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To Promote Communicative Efficiency through Speaking

Activities Capital University of Economics and Business

Hao Qinhai

Capital University of Economics and Business

Abstract: This paper will deal with the possibility of training students’ communicative competence by promoting their speaking skill with two major purposes; the first is to provide a theoretical background to a methodology for teaching speaking and the second is to present a relatively reasonable suggestion of stages in teaching speaking on the basis of the discussion of the purpose of our teaching and the unique nature or characteristics of the speaking skill. Key words: communicative competence communicative efficiency speaking skill I: Introduction With the social and economic development of our country, education at college level is changing to reflect the needs of the learner and hence society. Consequently, foreign language teaching is responding to society's need to prepare our youth for an unpredictable future in which language skills will be in great demand. However, according to the survey conducted by the College English Directive Committee, the comprehensive skills of the college graduates, their oral and written abilities in particular, are not satisfactory. To change the phenomenon of “dumb English” has become a challenging task for us.

Realizing the need to maximize the learner's foreign language abilities, the national educational administration has mandated language requirements for college English teaching that in turn require adjustments for teaching a diverse group of students and developing their oral communicative competence. The focus of curricula and hence assessment have, therefore, also shifted from the knowledge of grammar to oral proficiency and communicative competence in target language. II. The Purpose of Our Classroom Teaching

The aims of language teaching courses are very commonly defined with reference to four language skills. These aims, in turn, usually decide the content and the approach of our teaching. So let’s first focus on what purpose we can achieve in our classroom teaching.

As is known to us, the aims of language teaching are set out on the basis of linguistic theory concerning a native speaker’s knowledge of language. The investigation into it has been proceeding for quite a long time, and perhaps the most famous theory in this respect is put forward by Chomsky in his paper Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1965. His suggestion is that a native speaker has, somewhere in his brain, a set of grammar rules which enable him to make sentences and with a finite number of rules, it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences. Therefore , he made a distinction between “competence” and “performance”. By “competence” he meant a native speaker’s internalized linguistic knowledge, or internalized grammar, while

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“performance” was the use of language in a certain environment. Although what Chomsky suggests may account for a native speaker’s knowledge of grammar,

it is not sufficient to explain everything a native speaker knows about his own language. Unlike Chomsky, Hymes , in his paper On Communicative Competence in 1972, replaced “competence” with his own concept of “communicative competence” by arguing that besides the grammar rules, there are rules of use and competence by itself is not enough to explain a native speaker’s knowledge. He separated the native speaker’s knowledge into four categories: systematic potential, appropriateness, occurrence and feasibility. Obviously, Hymes includes categories that are very different from Chomsky’s original idea of competence and it seems clear that the native speaker does in some way know the rules of use and try to be appropriate with the help of the rules in their communications.

What is discussed above demonstrates that a native speaker knows about the grammar of the language and knows especially what is appropriate in certain situations. This is often referred to as the ability to communicate. Therefore, the learning of a language involves not only acquiring the ability to compose correct sentences but also acquiring an understanding of which sentences or parts of sentences are appropriate in a particular context. However, the idea of communicative competence can not be applied immediately to the study of a foreign language since it is based on too many cultural assumptions. It remains a question whether we can expect to teach our students communicative competence in a classroom. Our classroom is far from the target language community and it is doubtful whether we can give this knowledge to our students. So communicative competence may be an impossible goal in the classroom.

What we can expect our students to do in a language class is that they are capable of expressing what they wish to say and their meaning is understood. So in a language class, our purpose is not to teach our students to be model Americans or Englishmen but to teach them how to convey their thoughts and purposes efficiently in order that they are competent to communicate in the target language with native speakers naturally and smoothly. So a more realistic goal might be “communicative efficiency”, put forward by Harmer. In terms of language skills, communicative efficiency means that students should be able to perform efficiently in oral and written verbal communication.

However, there are many factors now in EFL classroom that hinder the development of communicative competence, thus resulting in the failure in achieving communicative efficiency. The texts are too difficult to comprehend and it takes most of the class time to explain the difficult language points, which leaves little time for the students to internalize the language input and communicate with it. Its lack of practical application and the difficulty of organizing communicative activities have made it hard to meet the demand of communicative language teaching. Besides, improper approach and test-oriented teaching are misleading in the process of developing skills to use language. Traditional method, which focuses on linguistic phenomena rather than on comprehension and communication, are still popular on account of various reasons, little or no attention paid to listening and speaking. And unfavorable learning environment in China is also an obstacle to achieve this goal in the classroom.

