Speaking+Theory


 * Chapter 5: Using Technology to Teach Oral Communication Skills, pages 96 to 102: Speaking Skills**

1. Give three times when students benefit from a technology-enhanced environment for the development of their speaking skills: (a) When speech occurs as students talk to each other while working on collaborative tasks and projects or while just chatting around the computer. (b) Technology also allows students to communicate via teleconferencing software such as CU-See Me with authentic audiences around the world and facilitates global technology-based projects that serve as incentives for this communication.

(c) Technology can provide focused practice of listening skills through software programs and websites for student interaction. Several websites have recording capabilities to allow students to practice speaking. 2. How have the different methods of L2 teaching treated the teaching of speaking? Various perspectives on speaking have range from total neglect of listening or speaking in the grammar translation method to extended communication in the communicative and task-based approaches. Murphy points out that some of the methods and approaches more widely discussed in literature-such as total physical response (TPR), the natural approach, the silent way, and suggestopedia-are more appropriate for the beginning levels of instruction. He reminds practitioners that varying treatments of speaking are based on a broad range of theories whose merits each teacher will have to evaluate for his or her own particular teaching situation. Frequently, teachers of English language learners need to draw on more than one approach and use a variety of instructional tools, including the computer and other forms of technology, to meet the needs of all their students.

3. Describe the Current Views on Speaking in an L2   In today’s world with easy access to travel, globalization of business and industry, and the desire of non-native English speakers to communicate with English speaking peers, English learners of all ages and purposes value the ability to orally communicate in the second or foreign language. Speaking is viewed in the larger context of communication with the focus on the speaker’s ability to take in messages, negotiate meaning, and produce comprehensible output. This view recognizes the interactive nature of listening and the crucial role of negotiating meaning in order to produce comprehensible speech. 4. Study Table 4.1 on page 98 and give your opinion .   In my opinion speaking is an important factor which helps in order to facilitate learning. If the learner is given the opportunity through tasks and activities to speak the L2 then the learning process will definitely be more effective. In order to achieve this, methods such as Silent Way, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and Task Based should be used in the classroom. 6. Describe the different types of oral interaction Bygate (1987) proposes a model of oral interactions based on routines, which Nunan (1991) defines as “conventional (and therefore predictable) ways of presenting information which can either focus on information or interaction”. In the first category, information routines consist of both information genres such as expository (which include description, instruction, and comparison) and evaluative routines (which include explanation, justification, prediction, and decision routines). In the second category, interaction routines are viewed as either being primarily service (for example, speech used in a job interview) or social (for instance, the small talk you would engage in at a dinner party). All of the participants in these routines constantly negotiate meaning of the oral messages and manage the interactions in terms of who says what, to whom, and so on (Nunan, 1991).