Teaching Speaking - Chapter 16 PDF

# Chapter 16: Teaching Speaking ## Types of Classroom Speaking Performance - What are some principles to follow in designing speaking tasks and activities? - When should teachers treat spoken errors and when should they be ignored, and what are some possibilities in between? In communicative lang...

# Chapter 16: Teaching Speaking ## Types of Classroom Speaking Performance - What are some principles to follow in designing speaking tasks and activities? - When should teachers treat spoken errors and when should they be ignored, and what are some possibilities in between? In communicative language courses, listening and speaking skills are closely intertwined, often combined as “Oral Communication Skills” or “Listening/Speaking.” The interaction between these two modes of performance applies especially strongly to conversation, the most popular discourse category in L2 curricula. And in the classroom, even relatively unidirectional types of spoken language input (e.g., speeches, lectures) are usually followed or preceded by various forms of oral production on the part of students. Some of the components of teaching spoken language were covered in Chapter 15 as we looked closely at teaching listening comprehension: types of spoken language, idiosyncrasies of spoken language that can be difficult, and microskills that are also a factor of oral language. This chapter will build on those considerations as we investigate the teaching of oral communication (OC) skills. ## Oral Communication Skills in Pedagogical Research A review of some of the current issues in teaching OC will help to provide some perspective on the more practical considerations that follow in this chapter. ### Conversational Discourse When someone asks you “Do you speak English?” they usually mean, “Can you carry on a conversation reasonably competently?” The benchmark of successful language acquisition is almost always the demonstration of an ability to accomplish pragmatic goals through interactive discourse with other speakers of the language. ### Teaching Pronunciation There has been some controversy over the role of pronunciation work in a communicative, interactive course of study (Levis, 2005; Setter & Jenkins, 2005; Tarone, 2005; Lane, 2010; Murphy, 2013; Goodwin, 2014). Because the overwhelming majority of adult learners will never acquire an accent-free command of a foreign language, should a language program that emphasizes whole language, meaningful contexts, and automaticity of production focus on these tiny phonological details of language? The answer is “yes,” but in a different way from what was perceived to be essential a few decades ago. This topic will be taken up later in the chapter. ### Accuracy and Fluency An issue that pervades all of language performance centers on the distinction between accuracy and fluency (Bailey, 2003; Bohlke, 2014; Lazaraton, 2014). In spoken language, the question we face as teachers is: How shall we prioritize the two clearly important speaker goals of accurate (clear, articulate, grammatically and phonologically correct) language and fluent (flowing, natural) language? In the mid to late 1970s, egged on by a somewhat short-lived anti-grammar approach, some teachers turned away from accuracy issues in favor of providing a plethora of “natural” language activity in their classrooms. The argument was that adult SLA should simulate the child’s L1 learning processes and become the locus of meaningful language involvement (at the expense of focus on forms). Unfortunately, such classrooms so strongly emphasized the importance of fluency—with a de-emphasis on grammar and phonology—that many students managed to produce fairly fluent but barely comprehensible language. Something was lacking. It’s now very clear that fluency and accuracy are both important goals to pursue in CLT and/or TBLT (Lazaraton, 2014). While fluency may in many communicative language courses be an initial goal in language teaching, accuracy is achieved to some extent by allowing students to focus on the elements of phonology, grammar, morphosyntax, and discourse in their spoken output. If you were learning to play tennis instead of a second language, this same philosophy would initially get you out on the tennis court to feel what it’s like to hold a racquet, hit the ball, serve it, and then have you focus more cognitively on certain fundamentals. Fluency is probably best achieved by allowing the “stream” of speech to “flow”; then, as some of this speech spills over beyond comprehensibility, the “riverbanks” of instruction on some details of phonology, grammar, or discourse can channel the speech on a more purposeful course. ### Complexity A related issue that has garnered some attention recently is the extent to which L2 tasks can be graded by complexity (Ellis, 2009; Skehan, 2009). Both grammatical and lexical complexity must be taken into account, but the task design itself may fall into a range of cognitive, strategic, and interpersonal complexity. The extent to which a task involves pre- and within-task planning has been found to be a major contributor to complexity, and subsequently to both fluency and accuracy of learners’ oral production (Skehan, 2009). Complexity also varies according to cognitive operations, abstract thinking, quantity of information, negotiation of meaning, and time pressure, among other factors (Ellis, 2009), all of which could account for accuracy, fluency, and successful completion of a task. ### Affective Factors "It's better to keep your mouth closed and have others think you are ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt.”