Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
2011
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
……………………………………………..
Author’s signature
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor James Edward Thomas
for his guidance, insightful comments and suggestions.
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction...............................................................................................6
1.1 Thesis structure...................................................................................7
1.2 Underlying motivation and research questions.......................................8
1.3 Target age groups of learners.............................................................13
1.4 What is ‘teaching speaking skills’?......................................................16
2 Theoretical framework....................................................................20
2.1 Basic features of speaking..................................................................20
2.1.1 On the seemingly disorganised nature of speaking......................20
2.1.2 Classroom implications: teachers’ expectations............................25
2.1.3 The role of context....................................................................27
2.1.4 Classroom implications: teaching materials.................................29
2.1.5 The types of communicative exchanges......................................34
2.1.6 Classroom implications: communicative tasks use........................36
2.1.7 Characteristics of conversation...................................................41
2.1.8 Classroom implications: challenges of conversational classes.......44
2.2 Communicative competence................................................................47
2.2.1 Historical background................................................................47
2.2.2 Individual components of communicative competence.................50
3 Practical part...................................................................................65
3.1 Individual aspects of teaching speaking skills.......................................65
3.1.1 Fluency and accuracy................................................................65
3.1.2 Corrective feedback and evaluation............................................76
3.1.3 The importance of pair work in LT..............................................79
3.2 Practical techniques............................................................................81
3.2.1 Information gap activities..........................................................82
3.2.2 Cooperative activities.................................................................85
3.2.3 Interviews.................................................................................87
3.2.3 Storytelling and retelling............................................................89
3.2.4 Role plays and simulations.........................................................93
3.2.5 Discussions and debates............................................................94
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3.2.6 Creative tasks...........................................................................96
3.2.7 Games......................................................................................99
4 Research........................................................................................102
4.1 Introduction.....................................................................................102
4.2 Data analysis....................................................................................109
4.2.1 Teaching approaches...............................................................109
4.2.2 Communication and the success of teaching speaking skills.......121
4.2.3 Teaching materials and using transcripts of recordings..............128
4.2.3 Accuracy versus fluency and corrective feedback.......................131
4.2.4 Assumptions about teaching speaking.......................................134
4.2.5 Practical techniques for teaching speaking................................137
4.3 Conclusion.......................................................................................140
Conclusion........................................................................................142
References........................................................................................144
Appendix A – List of abbreviations...................................................153
Appendix B – Glossary of terms........................................................154
Appendix C – Activities.....................................................................166
Appendix D – Questionnaire.............................................................197
Appendix E – Charts and tables........................................................206
Czech resume...................................................................................234
English resume..........................................................................................235
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1 Introduction
This thesis sets out to show the full scope of teaching speaking skills, which in
its entirety means more than just teaching ‘speaking’. The concept of teaching
competence. The main line of argument is consistent with the view that in
and writing and advocates a teaching approach which takes these differences
into account. It also attempts to link relevant theoretical concepts and thoughts
the Czech Republic and Austria. Moreover, primary focus is placed on the
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1.1 Thesis structure
This thesis is divided into four main parts. In the introductory part the
underlying motivation behind the choice of the particular topic is discussed and
subsection providing an explanation why the focus of the thesis is not restricted
to any particular age group of learners and a section attempting to define the
teaching. First of all, it deals with the basic features of speaking, such as its
different organization in comparison with writing and the role of context. It also
communicative activities that can be used in speaking skills lessons. Apart from
The final part presents my own research in the area and suggests
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skills, a questionnaire used in the quantitative research and charts and tables
meet hundreds of students seeking language training each year, mainly adult
majority of them stress that they especially need and want to improve their
backgrounds and their motivations for language study may differ – be it school,
work or personal interests – almost all of the potential learners agree that what
they primarily want to practise is speaking. They also wish to gain practical
Upon hearing the often repeated requests for practical speaking skills
training, one naturally starts to ask oneself why it is, that the need for learners
fundamental mode of human language” (Givón 1997: 92) and its training is
naturally sought out by learners for a number of obvious reasons. On the other
hand, this does not explain why so many learners frequently feel there is a lack
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Even though learners are to a certain extent responsible for their own
learning success, or the lack thereof, teachers can greatly influence their
learning experience and language acquisition (LA). After all, teachers are the
key players in the way lessons are organised and what skills are taught, down
researchers stress that it is the teacher who determines what actually happens
in the classroom. Referring to Williams and Burden (1997) he further adds that
“the teachers’ own beliefs can affect classroom action more than a particular
Although some teachers might argue at this point that they need to
follow certain guidelines or that they do not have much of a say when it comes
to decisions about coursebooks it cannot be denied that they themselves opt for
Furthermore, they also decide on the way these resources are used and how
each individual task is put into practice. Even under very restricted conditions,
this gives them some leeway to shape the nature of their lessons on a daily
basis and to place emphasis on the subject matter they consider important.
about speaking may prevent them from being successful in teaching speaking. I
suspect that many teachers fail to recognise important differences between the
nature of spoken and written texts in the first place. As a result, their speaking
skills training fails to meet their learners’ needs because it does not reflect real-
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life conditions of speech production and the scope of the skills that are
globally, has not led to a satisfactory level of communicative skill in the vast
national syllabuses he says that there has been an “apparent failure to ensure
(Allwright 1979: 167). Twenty-six years later, Thornbury still suggests that one
these in their lessons on a broader scale. If this hypothesis proves true, one of
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b) Do teachers think they teach speaking skills but due to various
does not meet their learners’ needs? Here I would also like to find out
speaking skills.
plan to carry out a survey in the form of online questionnaires that will be
short comparative study of two countries can be partly explained by the belief
that I hope to be able to see if there are any differences between the two
because of the historical link that has existed between the two countries for a
long time and secondly because the fact of having data from two countries at
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Contrasting the two countries might help me to interpret the results
more precisely. For example, if the research showed that the teachers in one of
skills, it would be interesting to examine if this belief originates in the ways they
teach. My next step therefore would be to compare the activities and strategies
these teachers use with those used in the other country. My objective would be
assumptions about LT can be identified in the first place and if they can, to
what extent they might be linked to the potential success or failure of learners
research can be substantiated by two major facts. Firstly, it is the recent rise in
interest in the area of speaking skills teaching. Secondly, it is the high number
tuition on a daily basis. Both these facts make speaking skills research highly
interest in this area can be observed over the last thirty years or so, the
referring to the last few years when speaking and its teaching finally started to
get the scope of attention they truly deserve with books by authors such as
throw some more light on teachers’ current attitudes towards teaching speaking
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skills and their ways of dealing with them in the classroom environment seen
present gap, this research might also open new interesting questions and
might also lie in its attempt to link theoretical concepts to their practical
implications for LT because as Cook (2009) points out: “despite the vast strides
in SLA research, few people have been interested in maintaining the bridge to
language teaching and only a fraction of the research has been applied to
classroom teaching”.
Consistent with this view is my last point that if the primary goal of
theoretical research did not consist in its further application in practice, the
This thesis does not restrict its focus to any particular age group for several
reasons.
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Firstly, many aspects of both foreign and second language acquisition
still remain unclear and need to be explored further including the question of
acquisition within the age group of adult learners in an EFL context in modern
books dealing with language teaching methodology or LA, and where the
Brown 2008, Hoff 2009, Hughes 2011, etc.). It is precisely this target group I
would be most interested to investigate. The fact that this field remains still
under-researched (Bygate 2009) would push this thesis beyond its scope, if the
processes of FLA and SLA cannot be the same,1 partly because learners already
transfer is one of the processes that distinguish FLA from SLA and influence it
On the other hand, it is also true that scholars believe that many
aspects2 which play an important role in FLA are likely to play a part in SLA, too.
2
e.g. input and output or exposure to modified input (Lightbown and Spada 2006)
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As can be seen, with so many areas yet to be explored and questions
age groups. Restricting my references to one specific target group might place
SLA, this paper makes references to the findings of both FLA and SLA research,
which can be considered as relevant for the purposes of this paper on the
following grounds.
First of all, the extent to which FLA and SLA differ is still a subject of
so FLA research will always offer new perspectives to SLA and foreign language
teaching, opening new questions to be answered. In fact, this makes all FLA
research relevant for those dealing with SLA, as the former is highly suggestive.
Lastly, not only does FLA research raise important questions for further
investigation but, it may also have important implications for teaching from the
terms of a specific target group of learners, I would also like to hope that the
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thesis might be of some interest to anyone involved in teaching English who
speaking’. She also stresses the fact that unfortunately, when compared to
writing, the spoken form is under-researched and that this may be one of the
reasons why teachers may feel more confident when using ‘stable written forms
concepts are interconnected. This may also be one of the reasons why they are
can be argued that teaching speaking if the data used comes from written
teachers may incline toward the written form of a language when teaching
3
Having said that, it needs to be taken into account that my perspective of reasoning, choice of
resources, activities, etc. are bound to be influenced by my ten years experience teaching adult
learners.
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speaking is consistent with my main line of argument. That is, that one of the
that it is not the spoken but the written form of language and its characteristics
that are taught. As a result, teachers do not meet their students’ needs when it
comes to speaking skills training because in the end it is not speaking skills that
are taught.
What exactly is it then that the terms speaking skills and speaking
skills teaching refer to? The definitions of both these terms are closely knit
Speaking has often been narrowly defined. When speaking skills are
however, is much more than that. Broader views focus either on communication
etc., or they describe speaking in terms of its basic competences used in daily
alternate in their roles as speakers and listeners and employ both verbal and
building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal
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Consistent with this view, is Nunan’s description of what teaching
skills are mentioned in this thesis, they refer to all the above-listed aspects. It
needs to be pointed out, however, that the scope of this paper does not allow a
special focus on teaching phonetics and phonology. Since this topic can easily
be singled out and treated in a separate paper, the first two above-mentioned
between another two terms that are frequently mentioned throughout this
thesis: language acquisition and language learning, a distinction that has been
hypothesis. They say that “language acquisition is the ‘natural’ way to develop
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linguistic ability, and is a subconscious process”, which is realised through
communication. This means that people are “not necessarily aware that they
knowledge of rules, being aware of them and being able to talk about them”.
(p. 26).
Similarly to Krashen and Terrell, this thesis builds on the view that
somewhat reserved with respect to the evidence that shows that certain
(Thornbury and Slade 2007: 231). Thus effective LT is such where teachers are
instruction with features that are better or only learned through instruction.
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2 Theoretical framework
understand what the main features of speaking are, as opposed to writing for
example, and what skills are involved in the ability to speak a second language.
One of the basic features of speaking is that it takes place in real time. Due to
the time constraints that allow speakers only limited planning time, speech
the main reasons why language learners, and this is not only restricted to true
(Thornbury and Slade 2007) significantly shape the nature of speaking and
distinguish it from writing. Crystal and Davy also mention time as “the main
like hesitations, word repetitions, false starts, unfinished utterances and repairs
make speaking look less neat and tidy than writing when transcribed. Therefore
one might assume that speaking is disorganised or even inferior to writing. But
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spoken language will always look chaotic on paper because first and foremost,
Burns and Joyce also state that “[...] speech, far from being
disorganised, has its own systematic patterns and structures – they are just
somewhat different from those in written language” (Burns and Joyce 1997: 7).
