
Spoken English for Informative Purposes
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Teachers involved in developing
spoken-language skills in ESL learners often find themselves in
a paradoxical situation. There seems to be a conflict between,
on the one hand, the learners perception that fluency and naturalness
in spoken English are a preeminent badge of success in learning
the language and, on the other, their disinclination to participate
in activities designed to develop competent speaking skills. It
is ironic that in the one skill area where we might expect real
enthusiasm and interest, i.e., speaking skills, we face problems.
This suggests a need to reexamine our practice to see how we can
exploit the motivation inherent in the learners positive perceptions
of the ability to speak English fluently.
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Research by Brown et al. (1984) questions the
assumption that native-English-speaking children naturally acquire competence in all the
uses of spoken English. Native-speaker children are often unable to express themselves
articulately, and they need explicit instruction in some of the spoken-language skills.
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This fact points to the urgency of the ESL
learner s need in this area. It is too often assumed that spoken-language skills can be
developed by assigning students general topics to discuss or by getting them to give a
short talk on some subject. Not enough attention is given to the factors that inhibit or
encourage the production of spoken language. In order to provide guidance in developing
competent spoken English, it is necessary to examine the different uses of the spoken
language, which learners will have to master as fluent speakers of English.
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Halliday (1985) has identified three major
functions of language: the ideational, the textual, and the interpersonal. Two of these,
the ideational and interpersonal, have particular relevance to a discussion of how the
spoken language is used.
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Halliday describes the ideational component of
language as being concerned with the expression of content. The interpersonal is concerned
with the social, expressive, and conative functions language.
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The Interpersonal Function. The
interpersonal function of language is reflected in the kind of social talk that we
participate in throughout the day in conversational exchanges with family, friends,
colleagues, etc. This kind of relaxed verbal interaction is the use of language to
establish and maintain social relations. The ability to use language for social purposes
begins early in the language experience of native speakers, and is not explicitly taught
in formal classroom situations. As Brown et al. (1984) have pointed out, such chat talk is
relatively undemanding, as it is often limited to short exchanges with people one feels
comfortable with, and the topic is determined by the immediate interests of the
participants. In a second- or foreign-language situation, such a component may or may not
be considered necessary. For example, it may be thought that learners need spoken-English
skills only in specific occupational or study situations, since they use the local
languages, not English, to establish and maintain social relations.
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On the other hand, the goal might be to equip
learners with the full repertoire of language skills needed to function with confidence in
any situation. This would necessitate a carefully planned course to teach conversational
skills something that has become a key component of many ESL courses. The aim of such a
course is to help the students learn in English the kind of sociolinguistic rules that
they are so adept at in their native language. The activities lead to the development of
social- relations skills and provide opportunities for practising common social exchanges
such as greetings, leave taking, introductions, complaints, congratulations, etc. Students
learn the common exponents for these functions and the rules for their use in both formal
and informal situations; then they practise the expressions in conversational situations
in which control is reduced by stages.
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The Ideational Function. Halliday
s second component of language, the ideational, corresponds to a function of language
quite different from its use for social relations. This is the use of language to express
content and to communicate information. It is an essential aspect of most real-life
situations, whether in study or in business, professional, or most other work contexts.
The management and organisation of activities depends on the efficient and accurate
expression and transfer of the right information in the right ways.
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Where the focus is on the transfer of
information rather than the maintenance of social relations, language is used to get
things done, to produce a result in real-life terms. The speaker may communicate
information to a listener who needs it for a particular purpose, as when giving
instructions on how to operate a piece of equipment. Or the speaker may need to give
information to a listener in order that the listener can respond in appropriate ways.
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Where content is the focus, the emphasis will be
on transferring information clearly and effectively so that it can be comprehended quickly
and easily. This obviously differs from interpersonal talk, where the concern is not with
communicating a message but with keeping up a relaxed and cooperative chat relationship.
The language appropriate to each of these two functions will be different; they are two
distinct kinds of speaking skills.
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In an ESL spoken-English course it is all too
easy to make the mistaken assumption that students competence can be developed by just any
kind of speaking activities. If the focus of the course is on conversational skills, this
will not ensure that learners will develop the ability to use language for informative
purposes, which is the aspect of spoken English that students most often have difficulty
with. These skills must be introduced as a component in their own right and explicitly
taught.
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Part of the problem for students lies in the
fact that the use of English to impart information requires them to produce long exchanges
of speech, which are more difficult to plan and produce than the short turns typical in
conversation. The longer the turn, the more planning the speaker is required to do. Long
turns used to communicate ideational content place great demands on the speaker to control
the flow of complex information skillfully and efficiently according to the needs of the
listener. Students may be quite competent in producing conversation, including long
exchanges where the transfer of content is secondary to the establishment of an amicable,
cooperative atmosphere. However, when required to impart more complex information, as in
justifying a position, refuting an argument, or explaining how something works, the need
to quickly plan and organise what they must say often results in an immediate drop in
fluency and confidence. The spoken-English skills that most urgently need to be taught
seem to be those that relate to selecting appropriate information on a subject, and then
ordering and expressing it in a clearly comprehensible way.
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Motivation and the need to talk
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How does this need to teach skills for
transferring information relate to the problem of motivation? In our attempt to develop
effective instruction in spoken language, we need to address an important issue. To
develop fluency, we must generate a need to speak, to make learners want to speak. The
learners themselves must be convinced of the need to relate to the subject and communicate
about it to others. They need to feel that they are speaking not simply because the
teacher expects them to, but because there is some strong reason to do so for example, to
get or provide information that is required for a purpose.