—Mark Twain Ah yes, but Mark Twain wasn’t talking about language classes! One of the major obstacles learners have to overcome in learning to speak is the anxiety generated over the risks of blurting things out that sound ignorant, embarrassing, or incomprehensible. Because of our language identity (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007) that informs others that “you are what you speak,” learners tend to be reluctant to put themselves in the situation of being judged by hearers. Language learners must put a new twist on Mark Twain’s quip. Our job as teachers is to provide the kind of warm, embracing climate that encourages students to speak, however halting or tentative their attempts may be. ### The Interaction Effect The greatest difficulty that learners encounter in attempts to speak is not the multiplicity of sounds, words, phrases, and discourse forms that characterize any language, but rather the interactive nature of most communication. Conversations are collaborative as participants engage in a process of negotiation of meaning. So, for the learner, the matter of what to say—a tremendous task, to be sure—is often eclipsed by conventions of how to say things, when to speak, and other discourse constraints. For example, among the many possible grammatical sentences that a learner could produce in response to a comment, how does that learner make a choice? Tarone (2005) and Oxford (2011) both noted a crucial role for communication strategies in learning to participate in conversational discourse. A few such strategies are discussed later in this chapter. Nunan (1991b, p. 47) noted yet another complication in interactive discourse: what he calls the interlocutor effect, or the difficulty of a speaking task as gauged by the skills of one’s interlocutor. In other words, one learner’s performance is always colored by that of the person (interlocutor) with whom he or she is talking. ### Intelligibility A now outdated model of English language teaching assumed that intelligibility should be gauged by whether nonnative speakers are intelligible to native speakers. This “rather arrogant” (Setter & Jenkins, 2005, p. 5) premise has now evolved into much more complex questions, especially because, statistically, most interactions among English speakers are among nonnative speakers. So, materials, technology, and teacher education programs are being challenged to grapple with the issue of intelligibility, and to adopt new standards of “correctness” and new attitudes toward “accent” in order to meet current global realities (Levis, 2005; Derwing & Munro, 2005; McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2010; Lazaraton, 2014). ### Corpus-Based Data on Spoken Language The intelligibility issue has been revolutionized by a growth of readily available corpora of spoken language (McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2004), one of the key developments in research on teaching oral production. As the size and scope of corpora expand, so our understanding of what people really say is informed by empirical evidence. An increasing stockpile of data on spoken grammar (as opposed to written grammar) has been instrumental in guiding L2 curricula and textbooks and in exposing learners to greater authenticity (Mumford, 2008; McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2010). Of special interest to teachers of English worldwide is the wider range of language varieties that are now available through such projects as the International Corpus of English, which contains data from the spoken Englishes of Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Nigeria, the Caribbean, and others. These data are spurring the language teaching profession—especially textbook and course developers—to adopt new models that transcend the traditional native-speaker/nonnative-speaker dichotomy. Our notions of what is correct, acceptable, or appropriate, both phonologically and grammatically, are changing. ### Genres of Spoken Language Finally, research on spoken language has recently attended to a specification of differences among various genres of oral production, and how to teach those variations (Hughes, 2002; Tardy, 2013). What is judged to be acceptable and/or correct varies by contexts, or genres, such as small talk, discussion, and narrative, among others. As research more accurately describes the constraints of such genres on spoken language, we will be better able to pinpoint models of appropriateness for students’ specific purposes in learning English. ## Types of Spoken Language In Chapter 15, several categories were defined for understanding types of spoken language, including monologue versus dialogue, planned versus spontaneous, and interpersonal versus transactional. In beginning through intermediate levels of proficiency, most of the efforts of students in oral production come in the form of conversation, or dialogue. As you plan and implement techniques in your interactive classroom, make sure your students can deal with both interpersonal (sometimes referred to as interactional) and transactional dialogue and that they are able to converse with a total stranger as well as someone with whom they are quite familiar. ## What Makes Speaking Difficult? In Chapter 15 we also outlined some idiosyncrasies of spoken language that make listening skills somewhat difficult to acquire. These same characteristics must be taken into account in the productive generation of speech, but with a slight twist in that the learner is now the producer. Bear in mind that the following characteristics of spoken language can make oral performance easy as well as, in some cases, difficult. ### Factors Contributing to Difficulty of Speaking Tasks 1. **Clustering** Fluent speech is phrasal, not word by word. Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically (in breath groups) through clustering. 2. **Redundancy** Learners can capitalize on redundancy, a feature of spoken language that allows a speaker to make meaning clearer. 3. **Reduced Forms** Contractions, elisions, reduced vowels, and other similar characteristics all pose special problems in teaching spoken English (see the section below on Teaching Pronunciation). Students who don’t learn colloquial contractions can sometimes develop a stilted, bookish quality of speaking that in turn stigmatizes them. 4. **Performance Variables** One of the advantages of spoken language is that the process of thinking as you speak allows you to manifest a certain number of performance hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and corrections. Learners can actually be taught how to pause and hesitate. For example, in English our “thinking time” is not silent; we insert certain “fillers” such as uh, um, well, you know, I mean, or like. One of the most salient differences between native and nonnative speakers of a language is in their hesitation phenomena. 5. **Colloquial Language** Make sure your students are reasonably well acquainted with the words, idioms, and phrases of colloquial language and that they get practice in producing these forms. 6. **Rate of Delivery** Another salient characteristic of fluency is rate of delivery. One of your tasks in teaching spoken English is to help learners achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency. 7. **Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation** This is the most important characteristic of English pronunciation, as will be explained below. The stress-timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important messages. 8. **Complexity** The complexity of grammatical and discourse structures is an obvious source of difficulty, but task complexity can also be a feature that teachers should consider. Tasks that are multidimensional or that have interdependencies may themselves be challenging regardless of linguistic features (Robinson, 2001; Ellis, 2009; Skehan, 2009; Kim & Payant, in press). 9. **Interaction** ## Micro- and Macroskills of Oral Communication In Chapter 15, micro- and macroskills for listening comprehension (adapted from Richards, 1983) were presented. Here, many of the same skills apply, but because of major cognitive and physical differences between listening and speaking, some noticeable alterations have been made, as illustrated in the box on page 352. One implication of such a list is the importance of focusing on both the forms and the functions of language. In teaching OC, we should not limit students’ attention to the whole picture, even though that whole picture is important. We can 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 color 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. ### Microskills 1. Produce chunks of language of different lengths. 2. Orally produce differences among the English phonemes and allophonic variants. 3. Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and intonational contours. 4. Produce reduced forms of words and phrases. 5. Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) in order to accomplish pragmatic purposes. 6. Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery. 7. Monitor your own oral production and use various strategic devices—pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking—to enhance the clarity of the message. 8. Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms. 9. Produce speech in natural constituents—in appropriate phrases, pause groups, breath groups, and sentences. 10. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms. ### Macroskills 1. Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse. 2. Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals. 3. Use appropriate registers, implicature, pragmatic conventions, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations. 4. Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification. 5. Use facial features, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal cues along with verbal language to convey meanings. 6. Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding you. ## Types of Classroom Speaking Performance In Chapter 15, six types of listening performance were listed. With the obvious connection between listening and speaking, six similar categories apply to the kinds of oral production that students are expected to carry out in the classroom. ### 1. Imitative A very limited portion of classroom speaking time may legitimately be spent generating rehearsed, imitative speech, where, for example, learners practice an intonation contour or try to pinpoint a certain vowel sound. Imitation of this kind is carried out not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some particular element of language form. Is drilling a legitimate part of the communicative language classroom? The answer is a qualified “yes.” Drills offer students an opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain strings of language that may pose some linguistic difficulty—either phonological or grammatical. Drills are to language teaching what the pitching machine is to baseball. They offer limited practice through repetition. They allow one to focus on one element of language in a controlled activity. They can help to establish certain psychomotor patterns (to “loosen the tongue”) and to associate selected grammatical forms with their appropriate context. Here are some useful guidelines: - Keep them short (a few minutes of a class hour only). - Keep them simple (preferably just one point at a time). - Keep them quick-paced and “snappy.” - Make sure students know why they are doing the drill. - Limit them to phonological, morphological, or grammatical aspect of language. ### 2. Intensive Intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Intensive speaking can be self-initiated or it can even form part of some pair work activity, where learners are “going over” certain forms of language. ### 3. Responsive A good deal of student speech in the classroom is responsive: short replies to teacher- or student-initiated questions or comments. These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues (categories 4 and 5). Such speech can be meaningful and authentic: - T: How are you today? - S: Pretty good, thanks; and you? - T: What is the main idea in this essay? - S: The United Nations should have more authority. - S1: So, what did you write for question number one? - S2: Well, I wasn’t sure, so I left it blank. ### 4. Transactional (Dialogue) Transactional language, carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information, is an extended form of responsive language. Conversations, for example, may have more of a negotiative nature to them than does responsive speech: - T: What is the main idea in this essay? - S: The United Nations should have more authority. - T: More authority than what? - S: Than it does right now. - T: What do you mean? - S: Well, for example, the UN should have the power to force a country to destroy its nuclear weapons. - T: You don’t think the UN has that power now? - S: I don’t think so. Some countries are still manufacturing nuclear bombs. Such conversations could readily be part of group work activity as well. ### 5. Interpersonal (Dialogue) The other form of conversation mentioned in Chapter 15 was interpersonal dialogue, carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information. These conversations are a little trickier for learners because they can involve some or all of the following factors: - a casual register - colloquial language - emotionally charged language - slang - ellipsis - sarcasm - hidden meaning that requires understanding. For example: - Amy: Hi, Bob, how’s it going? - Bob: Oh, so-so. - Amy: Not a great weekend, huh? - Bob: Well, far be it from me to criticize, but I’m pretty miffed about last week. - Amy: What are you talking about? - Bob: I think you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. - Amy: Oh, that . . . How come you get so bent out of shape over some- thing like that? - Bob: Well, whose fault was it, huh? - Amy: Oh, wow, this is great. Wonderful. Back to square one. For crying out loud, Bob, I thought we’d settled this before. Well, what more can I say? Learners would need to learn how such features as the relationship between interlocutors, casual style, and sarcasm are coded linguistically in this conversation. ### 6. Extensive (Monologue) Finally, students at intermediate to advanced levels are sometimes asked to give extended monologues in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short speeches. Here the register is more formal and deliberative. These monologues can be planned or impromptu. ## Principles for Teaching Speaking Skills Let’s look at some of the foundational principles that should guide your teaching of OC skills. ### 1. Focus on Both Fluency and Accuracy, Depending on Your Objective In our current zeal for interactive language teaching, we can easily slip into a pattern of providing zesty, content-based, interactive activities that don’t capitalize on grammatical pointers or pronunciation tips. We need to bear in mind a spectrum of learner needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency. When you do a jigsaw group technique, play a game, or discuss solutions to the environmental crisis, make sure that your tasks have a linguistic (language-based) objective, and seize the opportunity to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language. At the same time, don’t bore your students with lifeless, repetitious drills. As noted above, make any drilling you do as meaningful as possible. ### 2. Ascertain That the Complexity of Your Techniques Is Appropriate As we noted above, speaking tasks can range from very simple to extremely complex, depending on