For this reason, judging speech through the measures of writing means to deny
its basic characteristics and the purpose for which it is used. Likewise if written
texts like contracts, articles and reviews are rendered in spoken form, they also
sound unnatural. Moreover, they are difficult for listeners to follow because
they were originally created to be used for a different purpose and through a
different channel (Crystal and Davy 1979). An analogy, albeit inverse, is also
every bit as highly organised as the written, and is capable of just as great a
87) In the book Spoken and Written Language, he also suggests that unlike
written texts, spoken texts are dynamic and tend to have a lower degree of
describes the world in terms of its products and makes a greater use of
talks, one says that “something happened or something was done” (1989: 81)
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In reference to lexico-grammatical structures, Halliday states that
written texts are lexically dense and their sentence grammar is simple, whereas
spoken texts having a lower level of lexical density have a greater degree of
across turns.
frequent use of clauses and employs a greater variety of both syntactic and
conversational discourse […] are simply strings of ‘ands’. […] Rather, they are
texts, Crystal and Davy state that “the most obvious continuity feature is simple
conjunction” (Crystal and Davy 1979: 88), a view that Halliday seems to find
More than two decades later and building on the present research
one time” (Thornbury 2005: 4). As a result and as a way to compensate for
limited planning time, speakers use the so-called ‘add-on strategy’ in places
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where written texts might use embedding or subordination. This strategy
means that utterances, phrases or clauses, are added one after another and
articles, auxiliary verbs and word endings (2005: 4). Thornbury therefore
Thornbury and Slade also talk about “layering of phrase on phrase rather than
intonation patterns that arise from the real-time processing demands and the
new way of looking at the structure of spoken grammar. Rather than thinking
studies into the nature of spoken language emerged and also if the link
between spoken data and speaking skills teaching was further explored.
section, advocating Halliday’s notion, Thornbury and Slade say that “another
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characteristic of spoken language which is attributable to its spontaneity is the
fact that information is relatively loosely packed.” (Thornbury and Slade 2007:
13) Therefore both informational (as in Thornbury and Slade 2007) and lexical
sparsity (as in Halliday 1989) of spoken texts can be explained by the real-time
language are inevitable from the listeners’ perspective as well because while
written texts allow readers to read a text as many times as necessary, spoken
texts do not (Burns and Joyce 1997). Consequently, listeners need enough time
information or lexis, listeners would find it hard to absorb all that is being said.
Moreover, should the situation also require interaction from their part, it would
chaotic nor random but, rather is tightly organized and coherent” (Thornbury
and Slade 2007: 27). The main point that has been presented is that speaking
has its own patterns and structures that are different from those of writing. For
example, when compared to writing spoken language uses more verbs and
subordination might appear in a written text, speech freely adds utterances one
after another. In terms of its lexical and informational content, spoken language
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is loosely packed–both to allow its audience time to process the content of
are substantially different from writing. This means that it does not always
written texts can be redrafted, spoken texts are results of one-shot production.
(Burns and Joyce 1997: 14) All these facts have important implications for LT,
arising from what was mentioned above. Firstly, it is crucial for teachers to
realise that spoken language is essentially different from the written one.
Teachers therefore cannot expect their students to speak in full sentences as if,
in fact, they were producing written texts. Not only is this not the way people
speak in reality but also expecting and requiring such skills from learners, would
place extremely high pressure on their speech production for no reason at all.
speak.
important differences between speaking and writing and instruct them in the
ways to use this knowledge effectively when speaking. For example, learners
may be less hesitant to express themselves if they are shown that speakers
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sentences in their minds before they start to speak4. They may also find it
useful to learn that repairs, hesitations, repetitions and vague language are
through the use of meaningful tasks. Because as Thornbury and Slade point
out: “If this organization [meaning the organised nature of speaking] can be
described in ways that are accessible to teachers and learners, there are likely
to be practical classroom applications. (This does not mean, of course, that one
may find it useful to make their teaching more data-driven and consult further
literature dealing with detailed description of spoken language and its use of
this area in recent years and books like Longman student grammar of spoken
spoken and written English (Biber 1999) provide quite detailed accounts of
spoken language use based on corpus research. Another book dealing with
spoken language corpora that are accessible on the Internet. They may even
4
Unfortunately, I could not find any evidence supporting this specific suggestion. It would be
therefore valuable if this hypothesis was tested in further research. If this argument was
validated through concrete evidence, it would have important implications for LT.
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choose to teach corpus-based techniques in classroom for the benefit of their
learners. Conrad reports that even though “there is little empirical research into
are a variety of theoretical reasons for using them and many reports by
enough systematic training in the relevant skills, the full scope of which is to be
production takes place in a shared context between the speaker and the
listener, whereby both these participants shape the final form of a spoken text.
The more shared context there is, the easier it is for the listener to participate
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in a conversation. Tannen even describes a listener as a co-author and speaker
explanatory as possible5 (Burns and Joyce 1997). While ambiguities are not
conversation.
5
The decontextualised nature of writing is also one of the reasons why it is important for
writers to bear their potential readers in mind and be as clear as possible. This is of course true
only for texts whose purpose is informational, not texts which are read for pleasure.
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hesitations, errors or repairs, which can again only be understood in the context
framework as one of the three principles of LA6. They further state that “without
these context cues and cultural norms, sensory input for acquisition purposes
As has been indicated, spoken texts are not normally placed out of context in
real life. The same fact should be reflected in the classroom setting. Structures
exchange.
they use reflect the features of spoken language both in their recorded and
transcribed forms. If not, they may want to consider searching for other
training in class. Recordings are more accessible nowadays than they used to
teachers may even consider recording their own spoken texts. In fact, this is
6
The other two principles they highlight are Krashen’s concept of ‘comprehensible input’ and
Giles and Coupland’s notion of integrative motivation.
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something which can be done quite easily, e.g. while on holiday chatting with
using specific language, etc. I personally have good experience with both using
recordings from the Internet and working in class with my own mp3 recordings
and I have seen both techniques being used with a few other teachers, too.
More than thirty years ago, Crystal and Davy (1979) complained of
People in textbooks, it seems, are not allowed to tell long and unfunny
jokes, to get irritable or to lose their temper, to gossip (especially about
other people), to speak with their mouths full, to talk nonsense, or
swear (even mildly). They do not get all mixed up while they are
speaking, forget what they wanted to say, hesitate, make grammatical
mistakes, argue erratically or illogically, use words vaguely, get
interrupted, talk at the same time, switch speech styles, manipulate the
rules of the language to suit themselves, or fail to understand. In a
word, they are not real. (p. 3)
All these features are still deliberately being omitted from LT and
simplified and unauthentic materials are used. According to Burns and Joyce
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Teachers need to know how authentic texts differ from scripted and
semi-scripted texts and how to use this knowledge to assist second
language learners to develop speaking skills. (p. 85)
learning, they warn against their exclusive use and point out that:
between unscripted and scripted texts, some material writers choose to use
interaction, the context, purpose for interaction and specific authentic language
to be used are identified beforehand. Burns and Joyce conclude that “these
texts are a good transition between scripted and authentic texts because they
(1997: 88).
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Even though it is up to teachers when and how they introduce
authentic materials into their teaching, it is important that these are gradually
made part of LT. One of the tasks of LT is to help learners cope with real
operating conditions and real language. If authentic materials and language are
not used at all or rarely, the learners’ picture of English language is idealistic
but not real. Therefore authentic language and materials should become an
Learners who are taught mainly through simplified materials may feel more
confident about their English while in class but the minute they encounter a
native speaker and experience English used under real life conditions they are
from classrooms – a practice that might make a language classroom a safe and
secure island for learners and teachers. It is clear that such a procedure would
not be desirable for learners in the long term. Along the same lines, Nunan
(2010) states that “learners should be fed as rich a diet of authentic data as
listening texts, their learning task would be made more difficult” (2010: 27)
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the contexts where they naturally occur not where the textbook writer uses
them. In the end, this will help learners because they can experience how
items.
To conclude, let me point out that whenever teachers feel the need
adapt the materials but how to adapt the task so that it suits the learners’ level
of proficiency (Nunan 1989). If this is done with care, teachers need not be
lectures in their classroom. Such material will make a lesson a real learning
should be careful not to use textbooks as cookery books in which all ingredients
principally by what the coursebook tells them to do” (2008: 143). Textbooks
have their greatest potential if they are used thoughtfully as resource books
rather than a prescriptive manual and adapted both to the learners’ needs and
consider if the current materials correspond with their aims and to make
necessary alterations where desirable. If they find that the books include
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content that is contradictory to their aims, they should substitute relevant parts
with more suitable resources or ideally, opt for a better suited coursebook, if
they have a choice. If this is not an option, they can grab this opportunity as a
contexts. Based on a communicative situation and its purpose, two main types
other authors) and interactional routines (Bygate 1987). Both types differ in
interactional routines are not product-oriented. They are social interactions and
fulfil a phatic function, i.e. they signal friendship and establish social
Extract 1:
Store attendant: Morning.
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Customer: Morning.
Store attendant: Nice day.
Customer: Uh-huh. Can you give me two of those?
Store attendant: Sure.
Customer: Thanks.
Extract 2:
Father: Morning, Darling.
Daughter: Morning.
Father: Sleep well?
Daughter: Uh-uh. The thunder woke me up.
Father: Loud, wasn’t it. And the lightning . . . . What are you doing?
Daughter: I’m going to finish watching that . . .
Father: Well, don’t have it on too loud. Jenny’s still asleep.
