Drawing on classroom practice for research and vice versa

Activities based around speaking need to be managed and fostered through careful planning and direction by the teacher, and through a choice of suit-able tasks to stimulate speech. Where there are groups of students from different language backgrounds co-operating to carry out a task there is rich potential for the reflective practitioner to draw on existing research, or to carry out their own classroom-based project in this area. There are also, however, factors that need to be taken into account, some of which have been under-researched in relation to the language classroom.

When we consider the complex nature of speech interaction, it is perhaps unsurprising that even the most advanced students still feel most at a loss when they are trying to take part in spontaneous, informal conversation in a new language. While the communicative classroom gives abundant oppor-tunity for the student to interact, it is fruitful to raise awareness of the fundamentals of spoken discourse in order to give students a better under-standing of how very different speaking is from the stringing together of grammatically correct (or incorrect) sentences. Language awareness activities based around the norms of spontaneous interaction in the target language can provide both an increased understanding of the problems, pitfalls and skills needed for successful communication with native speak-ers, and provide the learner with a meta-language to ask further questions about the difficulties they are encountering.

Three basic aspects of spontaneous speech that language learners need to be aware of and which language teachers may find helpful to reflect on with their students are:

• speaking is fundamentally an interactive process and is defined by interactivity;

• speaking happens under real-time processing constraints;

• speaking is more fundamentally linked to the individual who produces it than the written form is.

These are the elements that stem directly from the way speech is pro-duced and distinguish it from standard written forms. I will discuss each of them further in the following three sub-sections and outline the implica-tions for the language learner.

6.4.1 The higher interactive potential of the spoken form than the written

There is a far greater potential for interactivity in the spoken mode than the written. Even online ‘chat’ that takes place in writing cannot match the interplay of speakers in face-to-face or mediated (telephone or online) oral interactions. This leads to features such as not only interruptions, correc-tions and overlaps, but also the potential for speaker co-operation as two or more people seek to speak and understand one another in real time. A written text and classroom tasks that are based on written mode are there-fore generally more predictable and easy to manage than tasks involving large amounts of ‘free’ speaking. As the earlier sections have suggested, generation of peer-to-peer talk is a commonly seen goal in the current language classroom. There may be several underlying issues to consider.

In the context of group task completion learners need to become aware of the potentially different mechanics of interaction in their own language

and the target language (see Concept 6.3 for some examples). The practi-tioner may also find that learning more from the literature on conversa-tional norms in the cultures of his or her students can explain the dynamics of what they see happening between students in their classroom. A class-room-based research project on the impact of different cultural expecta-tions in spoken communication when completing a particular task would be valuable.

Concept 6.3 The non-transferability of conversational patterns across cultures

A fundamental issue for the language teacher is the extent to which the norms of a target language’s interactions mirror those of the learners’ mother tongue. Nelson, Mahmood and Nichols (1996), for example, investigated the different ways in which Syrians and Americans respond to compliments.

Although there were a number of similarities (for instance mitigating the compliment), there were also some significant differences. Americans were more likely than Syrians simply to say ‘thank you’. Syrians were more likely to produce a long or a formulaic response (for instance offering the object of the compliment to the giver of the compliment). Where there is a combination of similarities and differences in the ways that cultures handle conversational functions there can be particular difficulties for the teacher of spoken forms.

These issues of intercultural expectations and their impact on communi-cation extend beyond the language classroom and are particularly relevant for teaching staff involved with language training in professional settings.

For example, Meeuwesen et al. (2007) examined doctor–patient discourse between Dutch doctors and patients from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. They discovered that the Dutch patients were much more capable of signalling a lack of understanding to the doctor than those from other backgrounds. Therefore intercultural communication awareness rais-ing and trainrais-ing for L1 and L2 users may be vital in a range of settrais-ings other than ‘simple’ language acquisition. Interestingly, more work has currently been carried out in professional settings on these issues than on their impact in Language for Specific Purposes classrooms. A consistent programme of applied research to consider the implications for language teaching would clearly be beneficial.

6.4.2 The production of speech happens under real-time processing constraints

While the written form can generally be edited, rewritten and ‘polished’, speech – even speech that is prepared in advance – is delivered to the listener with no possibility for the recall of a word or erasure of a grammatical

error. The exception is, of course, spoken discourse that is pre-recorded, and can be retaped if necessary. However, the greater part of speech, that is, conversational data, is created spontaneously in real time. This means that speakers tend to use simpler vocabulary, use a higher frequency of coordinated clauses, and use many fixed, filler expressions, such as ‘you know’, ‘you see’, to buy processing time. Learners need to realise that simple, even repetitive vocabulary is not unacceptable in speech, or rather that they should not spend so long making lexical choices that they lose the chance to speak. Equally, they need to gain a repertoire of natural time-buying devices to help them plan and process their discourse more easily.

