Interchange author Jack C. Richards has been considering three different types of speech: talk as interaction, talk as transaction, and talk as performance. Here, he begins looking at how we should teach speaking based upon an awareness of these three types, and shares some activities you can use with your class.
Implications for teaching
Three core issues need to be addressed in planning speaking activities for an English class. The first is to determine what kinds of speaking skills the class will focus on. Is it all three of the genres described in the preceding posts, or will some receive greater attention than others?
Informal needs analysis is the starting point here. Procedures for determining needs include observation of learners carrying out different kinds of communicative tasks, questionnaires, interviews, and diagnostic testing (e.g., Tsang and Wong 2002). The second issue is to identify teaching strategies to “teach” (i.e., provide opportunities for learners to acquire) each kind of talk.
Teaching talk as interaction
Talk as interaction is perhaps the most difficult skill to teach since interactional talk is a very complex and subtle phenomenon that takes place under the control of unspoken rules. In my experience, these are best taught by providing examples embedded in naturalistic dialogs that model features such as opening and closing conversations, making small talk, recounting personal incidents and experiences, and reacting to what others say.
One rule for making small talk is to initiate interactions with a comment concerning something in the immediate vicinity or that both participants have knowledge of. The comment should elicit agreement, since agreement is face-preserving and non-threatening. Hence, safe topics, such as the weather, traffic, and so on, must be chosen.
Students can initially be given models such as the following to practice:
A: Nice weather today.
B: Yes, it is.
A: I hope the weather is nice for the weekend.
B: Me, too.
A: The buses to school are always so crowded.
B: Yes, they are.
Later, students can be given situations in which small talk might be appropriate (e.g., meeting someone at a movie, running into a friend in the cafeteria, or waiting at a bus stop). They can then be asked to think of small talk topic comments and responses.
Giving feedback (or back channeling) is another important aspect of talk as interaction. It involves responding to a conversational partner with expressions that indicate interest and a wish for the speaker to continue, such as “That’s interesting,” “yeah,” “really,” and so on.
To practice using back channeling in this way, students can examine dialogs from which feedback expressions have been omitted. They can consider suitable ways of providing them and then practice using them.
For example, they can come up with different responses to use in the following dialog:
A: I’m going to Hawaii for my next vacation.
B: ________________.
A: Yeah, my parents are taking me there as a graduation present.
B: ________________. And what do you plan to do there?
A: Well I guess I’ll spend a lot of time on the beach.
B: ________________.
A: But I also want to do some snorkeling.
B: ________________.
Another technique to practice the use of conversation starters and narratives about personal experiences involves giving conversation starters that students respond to by asking one or two follow-up questions. For example: “I didn’t sleep very well last night.” “Look what I bought on Sunday. How do you like it?” “Did that thunderstorm last night wake you?”
Two simple activities I use to practice topic management are “in the hot seat” and “question time.” In the first activity, a student sits on a chair in front of the class and makes a statement about something he or she did recently (e.g., “I saw a good movie on Sunday”). The other members of the class ask three or more questions about the topic, which the student has to answer quickly.
The “question time” activity, introduces students to a lesson on a new theme. I prepare up to 15 questions related to the theme and put them on a handout. For example, if the next unit covers sports, the students’ handout would include questions such as “What sports do you play?” “How often do you play sports?” “What sports are popular in your country?” “What sport have you never tried?” I first ask students around the class to answer the questions quickly. Then students practice asking and answering the questions in pairs.