(p. 228)
Similarly, while the second extract fulfils mainly an interactional function, the
transactional purposes” (Burns and Joyce 1997: 5), Nunan reports that
Finally, citing Brown and Yule (1983), Thornbury and Slade add that
2007: 20). Viewed from this perspective, one can come to a realization that
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This is mainly because interactional conversational exchanges can easily deviate
from their primary focus reflecting the listener’s personal involvement. On the
The fact that interactions can be predictable has important implications for
teachers. They can help their students prepare for both types of conversational
On one hand, service encounters are relatively easy to deal with for
their easily predictable structures (Brown and Yule 1983) and students will
because these will help them prepare themselves for real-life situations.
means that learners can become relatively confident in many situations even
transactional ones, will probably bring more life and enjoyment in the classroom
even lists sharing personal experiences as one of task types to be used in the
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classroom. Furthermore, as early as 1961, Billows stressed the importance of
‘personal speech’ in teaching (Thornbury and Slade 2010). Thornbury and Slade
also support the use of personalised talk by reporting that it has even become
textbooks. They remark that many classroom activities, such as role plays, tend
transactional turns leaving not much room for free interaction. By the same
token, if instructions and workplans are too detailed, learners numbly follow
need to employ their pragmatic and discourse skills. This is because they are
independently.
that is also mentioned by Thornbury and Slade (2007), in which learners act out
a phone call following detailed guidelines. In each turn they are asked to
this task is that for many learners the detailed guidelines are rather counter-
productive. With these types of tasks it frequently happens that learners want
to add some extra information and by doing so, their conversation no longer fits
the pattern and they do not know how to proceed. This causes confusion and
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sense of failure in the task completion. Other learners who, on the other hand,
follow the given pattern to the letter usually end up quoting parts of the given
learners focus on how to say things rather than think about what to say next
and thus extend their communicative potential – at least for the course of the
task. However, such training will not equip them with the skills that are
Therefore, since the number of skills that learners practise in this way
is highly limited and such an activity has a tendency to turn into a drill exercise
better way of doing the same thing, that is practising telephone calls, is Activity
2 and even better Activity 3 (Appendix C), since learners are given more
act out their roles accordingly. Even though they are asked to convey a
particular message they are not told exactly in which part of the conversation to
do it. Nevertheless, once again the instructions are given exactly in the order in
which the conversation is likely to proceed based on the instructions the other
learner has.
situation the learner is in and gives learners only general instructions such as
“answer the telephone and take a message”. This is the situation that
resembles real life most because in reality learners will hardly ever know who is
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going to call and how they are supposed to react. Therefore using this type of
transactional task in class is likely to prepare the learners for real-life situations
best. Apart from this, learners are likely to enjoy the task more because using
practical.
questions which give learners a general idea of what they might talk about.
Nevertheless, the way they handle the task is entirely at their discretion. Apart
from pictures representing mainly popular American series, the activity also
how long each topic will be discussed and what questions will be asked. If they
are asked to pose questions and respond to them as quickly as possible, the
interactional language, a good example of how to prepare learners for that are
role-play cards which are cut up and distributed in pairs. Learners take turns in
picking up individual cards and act out the situations (Activity 6).
teaching (TBLT). They say that even though proponents of TBLT advocate
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communicative environment creation in class and put their emphasis on
“the way language is used in the real world” (Ellis cited in Thornbury and Slade
2010: 267), conversation in itself does not seem to qualify as a task type in
activity. They further explain that some scholars, such as Skehan, are sceptical
formed sentences, and speakers are able to ‘bypas syntax’ a great deal of the
time” (Skehan cited in Thornbury and Slade 2010: 269). However, based on the
are fairly rare but can be found nowadays. However, as far as LT in general is
concerned, the situation is pitiful. This is especially true with textbooks and
been particularly strong: the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany being
41
designing their own materials when teaching speaking. Unfortunately, searching
needle in a haystack7.
Coming back to the issue of free interaction practice, one cannot but notice the
fact that conversation is one of the most common types of speech production
that people are involved in on a daily basis (Thornbury and Slade 2007: 5). For
7
This statement is based on my five-year experience teaching German and using materials
available in the Czech market by German publishers, in particular by Hueber, Klett and others.
Having conducted a short empirical research of coursebooks by Hueber for the purpose of this
thesis, I found only a few activities which could be identified as communicative. The general
outline of all Hueber textbooks shows a strong accuracy-focused pattern, placing grammar and
vocabulary in the centre of LT.
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Conversation, involving a two-way interaction between people,
requires from its participants a broad range of skills. Participants need to know
how to interact and manage talk. They need to be familiar with the rules of
turn-taking, that is they need to know when and how to interrupt, take the floor
and how to hold it, how to change the topic, how to signal they wish to speak
and how to yield the turn. Furthermore, it is important for them to know how to
signal interest and the fact that you are listening or even how to avoid long
moment’s notice usually several of them at a time. For this purpose, speakers
what their intentions are. Speakers also cannot do without paralinguistic cues,
adjacency pairs. Thornbury and Slade emphasise that “(…) the basic unit of
interaction is the adjacency pair” (Thornbury and Slade 2007: 114). They
further explain that “an adjacency pair is composed of two turns produced by
different speakers which are placed adjacently and where the second utterance
is identified as related to the first” (2007: 115). Adjacency pairs typically include
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instruct/receipt. A successful conversation typically includes a number of such
exchanges with one speaker initiating the move and the other one responding.
Typically, the more cooperation there is, the fewer overlaps occur. The same
applies for turn-taking. Smooth transitions between turns usually happen with
communication. This means that even under ideal conditions, when all speakers
converse in their L1, not all conversations are successful. If for whatever reason
range of skills. Speakers need to know how to interact and manage the talk and
need to be familiar with the rules of turn-taking. Apart from these, speakers
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need to know how to effectively realise initiating and responding moves
through the use of the so-called adjacency pairs. Nevertheless, however high
their level of proficiency might be, the success of a conversation still depends
many different and unexpected conditions and about a broad range of topics.
interlocutor in a foreign language especially if one does not possess these skills
aware of all the skills that speakers need and/or if one cannot utilise them
conversation.
Along the same lines, one thing I have observed is that it is essential
for learners to have teachers who they can learn conversational patterns from
on a daily basis – by observing the ways their teacher interacts in class. For
45
Firstly, it is generally believed that languages are learned partly
through imitation (Lightbown and Spada 2006). Secondly, evidence shows that
teachers are a source of input for learners, even more so in an EFL context
where the language lessons might be the only opportunity for some learners to
listen to English being used. Thirdly, the teachers’ role in the exposure of
fact that some aspects of language are acquired subconsciously. Lastly, being
what Lightbown and Spada complain about when saying that “in many foreign
conversation is that learners often do not realise the complexity of skills that is
language. Diligent students often try to learn as many new words as they can in
hope that their conversational skills will improve as their vocabularies grow.
However, the result of such striving can only be disappointing because as can
of skills that are required and help their students acquire them. Secondly, it is
46
also a good idea to help learners understand one of the fundamental features
everything that it entails. Some of the skills that are necessary for one to be
able to converse have been touched upon. The whole spectrum of knowledge
and skills that learners need in order to become competent speakers will be
focused on in the following part of this chapter. For, as one might infer from
what has been mentioned so far, the ability to speak a language involves much
more than mere linguistic knowledge. The range of knowledge and skills that
speaking and writing. If teachers take them into consideration, they will more
likely be able to create lessons that will truly help learners acquire skills that are
47
2.2 Communicative competence
central role to sociocultural factors” (Trosborg 1986: 9). On the same page, she
further adds that the work of Hymes “exemplifies the shift away from the study
communication”.
48
representative of the scope of both competences, Communicative Competence,
sentences into unified spoken or written texts of various types’ (Trosborg 1986:
49
the other components of communicative competence (Swain cited by
Scarcella and Oxford 1992: 72).
There have been several more attempts to describe language knowledge and
skills that competent speakers have at their disposal. For example, a more
All in all, the crucial point to be made here is that through the use of
be the primary goal of LT (Savignon 1997). The eventual model that is chosen
8
This concept was expanded further by Littlemore and Low (2006), who stressed metaphorical
competence to be a part of communicative language ability. Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) moved
discourse competence to the centre of the model, stating that it is shaped by sociocultural,
linguistic and actional competences. Nevertheless, their five-dimensional model also does not
abandon the concept of strategic competence proposed earlier. (Magnan 2007).
50
To conclude, since all components of communicative competence are
competences as well as any of the four skills means to teach the others, too
here (Hughes 2011). Along the same lines, Bygate argues that for teachers the
be the fact that “it can be hard to disentangle the different dimensions of
foreign language speaking” (Bygate 2009). In the next section, the focus will
competence can be viewed both from the perspective of spoken and written
forms of a language, the angle that is taken here is that of the spoken language
production.
Furthermore, even though Canale and Swain point out that there are
(Trosborg: 1986), this chapter discusses mainly the former, i.e. the knowledge
51
The concept of ‘skill’ represents the readiness with which one is able
(Thornbury 2005). Thornbury also stresses the fact that speaking is “like any
other skill, such as driving or playing a musical instrument: the more practice
you get, the more likely it is you will be able to chunk small units into larger
ones” and achieve fluency (2005: 6). Knowing that both concepts of knowledge
and skill are interrelated, let us focus now on the description of the former so
that some forms of practising the latter can be presented in the next chapter.
of grammar, lexis, syntax, phonetics, etc. The following sections focus on some
of the above-mentioned areas and discuss the aspects which are important for
52
Table 1 (Thornbury 2005: 21)
already been touched upon in the previous sections of this thesis. The
remaining features result from the inherent nature of speaking in a similar way
to what has been described. For example, time constraints can explain for the
learners aim to attain the spoken rather than the written form of a language
53
the past perfect and present perfect continuous are rare.
passive verbs account for only 2% of all finite verb forms in speech.
will, would, and can are extremely common in speech.
(p. 22)
forms, past and present perfect continuous and passive voice should be
excluded from tuition. However, the time that might be wasted to help learners
important discoveries have been made, which unfortunately have not yet been
that are first on the list to be acquired are for example present progressive - ing
(Mommy running), plural -s and irregular past forms (Baby went), while those
that are acquired at later stages are third person singular simple present –s
that some studies contradict the clear-cut pattern of these findings, albeit a
54
confirmed that some aspects like the formation of questions or sentence word
start their spoken production by producing single content words such as water,
flower, etc. Then they learn how to combine words and put them in the right
order within one sentence. After that they learn how to move parts of the
sentence around to ask questions Does Jane like flowers? Finally, they learn to
use the right order in complex sentences such as reported speech I asked if
In spite of the fact that many EFL and ESL textbooks do not reflect
teaching if learners are not ready to incorporate them into their L2 language
is the knowledge of lexis. Lexis does not represent only individual words, word
families and their usage in context but it also includes formulaic language such
would you like a ...?, social formula like have a nice day, discourse markers,
interaction Thornbury and Slade (2007) quote Nation saying that “from the
55
small amount of evidence available, it seems that about half the words needed
just 2,500 words covers nearly 95% of spoken text (compared to 80% of
written text)” (2005: 23). This is good news, since a similar percentage (90%)
is generally quoted as necessary for one to be able to make sense of any text,
whether written or spoken (e.g Lightbown and Spada 2006). What follows is
interaction.
children read, as Lightbown and Spada point out. Here they refer to the studies
of Nagy, Herman, and Anderson 1985 and Dee Gardner 2004 (Lightbown and
56
values and the norms of behaviour in a given society, including the way these
values and norms are realised through language’ (Thornbury 2005: 12). This
illustrates this fact with the following example: “knowing whether people in a
knowing what they say when they greet each other is clearly linguistic” (p. 12).
Thornbury and Slade (2007) provide a humorous yet apt illustration: “it is a
evening, but a sociocultural one to individually greet all the occupants of a lift”
(2007: 228).
acquired within one’s own culture. Unfortunately, the bigger the gap between
Slade 2007). If left to work out the rules for themselves, learners will find it
hard to counter the effects of negative transfer from their L1 relying only on LA
language have emerged since the 1990s. (See Savignon 2008) The question
57
remains, however, to what extent teachers are successful in mediating this
knowledge.