Concept 6.4 Speech processing and language demands

Recognising what is said in any language is a remarkable feat. Recognising what is said in an unfamiliar language is a more difficult task but one that shares the basic processing system with L1 comprehension. Rather than presenting the learner with a binary of L1 (in which they are expert) versus L2 (in which they are currently in deficit) it is preferable to consider the demands of speech processing generally. Current thinking on how this pro-cess happens neurologically may help the learner understand the challenge they are facing and the strategies that they need to adopt to help them par-ticipate in spoken interaction. Interlocutors are constantly analysing spoken input and matching this against their linguistic expectations. Consensus in neurolinguistics is that ‘. . . candidate words are identified immediately, con-sidered in parallel, and compete in some way’ (McMurray et al., 2009: 3).

The acoustic clues in this process are, naturally, crucial as the stream of speech unfolds and is interpreted. In considering the capacity for successful spoken interaction in the L2 classroom it is worth bearing in mind that the student in a multi-lingual group performing a task is processing not only the competing lexical items that are normal for L1 speech processing, but also mapping a diverse set of realisations of phonemes from a variety of L1 back-ground speakers and dealing with these against a perhaps partial under-standing of the target language syntax. These processing demands are in addition to the potential cultural and pragmatic differences already men-tioned. It may, therefore, be fruitful for the practitioner to address the L1 differences and levels of mutual intelligibility at an early stage in planning communicative tasks.

6.4.3 A strong, perceptible link exists between the deliverer of the discourse and the discourse itself

Spoken discourse reaches the world directly from the human vocal tract.

As such it is a less mediated form than the written, which is transferred onto (or with technological advances such as computers and personal

communication devices into) another medium before it is read. Something of this is reflected in the greater evidence of personal involvement shown by the spoken form, for example high frequency of personal pronouns, especially first and second, and verbs showing stance to the topic such as

‘think’, ‘feel’, ‘believe’ and so on.

Concept 6.5 Stereotype effects on speech perception

Perception of speech is strongly affected by preconceptions about the person who is producing the speech. Unlike the written mode, where, to a far greater extent, the content of the discourse can be disconnected from the author, the message carried by the stream of speech is processed in real time as output from a particular person and is interpreted by an interlocutor not only as speech sounds but also as the production of this specific individual.

This means that whatever preconceptions the listener carries with them about the race, age, gender and personality of the speaker can have a powerful effect on how the spoken discourse is understood. To investigate these issues researchers have created a method known as the ‘matched-guise’ approach.

In this listeners are played an extract of talk and are told a fact about the speaker, often their nationality. The results suggest that the perception of sounds and attitudes to the presumed fact about the speaker correlate and influence what is heard to the point that perception and input are clearly at odds. For example, Hu and Lindemann (2009) conducted an experiment on attitudes to Cantonese accented English. All the examples played to the subjects were spoken by American speakers of English but half the time the subjects were told that they were Cantonese speakers of English. When this was the case, listeners were more likely to perceive one of the features associated with the accent – missed final consonants. These ‘hidden’ factors that influence what a listener hears provide a fascinating insight into how strong the connections are between perception and attitude to the individual speaking. Gaining a greater understanding of stereotype effects can help promote good classroom dynamics, can indicate to the learner that the spoken mode is fundamentally dependent on interpretation, and is of clear relevance in the assessment of speaking.

An awareness of the effects of the interactive, spontaneous and personally oriented nature of speech can, therefore, be of great benefit to learners, both in terms of confidence in production and also to help to improve global listening skills. If, however, speech is taught without greater regard for some of the basic features that shape the process of listening and speak-ing then learners will constantly be strivspeak-ing, and failspeak-ing, to speak in the complete, grammatically standard, and impersonal discourse that is quite untypical of naturally occurring speech.

Summary

The chapter has outlined some of the reasons for the emphasis on the spoken mode in language acquisition theories and the influence this has had on classroom practice. Some instances of the use of spoken interaction to promote language acquisition were given. It was suggested that there are possible tensions between the importance given to spoken interaction for general language uptake, and the particular needs of teaching speaking as a skill in its own right. The chapter ended with a review of the issues involved in the teaching of speaking per se due to its interactive and context dependent nature.

Further reading

Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding Language Teaching: from method to post-method. London: Routledge. A more unusual but still full overview of the develop-ment of language teaching methods and approaches.

Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, S. T. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A comprehensive and

‘standard’ text on the history of classroom practices in language teaching.

Research project ideas and