linguistic, cognitive, and task-design elements. As you design and carry out techniques, put yourself into the shoes of your learners, ascertaining that the complexity of task is appropriate for your learners’ proficiency levels. Sometimes activities may be linguistically simple, for example, but involve task complexity that causes undue difficulty. ### 3. Provide Techniques That Spark the Interest of Students Try at all times to appeal to students’ interests, daily lives outside the class-room, cultural habits, and to what is of genuine relevance to them, and ultimately to continuing their language learning journey. Even in those techniques that don’t send students into ecstasy, help them to see how the activity will benefit them. Often students don’t know why we ask them to do certain tasks and activities. It doesn’t hurt to tell them, as in, “This task will help to be able to order from an online store.” ### 4. Encourage the Use of Authentic Language in Meaningful Contexts This theme has been played time and again in this book, but one more reminder shouldn’t hurt! It is not easy to keep coming up with meaningful interaction. It’s easy to succumb to the temptation to do disconnected grammar exercises when we go around the room calling on students one by one to pick the right answer. It takes energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction, but with the help of a storehouse of teacher resource material (see recommended books and articles at the end of this chapter) it can be done. Even drills can be structured to provide a sense of authenticity. ### 5. Provide Appropriate Feedback In most “foreign” language situations, students are totally dependent on the teacher for useful linguistic feedback. In the context of L2 learning within an L2 speaking culture, they may get such feedback “out there” beyond the class- room, but even then you are in a position to be of great benefit. It is important that you take advantage of your knowledge of the L2 to inject the kinds of feedback that are appropriate for the moment, and that will help students to notice elements of language that need work. ### 6. Capitalize on the Natural Link Between Speaking and Listening Many interactive techniques that involve speaking will also, of course, include listening. Don’t lose out on opportunities to integrate these two skills. 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. ### 7. Give Students Opportunities to Initiate Oral Communication A good deal of typical classroom interaction is characterized by teacher initiation of language. We ask questions, give directions, and provide information, and students have been conditioned only to “speak when spoken to.” Part of OC competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject. As you design and use speaking techniques, ask yourself if you have allowed students to initiate language. ### 8. Encourage the Development of Speaking Strategies The concept of strategic competence (see PLLT, Chapters 5 and 8) 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 practice, such strategies as the following: - 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 - Using conversation maintenance cues (*Uh huh*, Right, Yeah, Okay, *Hm*) - Getting someone’s attention (Hey, Say, So) - Using paraphrases for structures one can’t produce - Appealing for assistance from the interlocutor (to get a word or phrase, for example) - Using formulaic expressions (at the survival stage) (*How much does _____ cost?*) ## Teaching Conversation Research on teaching conversational skills (Tarone, 2005; McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2010; Lazaraton, 2014) historically describes two major approaches for teaching conversation. The first is an indirect approach in which learners are more or less set loose to engage in interaction. The second is a direct approach that “involves planning a conversation program around the specific microskills, strategies, and processes that are involved in fluent conversation” (Richards 1990, pp. 76–77). The indirect approach implies that one does not actually teach conversation, but rather that students acquire conversational competence, peripherally, by engaging in meaningful tasks. A direct approach explicitly calls students’ attention to conversational rules, conventions, and strategies. While both approaches can be found in language-teaching institutions around the world, recent developments in such models as task-based language teaching (TBLT) have taken the learner well beyond simply using language. Research on SLA strongly suggests the inclusion focus on form, including analysis and practice, as an integral part of every task (Nunan, 2004; Loewen, 2011; Sheen & Ellis, 2011; Spada, 2011). Likewise, Skehan (1998a, p. 131) recommended that communicative tasks “maximize the chances of a focus on form through attentional manipulation.” It is clear, upon scanning current English language textbooks, that the prevailing approach to teaching conversation includes the learner’s inductive involvement in meaningful tasks as well as consciousness-raising elements of focus on form. What are some the specific elements of conversation implied in the current research on teaching conversation? We have adapted a list of features from Richards (1990, pp. 79–80) to create the following possible goals: - Conversing for