On the same subject, the fact that standard textbooks often choose
materials to suit a broad range of cultures does not make it easier for teachers
topics that are traditionally covered in textbooks is rather limited and generic
and learners’ needs, EFL teachers need to search for suitable materials and
used”. As Thornbury explains “knowing how to ask How do you do that here?
may be more useful than a list of ‘dos and don’ts’” (2005: 32).
society, but also the way these are realised through language. The latter aspect
sociolinguistic features from the learners’ L1 into L2 “may have much more
Thus violating the language use in terms of politeness will have more serious
58
impact than any other linguistic error. This is especially true if the speaker has
such errors will be understood not as a bad language use but rather as irritating
aspects of language, such as speech acts (see Austin 1962), frequently also
these might be: you may want to consider ..., you ought to..., what I suggest
is..., etc.
is not easy to place speech acts in one of the four dimensions of communicative
acts or functions will enable learners to “choose the words which most suitably
realize their intention, and this does not always entail the most closely related
form” (Cook 1989: 41). Since the choice of words may often not be intuitive or
cannot be transferred from L1, there is a good case for the explicit teaching of
named specifically, this dimension has already been touched upon when
59
briefly what exactly falls under this category, discourse knowledge involves
knowing how speakers realise their turns and signal their intentions through the
that is different in speech from that, which is used in writing. One of the
aspects that make spoken texts hang together is lexis and its repetition.
Although written texts also make use of semantic cohesion, the use of lexical
texts also make use of reduplication (e.g. She inspected, her passenger, this
little old lady), retrospective labelling (e.g. Well, that’s what she said!), etc.
turns, Thornbury (2005) notes that “since this is a universal feature of spoken
know how these turn-management moves are realized in the second language,
through the use, primarily, of discourse markers” (2005: 33). On the other
hand, it is clear that certain aspects such as register and the correct usage of
discourse markers will more easily be acquired through formal teaching. One
fact should not be neglected when deciding for or against treating some of
9
The way how utterances are strung together in spoken discourse has been discussed in
section 2.1.1 of this thesis.
60
these features. This is that “there is an extensive literature on the potential for
(2007: 227).
1985: 180), are an important part of TEFL. A number of scholars note that their
broken language, has been particularly strong as Cook (2009) points out.
conditions which oral exchanges bring. This tool also helps the interlocutors to
or not understood at all. Moreover, it also helps them express thoughts they
61
(Trosborg 1986). This term is certainly more precise because it also covers the
(2007) are often used in an attempt to use a linguistic system ‘efficiently and
strategies are used in the search for missing linguistic knowledge. Nevertheless,
Thornbury and Slade further admit that both concepts overlap and it may often
sides of the coin because she says that this term refers to:
negotiate the meaning and the compensatory tools that speakers employ to
(2007: 34).
62
In terms of whether to teach strategic competence, scholars’ answers
are not completely unified. For example, Cook (2009) states that “teachers may
students to make use of those they already prefer” (2009: 145). She reaches
this conclusion on the basis of Poulisse’s study (1990) carried out at the
largely reflected the strategies which they used in their first language. Cook
learners can simply transfer the strategies they already use in their L1.
training, even though in reference to Solarczyk she admits that there are still
few studies providing evidence for significant results. However, she makes a
reference to her own research stating that “positive strategic behaviour can
also points out that “the most significant factor influencing communicative
also define the strategic competence as a tool allowing effective speakers “to
155).
communication abilities can help all speakers a) to be more effective and clear
63
demands. This is true for all kinds of verbal expression, whether speaking L2 or
one’s own L1, a fact which I have observed as a teacher and a language learner
really broad. To summarise let me present a specific list of features that are
teaching conversation:
64
To sum up, speaking and successful communication require
pointed out that overall it is one’s language proficiency that has a significant
knowledge, they cannot substitute for one’s overall low language proficiency.
from requiring a certain knowledge base, speaking is primarily a skill. This skill,
65
3 Practical part
This part focuses on two important objectives of speaking skills lessons: fluency
and accuracy. In addition, it also touches upon error correction briefly and
techniques which can be recommended for speaking skills practice. Most of the
examples of the individual techniques which are included here were chosen
especially because I have observed in my lessons that they had a positive effect
learners enjoyed them. The majority of the tasks presented here are fluency
be pointed out that the range of task types presented here is by no means
exhaustive.
384), the term ‘fluency’ is “an ability in the second language to produce or
interesting because it clearly shows that both concepts, fluency and accuracy,
66
are closely knit together. Technically speaking, the term fluency is a hypernym
(Wu 2008). Since fluency means also accuracy, it is clear that the aim of CLT is
to reach both.
says that:
pauses is completely omitted from LT. To investigate this a bit further I have
studied several EFL coursebooks10 and have not found any formal instruction on
the issue of pauses distribution. Even though it could be that the level of
proficiency that the books under scrutiny focus on is too low, I still cannot
remember this issue being addressed in any coursebook I have taught from
10
Cunningham and Moor (2008), Dellar and Walkley (2005), Hutchinson (2007), Kay (2008),
Redston and Cunningham (2009) and Soars (2007).
67
intended for higher levels. Although it may seem that teaching linking, stress
and rhythm – the issues which are usually included in ELT – are to a certain
pauses correlates more with the concept of tone units. They are the elements
benefited especially from learning about this phenomenon. It was only when I
learned how tone units work in English that I first started to notice how native
speakers put their utterances one after another in speech and where they make
recommended.
Next, one of the issues that have been discussed in the previous
chapters is the importance of work with spoken data and transcripts in ELT. For
attaining fluency, the use of authentic texts and spoken data is significant.
Guillot (1999) reports that there are “practical as well as academic reasons for
making the study of spoken data – native speaker and learner data – an
that she lists is that “it can facilitate the emergence of individual paradigms of
68
to exploit both their strengths and weaknesses more efficiently” (p. 61). She
spoken data facilitates attaining fluency and that fluency leads to autonomy. As
she further puts it: “to teach fluency, in this sense, fits in with what Grenfell
62).
(2005) and Thornbury and Slade (2007) suggest that reaching native-like
that speakers use. These units include fixed phrases and idiomatic chunks such
as on the other hand, at the end of the day, or It’s a small world. Johnson
11
David Wood summarizes a number of studies that confirm the importance of formulaic
language for fluency, e.g. Raupach 1984, Sajavaara 1987, Pawley and Syder 1983, etc. (Wood
2002)
69
automaticity’. Oral communication due to its real-time processing demands falls
for formulaic language acquisition and use. For example, Cock et al. found that
advanced speakers use prefabricated language less than native speakers and
for different pragmatic purposes (Thornbury and Slade 2007). There are several
other studies presented by Wood (2002) which suggest that language learners
use less formulaic language than native speakers due to limited exposure to
formulas to particular pragmatic ends (2002: 10). Thornbury and Slade (2007)
making references to Lewis 1993 and Ellis 1998 and 2005 confirm that
language which learners love to work with are songs and films (or series). Song
lyrics usually contain a good deal of chunks, idioms, etc., which can be
exploited in the classroom. One of the advantages of songs is that learners can
particularly catchy, learners are quite likely to memorise a great deal of text by
themselves. Apart from this, songs are good sources of authentic language,
70
making it fun, break down barriers and build a relaxed atmosphere. Besides,
songs can be used with all ages and practically all proficiency levels if they are
chosen appropriately.
In terms of practicality, with the arrival of the digital era, songs can
be easily obtained for classroom use along with transcribed lyrics on the
exploit when using songs. My favourite is to write down language from song
lyrics (e.g. formulaic chunks) on little cards and stick them on the board. In the
classroom, learners form two rows. While listening to a song, they compete to
be the first to grab the card with the lyrics written on it, which they have just
cards and distribute them in pairs. While listening to a song, learners put the
that can be done with films, series, soap operas, etc. For instance, a teacher
plays a muted scene of a film and puts a few lines or phrases from the scene
on the board. In pairs, learners try to make a dialogue which might be taking
place in the scene while inserting the language on the board into their
dialogues. After that, they watch the scene again but this time with the sound
on and check what was really said. Next, they can reconstruct the dialogue
based on what they heard and saw. Another variation of this is distributing sets
of cards with phrases from the scene on them in pairs, or groups depending on
the number of actors in the scene. Learners do a similar activity but this time
71
they grab a card with particular language whenever they use it in their
out newspaper headlines which contain prefabricated chunks and ask learners
to speculate in small groups what the story behind the headlines might be and
This way learners use the language in the headlines meaningfully several times
while speculating about the stories. They also make use of a great range of
linguistic means when negotiating their stories. Next, learners can be asked to
present their ideas to the class. At the following stage, learners can be given
real texts which the headlines refer to. Discussing the stories with their partners
or within their groups, they compare how the texts differ from their own
stories.
Even though it has been said that fluency and accuracy are closely
linked together, for the purposes of LT, activities to practise speaking are
of the two concepts from teaching but rather to point out what the main
accurately or the ability to ‘get the message across’. The former is usually used
usually entails using a broader range of skills and helps learners train strategic
competence.
72
Whether an activity is accuracy or fluency focused depends on a
particular task learners are asked to complete. For example, role plays can be
which have been introduced earlier in a lesson. However, the same task type
can be also fluency focused if learners are to act out roles that require a
Typically, the more controlled a task is, i.e. requires learners to use a
certain types of information gap activities such as ‘Find someone who’ (Activity
can help learners use language which they are not ready to use yet by
themselves and thus gradually transfer passive knowledge into their active use.
pattern to be used, they do not require learners to think much about the
meaning of what they say and can become meaningless. This point has already
been discussed in the previous chapter with the section on transactional and
interactional tasks (see section 2.1.6). Another fact is that if teachers use
accuracy-focused tasks for language which learners are not ready to use, the
73
When conducting accuracy-focused tasks it is important that learners
accuracy focused. Otherwise a task can easily miss its aim. If learners do not
strive for accuracy but rather treat accuracy-focused tasks as a fluency practice,
their language skills will hardly develop further. This is mainly because
Therefore it is crucial for teachers to make sure that learners understand the
real objective of an activity, albeit not stated explicitly at all times. In addition,
All in all, for all accuracy-focused activities it is true that they should
at the controlled level. The ultimate aim is to give learners opportunities to take
learners can utilise language that has been practised in a controlled or semi-
controlled way.
of language and produce language that may not be predictable. Thanks to their
lower level of predictability, they better reflect the requirements which are
placed on learners when producing spoken texts outside the classroom. On the
74
especially if their overall proficiency is too low. The key to success in this case is
to introduce free tasks into tuition gradually, to choose tasks which learners are
discussions and debates, storytelling, creative tasks such as designing plans for
a new school facility and board games which require learners to speak on a
particular topic, etc. Apart from this, many accuracy-focused tasks may be
adapted to focus on fluency as well. For example, Activity 7, the ‘Find someone
who’ task, can be made more complex by asking learners to expand their
answers if positive and report in detail about their experience, such as ‘the best
film they have seen’ or ‘the most beautiful place they have visited’. Naturally,
For instance, first proponents of CLT suggested that three basic conditions must
75
1. use techniques covering the spectrum of learner needs, i.e.
