This article is based on the presentation given at TESOL 2014 in Portland, Oregon, titled “Teaching Speaking: Content and Methodology.” The background to the talk is the fact that when we enquire about someone’s language ability, we usually ask, “Do you speak English/French/Japanese?” indicating the centrality of speaking among the four skills in our concept of what second language ability means. Of course, there are many different kinds of speaking. Lectures, presentations, formal debates, and so on are all kinds of speaking, but the most common speaking activity that all people engage in is conversation, that is, the daily quotidian exchanges that are the mainstay of our social relationships with others. The word conversation should not carry connotations of triviality and formlessness in comparison to other more traditionally prestigious kinds of speaking. Rather, it should be recognized that conversational language and behavior is just as rule governed and particular as other genres of speech that are the mainstay of academic English and other specific purposes courses. To sum up, speaking is the central skill within the traditional four skills, and conversation is the central genre within speaking.

The following points are based on my experience teaching English in Japan. Although the background may have some bias towards the situation in that teaching/cultural environment, the points will also have a more general application to other EFL and possibly ESL teaching classroom cultures.

Conversation as a Genre

Cook (1989, p. 56) describes the defining characteristics of conversation as follows:

1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.
2. Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.
3. The number of participants is quite small.
4. Turns are quite short.
5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience.

Nunan (1987) adds:

Genuine conversation is characterized by the uneven distribution of information, the negotiation of meaning (through for example, clarification requests and confirmation checks), topic nomination and negotiation by more than one speaker, and the right of interlocutors to decide whether to contribute to an interaction or not. In other words, in genuine communication, decisions about who says what to whom and when are up for grabs. (p. 137)

Following these points, it can be seen that high levels of teacher control, topic and group selection, time limits, goal orientation, and so on will preclude the occurrence of genuine conversation in a language classroom environment. The classroom must be reconfigured as a psycho-social space if anything approaching genuine conversation is to occur.

Creating a Venue for Conversation

Traditional classroom interaction is not in harmony with the norms of conversation. Activities are often geared towards a task, controlled to a greater or lesser extent by the teacher, are mono-topical, and so on.

Learners must be given the opportunity to move away from traditional classroom interactions and towards a more naturalistic mode of speaking. In my classes I have a phase called “student talk time.” After taking the register, the students start talking to each other in English without any cue from me. This phase and its purpose must be explained to the students from the outset. Students need the space and time to automatically initiate conversation in English and develop key skills such as proffering; negotiating and changing topics; managing turn length, content, and turn boundaries; and so on. The phase lasts for 20 minutes so that the “how are you” type openings can get exhausted and the students have to work to keep the conversation going, drawing on their own resources rather than relying on guidance from a nonparticipating overhearer of differential status. I act as a monitor during this phase, ideally backgrounding my presence as much as possible.

Features of Conversational Language

Spoken language and written language are different in vocabulary and grammar, and students need to know what the features of conversational language are and have extensive practice using them in order to internalize conversational language norms.

Markers, Filler, Smallwords

These terms all refer to high-frequency words such as well, you know, I mean, and like, which are often treated as unnecessary extras in the business of speaking, or even as undesirable speech habits which should be avoided. The reality is that these words are central in performing various interactional tasks and vital to creating a sense of fluency (see Hasselgreen, 2010). These words are pronounced as hearable chunks and spoken slightly more quickly and quietly than the surrounding discourse. They should be an ongoing focus of all teaching of spoken language.

Vague Category Markers

This term refers to expressions such as something like that, that kind of thing, and stuff, those guys, and so on. They are frequent, fixed expressions in spoken English and serve a variety of functions, indicating convergence in epistemic world view and tacit assertion common understanding. They often occur at the end of a turn and may be a useful signal for speaker transition. Again, they are pronounced as hearable chunks and spoken slightly more quickly and quietly than the surrounding discourse.

Backchannel

Listeners do not sit silently while others talk. Rather, they contribute to the discourse by backchannels such as yeah, right, uh-huh, really, and others, which show agreement, understanding, surprise, and so on, and also signal continued acceptance of the other’s speakership. Students need to avoid using their first language backchannels (a common phenomenon in Japanese speakers) and use the English backchannels appropriately.

Vague Counters

Vagueness in expressing numbers, amounts, times, prices, and so on is a common feature of spoken language. People meet at about six-ish. They go to a bar for an hour or two and have a couple of drinks, spend about 20, 25 dollars and get back at 10, 10:30, something like that. Also related to amounts and numbers, the words much and many are used mainly in questions, negatives, and positive sentences with too or so. In other positive sentences speakers usually use a lot of, lots of, or other expressions (e.g., tons of, a whole bunch of).

Adjectives

Basic English adjectives usually have a parallel upgrade adjective. Cold can be upgraded to freezing, hot to boiling, funny to hilarious, and so on. These upgrade adjectives can be collocated with absolutely, but not with very. These words can be used to express a stronger version of the basic adjective and also as a way of showing agreement whilst avoiding repetition. It would be unusual in English to hear the following exchange:

A: It’s hot today.
B: Yes, hot.

The following exchange shows agreement and also signals comprehension. It is easy to repeat a word, even if one doesn’t fully understand it. It is difficult to upgrade a non-understood assessment.

A: It’s hot today.
B: Yeah, it’s absolutely boiling, isn’t it?

In addition to upgrade, opinions can be hedged. Kind of, a bit, sort of, a little bit can all be used to hedge and are especially appropriate for negative or critical assessments. Continued giving of assessments which are never upgraded or hedged will lead to language which is bland and unengaging.

Reported Speech

It is hard to overestimate the ubiquity of reported speech in our daily conversational interactions. Reporting what others have said forms the background to much of our conversation as we most often talk about the ongoing social world in which we find ourselves. The reporting verbs say, speak, talk, and tell can be used variously to report the fine-grained contents of others’ speech, (said that) or a more coarse-grained report of just the topic (was speaking/talking about), with the option of including or omitting the listener (said (to B) that vs. told B that). In addition, the use of be like can blur the line between reported speech and thought and can be used at the climax of narratives to indicate the anticipated/appropriate reaction (So she didn’t come to the party and I was like “Thank God for that”).

These are just some of the basic features of conversational language, and if learners wish to engage in conversation, they should be able to draw on these linguistic resources repeatedly and automatically. Teaching conversation should not be seen as the poor cousin of “serious” teaching, an intellectually light and content-free “fun” activity, but as a rich discipline in its own right. As Cook (1989) comments, “If the difficulty with conversation classes is widespread, so too is the desire of students to converse successfully in the language they are learning” (p. 116).

References

Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Hasselgreen, A. (2004). Testing the spoken English of young Norwegians: A study of test validity and the role of “smallwords” in contributing to pupil’s fluency. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, D. (1987). Communicative language teaching: Making it work. ELT Journal, 41(2), 136–145.