In
this previous post on teaching speaking,
Interchange author Jack C. Richards began to consider the
main features of talk as interaction. Today, he gives some illustrative examples of those features, and offers advice on how to help students master this type of talk.
We can see some of these features illustrated in the following authentic example of a segment of conversational discourse (from Thornbury and Slade 2006: 132–133). Two women are asking a third woman about her husband and how they first met.
Jessie: Right. Right, and so when did you – actually meet him?
Brenda: So we didn’t actually meet until that night.
Judy: Oh, hysterical. [laughs]
Brenda: Well, I met him that night. We were all, we all went out to dinner. So I had champagne and strawberries at the airport.
Jessie: And what was it like when you first saw him? Were you really – nervous?
Brenda: – Well, I was hanging out of a window watching him in his car, and I thought “oh God what about this!” [laughs]
Brenda: And he’d combed his hair and shaved his eyebrows – and
Jessie: Had you seen a photo of him?
Brenda: Oh, yeah, I had photos of him, photos . . . and I’d spoken to him on the phone.
Jessie: Did you get on well straight away?
Brenda: Uh, well sort of. I’m a sort of nervy person when I first meet people, so it was sort of . . . you know . . . just nice to meet him.
Jessie: – [laughs]
The conversation is highly interactive and is in a collaborative conversational style. The listeners give constant feedback, including laughter, to prompt the speaker to continue, and we see the examples of casual conversational register with “nervy” and “hanging out of the window.”
Examples of these kinds of talk are:
- Chatting to an adjacent passenger during a plane flight (polite conversation that does not seek to develop the basis for future social contact)
- Chatting to a school friend over coffee (casual conversation that serves to mark an ongoing friendship)
- A student chatting to his or her professor while waiting for an elevator (polite conversation that reflects unequal power between the two participants)
- Telling a friend about an amusing weekend experience, and hearing him or her recount a similar experience he or she once had (sharing personal recounts)
Some of the skills involved in using talk as interaction involve knowing how to do the following things:
- Opening and closing conversations
- Choosing topics
- Making small-talk
- Joking
- Recounting personal incidents and experiences
- Turn-taking
- Using adjacency pairs
- Interrupting
- Reacting to others
- Using an appropriate style of speaking
Mastering the art of talk as interaction is difficult and may not be a priority for all learners. However, students who do need such skills and find them lacking report that they sometimes feel awkward and at a loss for words when they find themselves in situations that require talk for interaction. They feel difficulty in presenting a good image of themselves and sometimes avoid situations that call for this kind of talk.
This can be a disadvantage for some learners where the ability to use talk for conversation can be important. Hatch (1978) emphasizes that second language learners need a wide range of topics at their disposal in order to manage talk as interaction. Initially, learners may depend on familiar topics to get by. However, they also need practice in introducing new topics into conversation to move beyond this stage. As Hatch suggests…
They should practice nominating topics about which they are prepared to speak. They should do lots of listening comprehension for topic nominations of native speakers. They should practice predicting questions for a large number of topics. … They should be taught elicitation devices … to get topic clarification. That is, they should practice saying “huh,” “pardon me,” “excuse me, I didn’t understand,” etc., and echoing parts of sentences they do not understand in order to get it recycled again. Nothing stops the opportunity to carry on a conversation quicker than silence or the use of “yes” and head nodding when the learner does not understand. (Hatch 1978:434)
Jack will be back next week, when he’ll be taking a look at talk as transaction.
Click the link to find the References-and-Further-Reading for this series of posts.
Adjacency pairs: A sequence of two related utterances by two different speakers. The second utterance is always a response to the first. For example, complain – apologize, compliment – accept, invite – decline.
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