contexts
2009).
activities are likely to help learners use language correctly, while fluency-
focused activities will help them produce fluent stretches of language. On the
because they help learners prepare for ‘what is out there’. As has been pointed
76
important qualities of efficient speaking tasks, such as the need for them to be
Research shows that errors which do not interfere with meaning are
usually overlooked both in FLA and SLA contexts in real life. Parents typically
respond to their children’s errors in meaning rather than to those that violate
usually also left unnoticed if they do not impede with meaning. (Lightbown and
errors is neither effective nor encouraging for further spoken production. This is
especially so if learners are trying to formulate their ideas and their flow of
77
Besides, as Dulay (1982) concludes: “Correction of grammatical
errors does not help students avoid them” (1982: 263). By this she means that
errors which are made unconsciously rather than because learners are not
aware of the rules underlying the system or the natural usage of an expression,
will not be eliminated by a teacher pointing out to what learners already know.
often they are a proof of learners’ ambitious attempts at testing new language
and their willingness to take risks when trying to express thoughts that go
hand, it can be deduced that error correction is useful in cases where mistakes
are made due to not being aware of a pattern or a more natural way of saying
question which cannot be answered easily is when and how to correct. Thus,
treated directly during an activity, after an activity or learners can correct each
other.
down instances of learners’ incorrect language use and putting them into
sentences in which learners try to locate their errors. However, this practice is
78
controversial with some saying that it is not a good practice to expose learners
to incorrect samples of language on one side and with those who object that
learners encounter incorrect language use when interacting with each other
they locate. Besides, as suggested above, the exercise also raises learners’
awareness of the language they can work on during their spoken production
practice.
how to treat errors is that it depends on the type of mistake (e.g. grammar or
meaning), on the type of activity (e.g. fluency vs. accuracy focused) and a
because some learners feel threatened when corrected and may be discouraged
to speak out while others request corrective feedback and may even feel that
they are not learning anything if not corrected. This fact makes the issue of
error correction even more complicated and teachers need to make their own
decisions about how to proceed in individual cases. They may also want to
explain a bit more about how language acquisition works and try to eliminate
learners’ assumptions about how languages are learned if learners are blatantly
a complex issue.
79
recommended to provide a brief feedback after each activity. This is especially
Majhanovich and Hu (1995) also add that “it is a good idea to have each group
turn in something tangible to the teacher after the activity. It keeps the
students task-oriented, gives information to the teacher about how well the
activity worked, and is something to base feedback on” (1995: 82). By the
rounded off nicely even if learners do not manage to complete their tasks. This
This section does not aim to present all the benefits of pair work, nor to show
how pair work can be used in classroom and discuss its possible challenges, for
this is not the main focus of this paper. What this section wants to highlight is
the fact that in EFL contexts, pair work should be used as much as possible in
teachers in many language classrooms. This does not correspond with the
notion that learners need a great deal of spoken practice in order to achieve a
12
Note: The term group work is usually used interchangeably in ELT meaning both work in
groups and pairs.
80
certain level of fluency as some scholars believe and as has been suggested at
the beginning of this thesis. The notion of the importance of interaction has
when learners engage in tasks that “push” them to the limits of their current
part of LT, thus making pair work one of the central concepts of learner-centred
LT. Apart from the fact that pair work increases STT, the assumptions about its
importance are also based on the evidence which shows that learners interact
better when talking to their peers rather than to their teachers (Pica and
Doughty 1985).
To conclude, pair work is the best way to give all learners as much
open-class setting, the fewer opportunities there are for individual learners to
81
3.2 Practical techniques
setting itself is adverse to real and genuine interaction. The best fluency
practice is therefore such that emerges from the situation, e.g. when learners
pose a question and a debate arises. Teachers should always exploit these
situations fully because they are likely to be one of the best examples of
Apart from that there are numerous ways how to promote interaction
and from group to group. Techniques which may work with one class may not
activity does not seem to be working, it is more reasonable to drop it and seek
do or do not find interesting enough. All in all, fluency practice will best develop
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3.2.1 Information gap activities
Information gap activities are goal-driven activities where one or more learners
information gap activities are likely to produce bigger output for language
development than other tasks. Anderson et al. (1984) also refer to the fact that
and for listeners it is meaningful to receive information which they do not know.
They argue that for teachers it is reasonable to try and put learners in positions
where a functional information gap exists, i.e. learners really need to seek
activities further. They argue that the term ‘information gap activities’ actually
among learners:
83
4. The learners all see the same information but each one has a
different task. (2009: 101)
Since the types 1 and 4 do not fall under the category of information
gap activities outlined above, let me focus on the arrangements number 2 and
in Appendix C. In this activity learners are put into pairs. Both learners receive a
different photocopy showing pictures of two towns – one of a town in 1975 and
the other one of a different town today. Learners must not look at their
partners’ pictures. Their task is to find out how both towns changed asking their
describe a neighbourhood they live in and discuss in pairs what changes they
have noticed or heard about. After that, learners could report shortly to the
a pair receives a different one with different words missing. Working in pairs,
learners take turns to define the words which the other learner misses. If
learners have not done this before, it is useful to pre-teach language such as
‘one down’ and ‘four across’, etc. Crossword puzzles are particularly helpful for
namely circumlocution. There are tools on the Internet that allow teachers to
design their own crosswords using the words they want their learners to
84
Teachers’ Club13. Crosswords for pair or individual work are made within a
couple of minutes with this tool and look professional (see Activity 9).
simpler the better, e.g. Activity 10. All learners but one are distributed the same
picture. The one who cannot see the picture stands by the board and tries to
draw the same picture according to the other learners’ instructions. Another
alternative of this activity is that learners do the same in pairs. One of the
both parties.
activity, learners receive maps – one complete and one blank version in each
pair. Learner A, who has the complete map, must not show it to Learner B, the
one with a blank map. Learner A describes the way to the treasure. Learner B
very productive task, which is also easily set up. Both pictures and treasure
maps can be downloaded from the Internet or drawn. Again simple maps work
better than overly complex ones. This is because complex maps and pictures
would take too long for learners to complete and would lose their appeal.
instance, in Activity 12 learners role play two colleagues who work for an
each other about the best candidate they have interviewed. After that, they
choose the best candidate for the job by discussing the strengths and
present their recommendation to their client, who is played by the other pair in
their group.
skills training. Thanks to the information gap between the learners, the
are given a list of items and are asked to rank the items according to a certain
criterion. For instance, Activity 13 asks learners to rank the occupations in order
of how stressful learners think they are. After that, learners compare their lists
in pairs providing explanations for their choices. They can also be asked to
negotiate their choices and end up with a ranking their pair or group has
agreed on.
to the photographs they can see. Learners might also be asked to reach a
compromising solution. In order to make the task more competitive, one idea to
tell learners to try and persuade each other about their points. Once again, this
category is a ‘joint task’ used in Part 3 of Cambridge Speaking Papers with PET,
FCE, CAE and CPE exams. These tasks can be easily arranged because they are
well covered online and in books preparing for Cambridge exams. Their outline
is always the same. Learners work in pairs (or in a group of three if there is an
related to a certain theme. They are asked to discuss the prompts and reach an
coursebook learners are presented with six pictures of different social activities,
such as a theme party, a picnic, a concert, etc. They are told that one of their
friends has a birthday and they should talk to each other to decide what
surprise they want to plan for him. Again, this type of task is a very good
asking for opinions. It can also be used for developing sociocultural, discourse
interrupting, use of discourse markers, etc. Some of the tasks contain even
awareness.
Finally, teachers may want to set learners a time limit on this task. In
the original testing task by Cambridge learners are asked to complete the task
in three minutes. Nation and Newton (2009) make an important methodological
point in when saying that time limits encourage learners to reach a higher level
levels and above who do not need all that much thinking time. However, it
needs to be noted that in certain types of tasks (e.g. debates, creative tasks)
conceptualise their ideas nor in the time they might need to formulate their
ideas and reach a compromise quickly is desirable. Not only is this skill very
useful for all kinds of professions but it is also enriching for one’s personal
development and can subsequently help learners extend their L1 skills as well
3.2.3 Interviews
opinion sharing, a fact which means that learners engage in interactions that
interest them.
open-class setting (Activity 16 in Appendix C). They can also involve learners in
is easy to prepare, the truth is that it is not easy to collect questions that are
answer routine, teachers may want to look for questions that will instigate
class. Another way of using the questions which makes this activity more
take turns to pick individual cards from their packs and interview their partners.
17, in which learners ask each other questions about their life experiences and
note short titles for each experience on their partner’s life map. Activity 18
They ask each other questions and note down their answers. With this activity,
providing further explanations. After the learners count their score they can
discuss to what extent they agree with the description of their personality.
Interviews can be followed by a short feedback activity where
Storytelling is one of the techniques that can be employed with learners at any
level to increase their fluency. This is because stories are a good opportunity for
Ervin-Tripp and Kűntay (Givón 1997: 162) suggests that sharing experience and
stories can be motivating for tellers if met with prompts and collaboration from
their audience. Such circumstances are likely to turn one’s speech into a
instruct learners on the ways of showing interest when listening and to raise
their learners’ awareness about the importance of feedback. This can be done,
for example, by contrasting two conversations – one with a good listener giving
encouraging feedback and another one with a listener who is more or less
silent.
tell stories based on their own experience, childhood memories, classical tales,
jokes, anecdotes or retell stories based on an input such as a text. For instance,
in activity 19 learners choose a classical tale they know based on the prompts
and discuss the story in their groups taking turns in their narrating. In a
Learners can also tell stories using a visual input, e.g. Activities 20
and 21. In the former, learners are given cut-up pictures which show the lives
of individual people in year 1990 and now. Learners match the pictures first to
find out how the life of each person changed. Then they make up stories
describing the development in the people’s lives from the past till the present.
The latter activity is based on a set of sequential pictures which each group of
learners is given. Learners put the pictures in the order in which they think the
Apart from pictures, teachers can also use cards as prompts for
storytelling. This is illustrated by Activity 22, in which learners pick a card and
try react try to tell their stories or talk on the subject on the card for two
minutes. While they are talking other learners try to interrupt them by asking
questions and stop them finishing. This is a very good activity for practising
taught.
mind map. Mind maps are easily created with mind map software (Activity 23).
