Recently, I was asked to give a plenary presentation at a conference in Saudi Arabia. Whilst there, the conference organisers wanted me to talk about speaking and the sorts of issues that both teachers and learners face in developing speaking skills.
Saudi Arabia is a country I frequently fly to, and is one where I am very familiar with the teaching and learning context: Learners tend to be fairly fluent in basic spoken English, but they often lack accuracy. The high numbers of expatriate workers in hotels, restaurants, shops, petrol stations, hospitals, and so on, means that L2 or L3 English is very often the language of communication (rather than L1 Arabic). As a result, the language models to which learners are exposed are not always accurate, and hence the rapid development of fluency over accuracy. As Penny Ur (1997) points out: “Students learning fluency without accuracy is one of the biggest threats”.
So, where do we start? Well, there are plenty of experts out there with something to say. So, in this first of two posts about speaking skills, let’s take a look at some of the theory…
Jack Richards (2002): “The ability to speak a second … language well is a very complex task”.
I think many of us would agree that we often set our sights far too high in terms of what we wish our learners to achieve, and in so doing we put a great deal of pressure on them. Jack Richards, who has written extensively on communicative language teaching and is the author of many international courses (Interchange, Four Corners, Passages) believes that speaking a second language well is not an easy task. This view is supported by Paul Seligson (1997) who says that: “Very few students will become fluent speakers but they can probably speak more than they do now [and] they can easily be made to feel more comfortable”. This idea that teachers’ expectations of their learners is unrealistically high could, in fact, be a barrier to our helping them to improve.
Chris Candlin (1990): “Getting students to talk is the major and one of the most difficult tasks confronting any teacher”.
I suspect this varies greatly from one context to another; however, there does seem to be a general hesitancy among learners when they are asked to speak (probably due to a fear of making mistakes and being corrected in front of others). However, as Kang Shumin (2002) points out: “Learning to speak a foreign language requires more than knowing its grammatical and semantic rules”. Thus, while learners may be reluctant to speak for fear of getting it wrong, they also need to be made aware of the need for clear pronunciation. They also need to be ready to monitor their output and to correct if it necessary.
The teacher’s role is not an easy one, especially when helping learners to develop their confidence in speaking. Nonetheless, if we believe that people learn a language best when using it to do things and through communicating in it (Jack Richards, 2006), we are already heading in the right direction. In my second post about speaking skills, we’ll look at some practical classroom ideas to help us ensure that both spoken accuracy and fluency are reinforced and developed.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy Penny Ur’s webinar, where she explores how to get your students talking (even if they don’t want to)!