Interchange author Jack C. Richards starts a new series of posts on teaching speaking, beginning with some analysis of conversational routines.
The mastery of speaking skills in English is a priority for many second-language or foreign-language learners. Consequently, learners often evaluate their success in language learning, as well as the effectiveness of their English course, on the basis of how much they feel they have improved in their spoken language proficiency.
Oral skills have hardly been neglected in EFL/ESL courses (witness the huge number of conversation and other speaking course books in the market), though how best to approach the teaching of oral skills has long been the focus of methodological debate. Teachers and textbooks make use of a variety of approaches, ranging from direct approaches focusing on specific features of oral interaction (e.g., turn-taking, topic management, and questioning strategies) to indirect approaches that create conditions for oral interaction through group work, task work, and other strategies (Richards, 1990).
Advances in discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and corpus analysis in recent years have revealed a great deal about the nature of spoken discourse and how it differs from written discourse (McCarthy and Carter, 1997). These differences reflect the different purposes for which spoken and written language are used. Jones (1996:12) comments:
In speaking and listening we tend to be getting something done, exploring ideas, working out some aspect of the world, or simply being together. In writing, we may be creating a record, committing events or moments to paper.
Research has also thrown considerable light on the complexity of spoken interaction in either a first or second language. For example, Luoma (2004) cites some of the following features of spoken discourse:
- Composed of idea units (conjoined short phrases and clauses)
- May be planned (e.g., a lecture) or unplanned (e.g., a conversation)
- Employs more vague or generic words than written language
- Employs fixed phrases, fillers, and hesitation markers
- Contains slips and errors reflecting online processing
- Involves reciprocity (i.e., interactions are jointly constructed)
- Shows variation (e.g., between formal and casual speech), reflecting speaker roles, speaking purpose, and the context
Conversational routines
A marked feature of conversational discourse is the use of fixed expressions, or “routines,” that often have specific functions in conversation and give conversational discourse the quality of naturalness. Wardhaugh (1985:74, cited in Richards 1990) observes:
There are routines to help people establish themselves in certain positions: routines for taking off and hanging up coats; arrangements concerning where one is to sit or stand at a party or in a meeting; offers of hospitality; and so on. There are routines for beginnings and endings of conversations, for leading into topics, and for moving away from one topic to another. And there are routines for breaking up conversations, for leaving a party, and for dissolving a gathering. … It is difficult to imagine how life could be lived without some routines.
Consider the following routines. Where might they occur? What might their function be within these situations?
- This one’s on me.
- I don’t believe a word of it.
- I don’t get the point.
- You look great today.
- As I was saying, …
- Nearly time. Got everything?
- I’ll be making a move then.
- I see what you mean.
- Let me think about it.
- Just looking, thanks.
- I’ll be with you in a minute.
- It doesn’t matter.
Pawley and Syder (1983) suggest that native speakers have a repertoire of thousands of routines like these, that their use in appropriate situations creates conversational discourse that sounds natural and native-like, and that they have to be learned and used as fixed expressions.
In designing speaking activities or instructional materials for second-language or foreign-language teaching, it is also necessary to recognize the very different functions speaking performs in daily communication and the different purposes for which our students need speaking skills.
Click the link to find the References-and-Further-Reading.
Read all the posts in this series:
Teaching speaking #1 – Conversational routines
Teaching speaking #2 – Styles and functions of speaking; talk as interaction (i)
Teaching speaking #3 – Talk as interaction (ii)
Teaching speaking #4 – Talk as transaction
Teaching speaking #5 – Talk as performance
Teaching speaking #6 – Teaching talk as interaction
Teaching speaking #7 – Teaching talk as transaction
Teaching speaking #8 – Teaching talk as performance
Teaching speaking #9 – Evaluating performance on speaking activities