If using a very simple structure, a mind map can also be created in a word-
saying that it promotes learners’ ability to rearrange information from the texts,
(Nation and Newton 2009: 70). I have also observed that presenting learners
with short texts which they retell each other is effective in terms of
is based on a recorded input. Learners listen to a recording and note down key
recordings which learners are familiar with help learners extend their
output for example in the form of retelling facilitates LA and help learners
transfer knowledge from the passive domain into the active one through the
14
The technique of ample subconscious listening of tapes used for later language study was
proposed by Vera F. Birkenbihl (2002). Unfortunately, I am not aware of a research confirming
the link between systematic exposure to listening input outside classroom and LA. However, I
have observed notable results with the majority of learners who use the technique of
subconscious listening outside classroom which is linked to a subsequent systematic classroom
communicative language practice. Nevertheless, further investigation would be desirable.
recommended to be implemented “more often than usual in order to develop
students’ speaking fluency”. They also call for learners to collect short stories to
stimulate spoken production, let me make a final note on a technique which can
language that learners can produce on the basis of pictures is rather limited
and on the whole, the technique does not provide much of training in other
rather than fluency. It can also be recommended at beginning stages for giving
Visual prompts including pictures can be used more dynamically. Andrew Wright
while asking “Have you ever been up the Eiffel Tower? Are you afraid of high
places?” rather than eliciting objective descriptions such as “This is the Eiffel
various social contexts and have various social roles. Several examples of role
Role plays are often designed for pairs but can also involve more
four is Activity 25. Two learners play a couple of holiday makers who have
complaints about a hotel. Another two learners, the owners of the hotel, feel
that the complaints are unjustified or misguided. First, both couples prepare
in pairs based on visual prompts. After that, learners act out their roles trying to
reach some kind of understanding in the end. Again, if there is a special focus
is called ‘I’m a fish’ (see Activity 26). Learners pretend to be fish and think
shortly about their lives as fish. After that, they mingle with the other fish and
talk to them about their day, worries, and plans for the weekend or even more
Simulations are a kind of role play with the only difference that
learners use realia, that is real objects which teachers and/or learners bring into
the class to make the situation more realistic. A typical simulation activity can
be ‘ordering food in a restaurant’ where learners are divided into two groups:
waiters and customers. The items which can be used are menus, knives and
forks, etc. Learners are given prompts describing their roles (e.g. you are a
difficult customer who complains about random things all the time) and act out
a great spur for learners because they help them to see a direct link between
themselves who they represent when speaking and thus they do not have to
take the responsibility for their utterances and actions (Harmer 1984).
Discussions give learners an opportunity to share their views and are a useful
Discussion and debates can touch upon up-to-date issues such as technology
(Activity 27), can include culture-specific debates such as the issue of the Czech
National Library by the world-renowned architect Jan Kaplicky (Activity 28), can
learners enough thinking time to generate their thoughts. This can be done
through brainstorming in pairs. Learners discuss their ideas and become more
confident about what they have to say. While learners participate in debates in
their groups, a teacher monitors their discussions and provides further stimuli
where necessary. During a feedback stage, learners can report the main points
of their discussion to the class and receive feedback from their teacher. It is
interest learners and/or challenge them. Topics which are quite likely to spur
debate more than anything else concern especially controversial and current
issues.
roles such as in Activity 31. Learners are to discuss the issue of a congestion
as if they were a particular person from that town, e.g. a local resident, a local
face-threatening because it is not the learners’ attitudes and ideas that are
The last activity I would like to present in this section falls under the
Nation and Newton (2009), i.e. “The learners all see the same information but
each one has a different task” (p. 101). This can be exemplified by Activity 32.
Learners are told that they want to go on holiday. They are separated into
package tour around Europe, group B wishes to have a budget holiday by the
does not know where to go. (Group C is optional and can be omitted in classes
with fewer learners.) Groups A and B brainstorm points for their argument and
both groups for their later decision which of the holidays they want to take. In
the discussion, learners from group A and group B try to present their views
Creative tasks develop creativity and thinking, but are also effective in terms of
LT. Research shows that learners develop their fluency best, if they engage in
tasks where all their concentration focuses on producing something, rather than
on the language itself. Creative tasks should be allowed sufficient time so that
learners manage to finish their products and feel the feeling of satisfaction of
making a poster for a party, organizing a fictional (or real) trip including
advertisement for a product (Activity 33), designing a room (Activity 34) and
other projects.
Activities 34 and 35. In Activity 34, the learners work in pairs and are asked to
design a room. Learner A is a House Doctor and learner B wants to help. They
discuss together their ideas about how to design house A, but it is the House
Doctor who decides what to do and draws the items on the plan. When
finished, learners exchange their roles and discuss house B. This activity is an
How about..., Let’s..., Why don’t you..., etc. As with other tasks, it is useful to
pre-teach language the learners might need and encourage them to use it. Or
teachers may want to take the ‘noticing gap’ route: let learners perform the first
part of the task designing the first house, then discuss the language which they
may want to use. After that, teachers may want to encourage the learners to
improve their negotiation while designing the second house putting the new
language in use.
group and ask questions, and a secretary to take the minutes. The chairperson
and the secretary receive photocopies (see Activity 35) to go by. Learners
discuss their ideas and agree on final looks of the magazine. After that, the
secretaries present their decisions to the class. The same task could be
first page and the content page of their magazine. The crucial thing when using
creative tasks in the classroom is to ask learners to make their products while
talking to each other, not after the activity. Thus they can negotiate their ideas
while in the process and have some more meaningful exchanges. Importantly,
it is not the completion of the final product that matters but the negotiation of
Another activity which does not directly fall under the category of
creative tasks but involves creative thinking and develops creativity is Activity
they complete a chart which may include questions such as “How do you feel
about this song?” or “What do you think this song is about?” After that, they
discuss their ideas in class. Learners usually come up with many ideas and the
debate can become lively as their opinions differ. It is not important if learners
do not get the meaning of the song’s content – as long as the discussion which
this task is to use extracts of songs rather than complete songs. They are
shorter and spur the debate in the same way as complete songs but prevent
the listening part from becoming too tedious. Extracts of songs can be made
with electronic tools which allow editing recordings. They are downloadable
grammar for the sake of grammar. Playing hangman or word football at the end
of lessons because “it is not worth it to start another activity” is a bad practice
and a waste of precious time. Games are a great tool in LT if used purposefully.
imaginary object and they have to guess what it is by the way he or she picks it
up and passes it on. Next, learners say what they are going to do with it and
pairs, learner A chooses one object and learner B asks yes/no questions to find
Some of the games that are popular with learners are board games.
talking for a certain period of time when they land on it after throwing a die.
Teachers can prepare their own board games which cover the subject matter
they want their learners to practise. The website called ESL Lounge 15, for
cards which learners either pick up or give each other depending on the
many more activities promoting fluency which could be discussed here, such as
drama, and so on. However, even at this point one can see that the range of
product of most of the teaching time even though the main aim of a lesson may
stage to all those who seek further ways to help learners develop their
lectures and seminars dealing with teaching the four skills. It also covers the
areas of vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics and culture. Since the last two are
16
The link to the website is http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/
not profusely covered in ESL textbooks, I would like to highlight these areas
especially. The videos, as well as all the website content, are inspiring.
All in all, the aim of this chapter was to present a range of techniques
chapter, in which, apart from other things, the techniques which teachers use
4 Research
The main aim of this chapter is to present the results of my own research
These questionnaires were to find out what the teachers’ assumptions about LT
and teaching speaking are and to test my hypotheses presented in the first
chapter.
4.1 Introduction
The two countries under scrutiny are in a comparable position in terms of ELT,
since they are both non-English speaking countries. From a geographical and
historical point of view, they are two neighbouring countries placed in Central
Europe with tight historical links. In present Austria, English is taught from age
is taught from age 8 (Year 3) but in some schools it is also possible to start it
from the age of 6. The numbers of lessons taught per week are comparable.
group as English, while Czech is a Slavic language. This may also be one of the
reasons why Austria ranks among the countries where a large proportion of the
24% of Czechs17. The research results are also likely to reflect these facts.
17
Eurobarometer. Europeans and Languages. Fieldwork: May-June 2005. Publication:
September 2005. Retrieved from:
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf
Let us now turn to the research itself. The quantitative research
email. The email addresses were collected from the Internet websites of Czech
The total of over 800 English teachers were addressed with the
request to take part in a survey exploring teaching habits of Czech and Austrian
teachers of English. In the case of Austria, the over 400 contacts represented
almost all contacts for English teachers made available online. The number of
respondents taking part in the survey was therefore nationality. In order to get
an exact number for both countries, quotas were set to eliminate possible
responses over the limit. The complete sample was collected in seven days.
survey questions which were used included mainly structured response formats,
was converted into a static form to be printed out and is included in Appendix D
of this thesis. Unfortunately, this format does not allow seeing the filters, quota
The website where the tool is administered is called Click4Survey. The link to the website is:
18
www.click4survey.cz
and contingencies which were used in the electronic form in order to make the
nevertheless this fact does not impede the general informative character of the
printed version.
The validity of the survey was ensured firstly by the fact that the
subsequent measures. The first question “Are you an English teacher?” was
and Other. If the field “Other” was selected, the respondents were
to small towns and big cities. My reasoning behind this was that it would be
terms of the size of the towns where the schools of the teachers were based,
since this factor might have an effect on the data received and it could make
further comparisons irrelevant. In the end however, this quota was not put to
use because the respondents fell within the limits which were set on this
question.
differences between the two countries in terms of where the respondents teach
part in the survey, teach English in smaller or medium-sized towns with less
than 50,000 inhabitants. Out of these, the majority teach in small towns with
less than 10,000 inhabitants, comprising 42% of the total. At the bottom end
participating in the survey, the subjects were asked about their qualifications
and experience. The data shows slight differences with both factors. This,
19
Some charts contain the variable Other in their legends, next to Czech and Austrian
nationalities, even though the category is not represented in the charts. The variable itself does
not have any meaning in the charts, since it was included only for the purpose of the
elimination of ineligible participants. That the item is included in the legend is a feature of the
tool used for data analysis which could not be removed.
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Chart 2 – Qualifications (Czech vs. Austrian teachers)
Q: What are your qualifications for the job of an English teacher?
Czech Austrian
the “Other” field, representing 10 % of Czech respondents (see Table 2), it can
be noted that what was stated as the qualifications for the position of an
degree/course in pedagogy.
Czech:
Austrian:
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Chart 3 – Experience in teaching English
Q: How many years of experience in teaching English do you have?
their experience. Chart 3 shows that the biggest single category involves
teachers with more than 15 years of experience, at 41%. This category makes
and Austria, does the data suggest that on average Austrian teachers have
less experienced as a result of the fact that there is more new blood in Czech
education, or simply because they recruit from other professions? Since the
question of age was not relevant for the main part of the research and the
108
respondents were therefore not asked about their age groups, this is an issue
Quite importantly, when the data was studied from these two
‘nationality’. The same was true when studying the data in relation to the size
of the town the respondents teach in. Judging from the data obtained the
these variables would need to be up to ten times higher with respect to the
within one nationality. Taking the low-profile nature of the target group into
teachers had significantly more experience than Czech teachers. All in all, both
of these factors are marginal in terms of their overall effect on the results of the
research. The only factor which was observed as having a significant impact
109
was nationality. Therefore, further on, the data will be interpreted only in terms
of this variable.