both transactional and interactional conversation tasks - Using casual, neutral, and formal styles of speaking - Using conversation in different social settings and social encounters - Developing strategies for repairing trouble spots in conversation, including communication breakdowns and comprehension problems - Maintaining fluency in conversation through avoiding excessive pausing, breakdowns, and errors of grammar or pronunciation - Using conversational fillers and small talk - Using conversational routines It became clear that pronunciation was a key to gaining full communicative competence. Current approaches to pronunciation contrast starkly with the early approaches (Murphy, 2013). Rather than attempting only to build a learner’s articulatory competence from the bottom up, and simply as the mastery of a list of phonemes and allophones, a top-down approach is taken in which the most relevant features of pronunciation—stress, rhythm, and intonation—are given high priority. Instead of teaching only the role of articulation within words, or at best, phrases, we teach its role in a whole stream of discourse. ### Learner Factors That Affect Pronunciation 1. **Native Language** Clearly, the native language is the most influential factor affecting a learner’s pronunciation (see PLLT, Chapter 9). If you are familiar with the sound system of a learner’s native language, you will be better able to diagnose student difficulties. Many L1-L2 carryovers can be overcome through a focused awareness and effort on the learner’s part. 2. **Age** Generally speaking, children under the age of puberty stand an excellent chance of “sounding like a native” if they have continued exposure in authentic contexts. Beyond the age of puberty, while adults will almost surely maintain a “foreign accent,” there is no particular advantage attributed to age (see PLLT, Chapter 3). A fifty-year-old can be as successful as an eighteen-year-old if all other factors are equal. Remind your students, especially if your students are older, that “the younger, the better” is a myth. 3. **Exposure** It is difficult to define exposure. One can actually live in a foreign country for some time but not take advantage of being “with the people.” 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. In many cases, if a person has had exposure to a foreign language as a child, this “knack” is present whether the early language is remembered or not. Others are simply more attuned to phonetic discriminations. Some people would have you believe that you either have such a knack, or you don’t. Strategies-based instruction (see Chapter 3, pp. 51–55), however, has proven that 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, they should not despair; with some effort and concentration, they can improve their competence. 5. **Identity and Agency** Yet another influence is one’s perception of speakers of the target language and the extent to which the L2 user identifies with those speakers. Learners need to be reminded of the importance of positive attitudes toward the people who speak the language (if such a target is identifiable), but more important, 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** Some learners are not particularly concerned about their pronunciation, while others are. The extent to which learners’ intrinsic motivation propels them toward improvement will be perhaps the strongest influence of all six of the factors in this language ego has been capsulized in the claim that “you are what you speak.” How would that factor intimidate a learner who is trying to be as accurate as possible in oral production? On the other hand, how might such a feeling actually motivate a learner to keep trying to improve pronunciation? If one’s accent is a manifestation of one’s identity is it advisable to really want to can learn to pronounce English clearly and comprehensibly. You can assist in the process by gearing your planned and unplanned instruction toward these six factors. On the next few pages you will find excerpts of lessons designed to teach different aspects of English pronunciation, along with some description of meaningful minimal pair exercises. Take note of how those techniques may capitalize on the positive benefits of the six factors above, and the extent to which they reflect a discourse-based view of pronunciation teaching. A significant factor for you in the success of such techniques lies in your ability to instill in your students the motivation to put forth the effort needed to develop clear, comprehensible pronunciation. ## Other Oral Communication Techniques The number of techniques for teaching OC skills is almost limitless. For the sake of stimulating your awareness, we’ll simply list some of these here, and encourage you to explore the many other possibilities that are available. For some ideas, consult Klippel (1984), Hughes (2002), and Bailey (2005). ### Oral Dialogue Journals Students create audio recordings of thoughts, reactions, questions, and concerns that the teacher can listen and respond to. ### Games Team building and guessing games can be used in pairs, groups, or the whole class. ### Role Play Role play offers learners a chance to get “outside themselves,” to use their imagination, and at times to voice opinions that may not be their very own beliefs. Role play can be