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A popular approach used by teachers to encourage
students to speak is to assign a topic and require them to discuss it or to come up with a
short talk. Such discussions, which do not lead to any outcome apart from the talk itself,
intimidate most students. This approach assumes that the students are highly articulate
and able to argue and express abstract notions in rapid and comprehensible speech. Often
such discussion sessions become boring and talk quickly peters out. Student participation
fizzles out because they have nothing more to say and look to the teacher to supply most
of the language and ideas. The underlying problem is that students have no reason to say
anything more. We have to recognize that we cannot expect students to produce long turns
of speech by simply giving them topics and requiring them to get on with the discussion.
We must arouse in the learners a willingness and need to talk by providing them with
something they feel they have a need or reason to talk about. Telling students to talk
about popularly offered topics like pollution or abortion is not very helpful. This seems
to require the students to create talk simply for the sake of talking for a required
amount of time. Students recognize the artificiality of the activity. The resultant lack
of interest and motivation can be attributed to the purposelessness of the language they
are being asked to produce.
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Two specific difficulties
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Brown et al. (1984) point out that many of the
general essay-type topics that pupils are asked to talk about are particularly difficult
for inexperienced speakers to control. They see one aspect of the problem in the
difficulty speakers have in assessing the background knowledge of their listeners. When
speakers are required to talk about something they know about and their listeners do not,
they make judgments about the uneven distribution of background knowledge their listeners
have and tailor the talk so that it presents an appropriate amount of new information.
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Brown et al. (1984) suggest that a second
difficulty lies in the problem of constructing a reportable event out of what is felt to
be a relatively unstructured experience. In apparently straightforward tasks that require
speakers to talk about experiences they have undergone, e.g., talking about films they
have seen or describing how to play a game, they have to abstract from that total
experience some portion which can be detached and presented meaningfully on its own (Brown
et al. 1984:41). This makes demands on speakers to organise the experience and abstract it
into chunks that can be identified as self-contained and "tellable."
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Thus, learners often have tasks imposed on them
that may seem on the surface to be simple and direct, but are, in reality, formidable in
terms of what it takes to select appropriate information and structure it according to
listeners needs and states of knowledge.
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It is perhaps inadvisable to require students
who are not competent in spoken English to perform such complex tasks. However, without
having to abandon the traditionally popular class discussions, a possible way of
stimulating more informative talk might be to provide a lot more support for the learners
by introducing activities that are more structured, organised around a definite purpose or
objective. There might be some advantage in placing greater focus on purposeful,
task-based activities for developing competence in the use of spoken English for
transactional purposes. The task-based approach has been gaining prominence in recent
years, and it appears to be particularly relevant for eliciting spoken language for the
transfer of information. Brown et al. (1984) describe a variety of task-based
spoken-language activities. These have been categorised into:
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1. Tasks that involve the speaker in describing
static relationships among objects.
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2. Tasks that involve dynamic relationships
among people or objects, with events that change over time and space.
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3. Tasks that require the speaker to communicate
abstract ideas for instance, in argument or justification.
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Such task-based activities are one way of
encouraging the production of spoken English that learners recognize as a means to
achieving an objective. It is possible to transform general discussions into different
tasks with definite objectives/purposes in the form of expected outcomes resulting from
the long turns of student interaction and talk/discussion. A practical example of this:
Instead of a free talk or general discussion on a topic like "cigarette smoking
should be banned," it might be possible to have a structured activity in which a
group of students are required to organise a propaganda campaign to convince the
authorities or the public that smoking ought to be banned. This is likely to be more
meaningful and motivating than the traditional approach because the speaker s attention is
focused on performing a real-life activity. He/she is speaking not because the teacher
expects him/her to say something for a certain length of time, but for the real purpose of
convincing people of the need to ban smoking.
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The teacher who organises such speaking
activities will be required to do careful planning and to give consideration to providing
appropriate stimuli of all sorts, pictorial or textual, with suggestions and guidelines
for their exploitation. This will encourage interaction in the course of interpreting and
discussing the stimulus material.
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In this article we have suggested that there is
a serious gap in our learners ability to use spoken English effectively for communicating
ideational content. This is a vital aspect of developing speaking skills, and, to a large
extent, academic and job-related success will be affected by the students ability to
communicate orally and transfer information accurately and effectively.
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It has been shown that a number
of the traditional approaches, such as free talk and general discussion,
do not offer the kind of support that many nonfluent learners
need to produce long turns of informative speech on a range of
cognitively demanding topics. We believe that a more structured
approach organised around realistic tasks that lead to specific
outcomes has many advantages in eliciting extended talk. These
activities require the learners to participate actively because
their attention is on performing a lifelike task. The task orientation
gives the student a purpose for talking and, in this way, provides
the speaker with interest in and motivation for speaking.
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- Brown, G., A. Anderson, R. Shillcock and G. Yule. 1984. Teaching talk: Strategies for
production and assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Byrne, D. 1976. Teaching oral English. London: Longman.
- Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Arnold.
- Halliday, M. A. K. and R. Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
- Ur, P. 1981. Discussions that work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Thomas
Hawes is a lecturer at M.A.R.A. Penang, Malaysia. He has taught at all levels in
U.K., Germany, France, Morocco, and Malaysia. His interests are discourse analysis and
language and ideology.
Sarah Thomas is a lecturer at the
Language Centre, Science University of Malaysia, and chairperson
of language and literature courses for students and teachers.
Her interests include discourse analysis and ESP. |
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