This section aims to analyse the data which was obtained in the research.
questions used in the questionnaire, the questions in the main body of the
questionnaire have been numbered, even though the numbers were not used in
distribution of the responses was surprisingly identical within both target groups
and there were only marginal differences between the two nationalities.
whole, consistent patterns and trends were observed within the individual
First of all, one of the things which the research aimed to explore was teachers’
in general is interesting, this was not done for the description of their LT
preferences per se, but rather to find out what role the teaching of speaking
110
The questions which can be used for interpreting the teaching
teachers prefer to use (Question 1). Therefore, this aspect will also be partly
activities which are on the list were discussed in Chapter 3, since their focus is
communicative. Apart from this, two more activities are included, namely
translation and dictation. This was done to test whether there is an inclination
for both countries while with others they substantially differ. The complete
chart showing data by all 100 subjects is included in Appendix E (Chart 4). The
These are translation, discussions and debates and oral picture description.
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Chart 5 – Frequency of translation activities in English tuition
Q 1: How often do your students practise English through the following activities?
Give 1,2,3,4,5. 1 = very often, 5 = never
for 72% of their total, never or hardly ever use the technique, almost half of
their total.
On the other hand, an inverse trend can be seen with discussions and
debates (Chart 6 on the following page). The research shows that a greater
often or often, forming 68% of their total, while the same is true only for 42%
of the Czech. The most significant gap can be noted with respondents who
advocate using discussions and debates very often in their tuition. The ratio
differs between the two nationalities by 20%. While with Austrian respondents
it forms more than one-third of their total, at 34%, only about every seventh
Czech respondent, 14% of the Czech total, claim to do the same. Interestingly,
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Chart 6 - Frequency of discussions and debates in English tuition
description (Chart 7). The bar graph shows that the main difference lies in the
half of them (52%) reported to use the technique very often, as opposed to
Differences which are observed with the frequency in the use of other
techniques are more or less marginal. The most noteworthy of these is perhaps
sequential pictures (Chart 8). While overall this is not a technique which would
respondents. 16% of total Czech respondents say they use the technique very
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Chart 8 - Picture narrating by several sequential pictures
similar pattern with both Czech and Austrian respondents. However, it needs to
be pointed out that all the three techniques are slightly more often put in use
by Austrian respondents. The charts showing the exact results can be found in
Czech: Austrian:
very frequent 1. oral picture description 1. information gap activities
2. discussions and debates
2. information gap activities 3. brainstorming
frequent 3. brainstorming
4. translation 4. oral picture description
5. interviews 5. interviews
less frequent 6. discussions and debates 6. role plays
7. storytelling 7. storytelling
8. role plays
9. picture narrating 8. picture narrating
rare 9. translation
10. dictation 10. dictation
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Even though Table 3 is synoptic and should be understood rather in
some significant differences between the two groups. These are put in bold.
Overall, the results suggest that Czech respondents prioritise form-focused and
and brainstorming rank among the top three techniques in the pre-given list.
end of the scale as the least popular and rarely used. Taking the broadness of
the term ‘information gap activities’ into account, however, it needs to be noted
that one cannot tell whether the term represents accuracy-focused or fluency-
focused activities. The knowledge of this might throw some more light onto the
research. The broadness of the term, and a great variety of the techniques
which the term encompasses, may also explain its high ranking on the list when
respondents are asked to mark on a Likert scale how likely they are to teach or
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Table 4 – Interpretation of Question 4
that the question uses end-products rather than general terms. The purpose of
this was to make the question a bit more discreet and the answers less biased
which the individual items on the list represent need to be interpreted first.
Table 4 lists the items from the questionnaire on the left, and their possible
interpretations in terms of general categories are on the right. For example, the
item “past continuous, going to x will, passive voice, etc.” stands for teaching
116
grammar. In order to make the data analysis straightforward, the items will be
categories on the list which are likely to be problematic. These are creative
tasks, and the last category on the list representing authentic materials use
and/or receptive skills. The problem with creative tasks might be that all the
three items on the list might bring different associations with different
respondents. For instance, for some, “making a poster” might represent asking
might be associated with having a substitution class in which learners are left
Therefore these two categories need to be taken into account with some
reservations. Having said that, this should not downgrade the validity of the
117
language use depending on how the first category on the list is to be
interpreted.
the data in this question. They feature significant differences between the two
strategic competence, etc., which score the lowest with both nationalities
(Charts 23-26). Since the most significant differences can be observed with
The bar chart on the following page illustrates the big gap between the
staggering 82% of their total in fact. This is in stark contrast with only about
only slightly likely to teach skills, whereas none of the Austrian respondents
admit to this. In fact, counting the proportionate difference between the data
given by the two nationalities, it can be said that almost a half of Czech
respondents spend less time teaching skills than their Austrian colleagues.
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Chart 17 – The four skills
Q 4: How likely are you to do the following in your lessons?
listening for main ideas, reading for specific information, writing using linking
words, skimming
At the same time, the graph suggests that 16% of Czech respondents
are only slightly likely to teach skills, whereas none of the Austrians admits this.
the two nationalities, it can be said that almost half of Czech respondents
(around 48%) spend less time teaching skills than their Austrian colleagues.
(Charts 17 and 18), similar patterns can be observed. While a high percentage
skills-related items on the list, Czech teachers are on average less likely to do
so, even though with these two graphs the gap is not as large.
taught in both countries are lexis and grammar (Charts 20, 21). However, while
in Austria they seem to be only one part of language teaching (Chart 16), with
Czech respondents these aspects score the highest. It can be inferred from the
119
data that a certain proportion of Czech teachers20 are vocabulary and grammar-
oriented.
comparison with 50% of all Austrian teachers. In fact, the data shows that
respondents are more likely to teach vocabulary than any other aspect of
which were named on the list, in particular animals, school subjects and body
communication as opposed to other items on the list which are more likely to
Chart 22 illustrates that Austrians are on average more likely to teach these
aspects than Czechs. Furthermore, the graph shows that every fourth Czech
eighth Austrian respondent. One interpretation of the data might be that some
the others. However, with Austrian respondents it is striking that almost one-
fourth of them are more likely to teach these aspects than functional language.
20
The data does not allow the pinpointing a particular number in this case, as this was not the
objective of the survey, so the suggestion can be expressed only in general terms describing a
certain trend with some respondents.
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Chart 22 – Complex grammar / grammar used rarely in spoken interaction
Q 4: How likely are you to do the following in your lessons?
past perfect simple, present perfect continuous, 3rd conditional
although the data suggests that this is not true for all. On average, a
ones and teach grammar and vocabulary as frequently as, or even more
translation. They also make a very frequent use of discussions and debates.
substantial measure in either country, even though both of these aspects are
survey which asked the respondents how often they students express
Appendix E. The patterns are strikingly similar with both countries. However,
when studied in detail, it can be seen that Austrian learners are more likely to
can be observed with small groups where the difference makes 14%. This
result seems to correspond with the results of the first question in the survey
showing that Austrians prioritise discussions and debates, whereas the Czech
utilise them less frequently (Table 3 on page 113). It is interesting that learners
are reported to interact in pairs more or less to the same extent, with only a
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Another section in the questionnaire investigates how teachers
concerned and how much they think their students are successful at expressing
respondents were asked to mark to what extent they agree or disagree with the
charts 29 and 30). 30% of Austrians strongly agree with the statement as
opposed to only 12% of the Czech. The other end of the scale shows that only
14% of Austrians neither agree nor disagree with the statement in comparison
respondents more strongly agree with the statements than their Czech
colleagues.
have plenty of opportunities to speak (Pie charts 31 and 32). However, the
differences are not dramatic. Strong agreement to the statement is given only
18% for each group. At the same time, only 6% of Austrian respondents rather
agree with the statement, followed by 20%, who neither agree nor disagree. In
comparison, the figures are slightly higher in the case of Czech respondents,
namely 10% and 26%. Counting all the differences together, the figures
suggest that 12% of Austrian learners are likely to have more opportunities to
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discussed at the beginning of this section, it can be seen that the results of the
data from both questions correspond to each other. Comparing all the listed
discussion and individual speaking which are reported as used very often or
often in Charts 27 and 28, the differences in figures range from 4% to 24% in
express themselves in one of the situations more often than Czechs. Even
though the numbers are only approximate and need to be regarded only as
Along the same lines, Pie charts 33 and 34 show that more Austrians
the two pie charts on the following page. According to these charts, 26% of
Austrian respondents strongly agree with the statement that their students are
figures show that 12% of Czechs rather or strongly disagree with the fact that
their students are successful when speaking, while none of the Austrians thinks
so. Overall, the charts show that while three-quarters of Austrians think that
slightly over one-third of the Czech state the same, giving only a partial consent
to the statement.
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Pie charts 33 and 34 – Success of students in speaking
Q 12: My students are generally successful at expressing themselves in a foreign
language.
Czech Austrian
Pie charts 35 and 36 below show that while three-quarters of Czech think that
respondents believe that teaching speaking is “OK”. The sharpest contrast can
be observed between the amounts of respondents who strongly agree with the
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Table 5 – obstacles teachers face when teaching speaking
students themselves
external
or factors closely self-critique no answer
factors
related to students
question in the questionnaire and the respondents were free to give their own
descriptions of the problems they face. Based on the data, the table above was
composed. The table shows that there is a significant difference between the
at 67%, name external factors to be the main problem, the vast majority of
Czech teachers (72%) refer mainly to their students and factors closely related
Tables 6 and 7 in Appendix E look into the data in more detail and list
all the obstacles stated giving exact numbers of teachers that mentioned the
problem. The table shows that by far the largest obstacle for Austrian teachers
represents the fact that they are placed in large groups. Apart from this,
126
teachers refer to inappropriate materials not reflecting their students’ interests
and needs, to other priorities in their schools and too many other things to be
done in classes than speaking. They also name lack of time and complain that
some learners turn to L1 when they interact in pairs or groups and several state
unwillingness to speak as one of the main obstacles. They report that some
students are not interested in the subject, lack motivation, that they are shy or
afraid to speak and they also complain that their students do not learn
following assertions: “Students are shy, do not know what to answer even in
Czech. They miss words in English, I mean they can’t use them even they know
them.” or “Students are not able to turn ideas to the words.” Statements like
that show the some Czech respondents fail to understand that for one to be
number of teachers seem not to realise this, e.g.: “The students don't know
21
Here I am citing the data coming from the questionnaires. There was a certain difference in
the way the two nationalities reported the problems they face. While Austrian teachers referred
to “lack of discipline”, some Czech teachers talked of “lazy students” or even “low IQ”, etc. In
fact, attitudes to the learners with some teachers were striking.
127
how to express themselves, sometimes they are shy, they aren't used to
speaking English.”