worked into interviews, simulations, and problem-solving activities. ### Information Gap Sometimes called “jigsaw” exercises, these tasks require collaboration between or among students to derive the desired information. Activities range from map exercises, to ranking, to problem solving. ### Oral Form-Focused Activities Some OC techniques elicit or contain ... docionod ## Focus on Form and Error Treatment 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? This happens also to be one of the most enigmatic questions in the language teaching profession. I offer some guidelines here, but at the same time urge you to read the last part of Chapter 9 of PLLT, where issues surrounding form-focused instruction are described in more detail. ### The Role of Feedback One of the keys to successful L2 learning lies in the feedback that a learner receives from others. Research has shown that the quality and quantity of feedback given to learners will affect what they eventually incorporate into their linguistic competence (Williams, 2005; Loewen, 2011; Sheen & Ellis, 2011; Spada, 2011). The quality of feedback lies in what teachers choose to call to learners’ attention, how they do it, when they do it, and in what manner. Four decades ago Vigil and Oller (1976) suggested that the affective quality of feedback is as important as its cognitive elements. So, for example, supportive, encouraging, and affirming verbal (and nonverbal) feedback from a teacher is an almost essential element of the extent to which a learner will be receptive to feedback. And a barrage of interruptions and corrections will, of course, lead learners to shut off their attempts at communication. Once a positive affective climate is established, learners will feel encouraged to continue their attempts to communicate orally (Vigil & Oller, 1976). The cognitive nature of feedback is a little more complicated, as we shall see in our next few sections, and as a stockpile of research has shown (Sheen & Ellis, 2011; Spada, 2011). The quantity of feedback is also relevant. Which errors should teachers treat? Should they supply overt, immediate “correction”? Should they make incidental references to form? How can they encourage learners to notice errors? Should error treatment be planned on the part of the teacher or spontaneous? These are issues that are still being addressed, but we do have some positive guidelines in recent research. Let’s look at those options. ### How to Treat Errors In a very practical article on error treatment, James Hendrickson (1980) advised teachers to try to discern the difference between global and local errors, that is, errors that cannot be interpreted by the hearer versus errors that are inter-pretable. When a learner of English describes a quaint old hotel in Europe by saying, “There is a French widow in every bedroom,” the local error is clearly—and humorously—recognized. Hendrickson recommended that local errors not be corrected because the message is clear and correction might interrupt a learner’s flow of communication. Global errors need to be treated in some way because the message may otherwise remain garbled. Many utterances are not clearly global or local, and it is difficult to discern the necessity for corrective feedback. A learner once wrote, “The grammar is the basement of every language.” In this witty little proclamation the speaker probably meant “basis” rather than “basement,” but because of some potential misunderstanding, the error probably warrants treatment. The matter of how to treat errors is complex. It seems quite clear that students in the classroom generally want and expect errors to be corrected. However, correcting (or treating) every error is obviously not advisable. We can safely conclude that a sensitive and perceptive language teacher should make the language classroom a happy optimum, which may best be accomplished through a number of different treatment options. The first choice that a teacher needs to make is to decide whether to treat an error or to ignore it. Then, if some form of treatment is warranted, consider the following options (adapted from Bailey, 1985, p. 111): - Treat immediately or delay to a more appropriate moment - Treat explicitly or give the student an opportunity to self-correct - The teacher initiates treatment or defers to others (students) - If the latter, defer to an individual or to the whole class - Return, or not, to the original error maker after treatment Then, if some form of treatment is chosen, quite a number of strategies for treatment are possible. Among those are: - Simply indicate (possibly nonverbally) that an error occurred - Point out the location of the error (e.g., “You go to the store yesterday?”) - Recast, using the correct form (e.g., “Oh, I see, you went to the store?”) - Indicate the type of error (e.g., “What’s the past tense of go?”) These basic options and strategies are common and viable modes of error treatment in the classroom. It’s important to understand that not all error treatment is error correction. Among the strategies listed above, none of them is an explicit correction, in which the wrong form is specified and the correct form provided. Error treatment encompasses a wide range of options, one of which—at the extreme end of a continuum—may be considered to be correction. Research (Williams, 2005