On a final note, I would like to highlight the fact that this is not
meant to put all Czech teachers in general in a bad light. The fact is, however,
to the one shown above. At the same time it needs to be pointed out that a few
obstacles they face correspond with Pie charts 33 and 34 which show that a
questionnaire aims to find out to what extent teachers themselves use English
in their classes and it also focuses on the use of materials. While the former is
to be dealt with in the paragraphs to come, the latter is described in the next
section.
to rate the statements according to how strongly they agree with the
statements.
128
The pie charts 37 and 38 on the following page show dramatic
used in the classes from the part of the teachers. A staggering number of 98%
of Austrian teachers strongly or rather agree with the statement that they
129
Pie charts 37 and 38 – I speak English in my classes at all times.
Q 3: Do you agree with the statement?
Czech Austrian
agree with the statement, at 38%, whereas this is true only for 8% of the
Czechs. 22% of Czech respondents report to neither agree nor disagree with
the statement. In summary, the pie charts strongly suggest that Czech teachers
A section in the survey which dealt with teaching materials and tasks
in them was number three, the Likert scale question referred to in the previous
section. Pie charts 39 and 40 on the next page present the data corresponding
Austrian than Czech respondents use authentic materials in their classes. 56%
130
of Austrians strongly agree with the statement in comparison with only 24% of
question, it can be inferred that all those who do not answer “yes”, answer “no”
or prefer to avoid the answer by neither agreeing nor disagreeing. The number
of people avoiding the answer or saying “no” accounts for one-third of all Czech
Chart 19, which was to investigate how likely authentic materials are to be used
in classes. Even though, it has been noted above that the data in Chart 19
interesting.
The other two statements in the question 3 do not show any major
differences. According to Chart 41, Austrian and Czech teachers more or less
agree that they adapt tasks and instructions in the book so that they better suit
131
The remaining number of teachers rather agree – just over half of all Austrian
countries strongly agree with the statement and approximately another third
rather agrees. The difference in the latter is marginal with 4% of the total
of Czech respondents say they use transcripts after their activity, while only just
Charts 45 and 46. Interestingly, while the use of transcripts for practising
listening follows a similar pattern with both countries, transcripts are used
account that the percentage of Austrian answering this question was lower than
for Czechs and the data represents only those teachers that report to make use
of transcripts in their lessons. On the whole, it can be said that transcripts are
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4.2.3 Accuracy versus fluency and corrective feedback
fluency and corrective feedback. They also investigate whether teachers aim for
written or spoken features of language when teaching speaking skills. The latter
they aim for the standards of written texts, such as grammatical accuracy, full
sentences, etc. Pie charts 47 and 48 illustrate that 38% of Czech respondents
In actual fact, both these groups of people agree to the statement: “Yes, I do. I
don’t like when students make too many mistakes and use vague language or
depends on a situation. This is true for 42% of the Czech and 50% of the
Austrian respondents.
Both Czech and Austrian teachers further explain that their decisions
about the standards which they require depend mainly on the type of activity,
i.e. accuracy or fluency focus. Some add that in terms of accuracy, they
distinguish between errors impeding meaning, which they correct, and non-
impeding errors, which they do not correct. Apart from this, for Austrian
frequent a certain mistake is. Some of them also point out that the level of
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is concerned. The question asks the respondents to choose the speaker who
resembles more the way they would like their students to speak. While the text
2 uses complete and written-like sentences without any pauses or fillers. Both
respondents were asked to give 1-5 to the statements, where 1 stands for
strongly agree and 5 for strongly disagree. The complete data can be viewed in
was the first one, quote: “I correct errors as soon as I hear them”. Studying Pie
of Austrians express their disagreement with the statement, whereas only 18%
of Czechs disagree.
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Pie charts 53 and 54 - I correct errors as soon as I hear them.
Q 9: Give 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to these statements. 1 = strongly agree, 5 = strongly disagree.
Czech Austrian
groups (see Charts 51 and 52 in Appendix E). Around half of all teachers agree
that they have an error correcting segment after an activity and three-quarters
of all teachers either disagree or are neutral in reference to the statement that
“Students correct each other”. The only factor that slightly divides the two
countries is how many errors in class remain untreated. 62% of all Czech
respondents claim that “Most students’ errors are treated” in their classes, while
immediate error correction depends on, respondents report that the aspects
which play a role are mainly the type of activity, closely followed by the type of
mistake (Chart 55). Comparatively, more Czechs than Austrians add that they
also take their students into consideration when treating errors. In figures, this
represents 24% versus 10% for each group. In addition, the respondents who
chose “something else” as an option mainly report that they do not want to
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interrupt their students’ flow of language when speaking. The complete
should be noted that the previous sections of this research revealed more about
teachers’ assumptions about LT than this short section is likely to do. Taking
everything into account, several of the items described below correspond with
where asked to rate on a Likert scale how much they agree with each
statement. In reference to the first one which says: “When students interact
freely they copy each other’s mistakes”, Austrians show a strong disagreement,
In contrast, 12% of Czechs rather agree with the statement as opposed to only
The subsequent charts (Pie charts 58 and 59) record a more dramatic
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Czechs and 14% of Austrians give their consent to the statement, albeit
tentative.
systematic and therefore effective for language learning”. The same statement
wanted to investigate (see Pie charts 62 and 63). On second thought, I must
admit that the statement the pie charts refer to is badly worded. The statement
says that “to become fluent in a foreign language one needs to learn it for
many years (usually more than eight) and spend some time abroad”. However,
something which all speakers work on their whole lives. Even though the
statement starts with the verb “to become” which refers to the onset and not
the whole process, the statement is slightly controversial as it is. All in all, it is
interesting that 62% of Austrians agree to the statement, whereas the same is
Pie charts 64 and 65 record one of the aspects which can be well
observed in other parts of the research and that is that the vast majority of
grammar and vocabulary. Even though the statement seems to suggest that
later success in communication, 86% of both nationalities agree with it. Czechs
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show a slightly stronger consent, although the difference is relatively
unimportant. The important words in the statement are “especially” and “later”.
life. The statement also suggests that fluency can be learned at “later” stages,
when learners leave school, not necessarily in their English lessons. Considering
the fact how controversial these suggestions are it is all the more surprising
The last two charts show two statements which are strongly agreed
statement that “the most important thing when learning to speak a foreign
language is to speak a lot” (See Chart 66 below). Interestingly, even though the
show that the space which is allowed for speaking skills practice as well as
activities which some Czech teachers choose to use in class do not reflect this
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4.2.5 Practical techniques for teaching speaking
The last section of this research will analyse a specific task respondents were
asked to reflect upon and also present some of the activities which teachers
named as their favourite ones. The sections of the questionnaire which will be
task and answer questions that followed. The task was taken from New Cutting
not to show sections such as useful language, etc., which would make it too
suggestive. The task falls under the category of creative tasks where learners
are asked to discuss their ideas, design a plan of a coffee bar and present their
end-product to the others. The task was chosen in order to find out how much
Appendix E. In summary, the tables show that while Austrian teachers would
allow such a task considerably more time, 33 minutes on average in fact, Czech
teachers would spend only 22 minutes on average on the task. This fact is also
reflected in the other tables. Czech teachers would spend 5 and a half minutes
students to discuss their ideas and 8 minutes to present them to the others, as
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report they would not do such a task at all and another 4% add they would not
Austrians and 29% of Czechs would not pre-teach any language (Pie chart 68
and 69). In the subsequent question some of the teachers explain that they
would prefer to teach what learners need during the task according to the
makes a remarkable difference with the two countries (see Table 13 below).
Table 13 shows general trends of the two groups. While Austrian respondents
language.
22
This was a contingency question. Only the respondents who reported to find teaching
speaking rather or completely difficult answered it. Some of the learners referred to teaching
more items on the list. The question was not compulsory, however, and some respondents
chose not to answer it therefore the numbers do not correspond with the number of
respondents.
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The pie charts on the last page of Appendix E illustrate that a vast
majority of teachers would let students draw their ideas while discussing the
task, although 18% of Austrian teachers would ask them to do it after the
96%, in comparison with 84% of Austrians claim to have done a similar creative
task like this (Pie charts 72 and 73). On the other hand, slightly more Austrian
teachers report they have done the task many times, 22% versus 15% of Czech
teachers.
questionnaire and the data presented in Table 3 on page 113 and Charts 6 to
13 in Appendix E.
frequently mentioned activities are discussions and debates. These are followed
by group work and pair work, role plays, presentations, picture description and
only a few times, however, they are likely to be included in pair work, role
plays, etc., which all score high. Apart form this, a few teachers mention
followed by speaking.
discussions and role plays, closely followed by games and quizzes, storytelling
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and questions (probably meaning interviews). Pair work and group work are
mentioned by about half times less than by Austrian teachers. A similar pattern
concerns presentations. While they are named by almost every third Austrian,
they are mentioned only a few times (literally by 4 out of 50) by Czechs. Other
activities which are mentioned only fractionally are reading and speaking.
considerably more activities and name a greater variety than Czech teachers.
4.3 Conclusion
teaching. They make use of activities which reveal a tendency for form-focused
instruction and accuracy focus. Top of the list rank such activities as picture
role plays, interviews and storytelling in their LT, this does not compare with
language teaching. Overall, it could be observed that Czech teachers allow less
time for speaking and create fewer opportunities for speaking in class. When
Czech learners are asked to express themselves, they are likely to be corrected
more than Austrian learners. They are also likely to hear less English in their
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lessons, use fewer authentic materials, learn from vocabulary lists more, and
are likely to be more corrected than Austrian learners. The survey suggests that
and the main difficulties they see in teaching speaking are external factors, in
In conclusion, the results suggest that some Czech learners are likely
them omit speaking skills practice because they have other priorities
All in all, even though this is an outcome of only a small research and
teachers, the correspondence with a number of results within the research are
interesting. The survey opens new opportunities for further research, such as
learners and pinpointing some of the data which the research did not manage
to reveal. Other questions suggested for further research have been presented
in the thesis.
143
Conclusion
was hypothesised that learners might lack speaking practise because teachers
One of the hypotheses expressed the view that some teachers might
fail in teaching speaking skills because their assumptions about how languages
are acquired and what features influence the way spoken production is
composed prevent them from teaching the right skills. Therefore, the second
chapter aimed to reveal how spoken language is organised as opposed to, for
example writing. It also discussed the fact that context and discoursal aspects,
successful conversation. The main emphasis was placed on the fact that spoken
production cannot resemble written texts showing every bit of accuracy, full
sentences etc., that written texts have. This is because speakers face real-time
144
because misconceptions in terms of these aspects are regarded as serious
evaluation and pair work. Quite importantly, it was pointed out that in order to
was made was that teaching how pauses are distributed within utterances
further research into this aspect was made. Also, as far as corrective feedback
activities which focus on meaning and those which focus on form. It was
activities which can be utilised for teaching speaking skills were outlined.
The last section focused on the research which was carried out
among Czech and Austrian teachers of English, firstly in order to explore the
links between my hypotheses and reality and also to compare and contrast the
teaching approaches and techniques put in use for teaching speaking skills in
the two countries. The outcomes of the research support my original hypothesis
145
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