As a result, most students possess poor oral communicative competence and they desire to improve their ability. We designed a questionnaire and interviewed some students to identify students’ perception of their language needs and motivations and to discover students’ oral communicative competence.. The results of the analysis demonstrate that learners want more

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opportunities to speak English and want teachers’ help in their listening and oral practices. In the light of these findings, it is suggested that in order to achieve this goal in the classroom, priority should be placed on the following areas: improving listening and oral skills, creating English-speaking environment and shifting from test-oriented teaching to communication-oriented teaching. It is essential to design a superior way to achieve communicative efficiency. III. Analysis of Communication and Communicative Activities

We are supposed to adopt a superior approach in our teaching practice. However, before designing a useful and efficient approach it is necessary and beneficial to analyze the nature of communication.

Communication between humans, though rather complex and ever-changing, shares certain characteristics which are relevant for the learning and teaching. Therefore, we may make some generalizations. In a talk involving two people, both speaker and listener have their particular roles for a certain reason. The three generalizations which apply to all speakers and listeners may be made as the following:

speaker Listener

want to say something; want to listen to something;

Have a communicative purpose; be interested in communicative purpose;

select from language store; process a variety of language;

This table suggests that a speaker makes a decision to address someone. Speaking may be

forced on him in some way, but we can say that he wants and intends to speak, otherwise he could keep silent. Speaker says things because they want something to happen as a result of what they say. He is interested in achieving his communicative purpose, in other words being successful in what he wants to convey. The speaker also will select the language that he thinks is appropriate to achieve his purpose. So is the listener other way round.

Having discussed the nature of communication, we can now suggest characteristics necessary for communicative activities. There is a considerable debate on appropriate ways of defining communicative language teaching and no single model is universally accepted as authoritative(Mcgroarty, 1984; Markee, 1997). However, according to Richards and Rodgers(1986), communicative language teaching starts with a theory of language as communication, and its goal is to develop learners’ communicative competence.

The most obvious characteristic, according to Larsen-Freeman (1986), is that “almost everything that is done is done with communicative intent”.In our classroom teaching, whatever activities the students are involved in, if it is genuinely communicative and really promoting language use, the students should have a desire to communicate and they should use language in some way to achieve an objective. Their attention should be centred on content of what is being said not the form that is being used. And the students will have to deal with a variety of language rather than just one language item.

Another characteristic is that “activities in the Communicative Approach are often carried out by students in small groups”(Larshen-Freeman, 1986, p.132) and is “its learner-centered and experience-based view of second language teaching”(Richards and Rodger, 1986, p.69). The

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teacher’s intervention should be forbidden while the students are engaged in the communicative activities. The teacher should act as a participant instead of an instructor. In addition, communicative activities favor authentic materials(Larsen-Freeman,1986; Dubin, 1995; Widdowson, 1996) and materials from life. In a communicative activity, the materials students employ should not be controlled, otherwise the characteristic of using a variety of language will be denied.

These characteristics for communicative activities can be seen as forming one end of a continuum of classroom activity and they can be matched by opposite points at the other end of the continuum.

Non-communicative Communicative no communicative desire a desire to communicate teacher intervention no teacher intevention no communicative purpose a communicative purpose materials control no materials control form not content content not form

one language item variety of language IV: The Characteristics of Speaking:

One may communicate in various ways, but one can’t succeed in the communication without the good command of the four basic skills. That’s why we lay great emphasis on the four skills in the language teaching.

It is the conventional practice to present the four skills in terms of the medium and activity of the language user. As a result, the four skills may fall into two categories: with reference to the medium speaking and listening are said to relate to language expressed through the aural medium; by reference to the activity of language user, speaking and writing are said to be productive skills whereas listening and reading are said to be receptive skills. In a word, speaking is obviously a productive skill involving some kind of production on the part of the language user and is realized through the aural medium.

Speaking may be said to be mainly fostered and trained at the stage of the output. Our classroom activities designed to develop the learner’s ability in the four skills may be divided into two major categories; those that give the student input and those that encourage the student to produce output. Considering the overall stages of language teaching, we may find the stages at which language is somehow being put into the student’s brain. If the students only get the language input, however, they may end up with a lot of language items separately stored, but with on ability to retrieve those items when they need them. It is only when the students are asked to produce and use language that they are forced to select the appropriate language stored in their brains. The ability to retrieve this stored language is clearly vital to any language user and can be trained in the output stages at which students are encouraged to speak and write.

Here is the summary of the features of speaking

receptive productive input output aural visual speaking x √ x √ √ x V: Stages in the Teaching of Speaking

Though we made a division of four skills, in fact, it is very often true that one skill cannot be

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performed without another. It is impossible to speak in a conversation if you don’t listen to others as well. Besides, people often use different skills when dealing with the same object for all sorts of reasons. So it is inevitable to practise other skills in the teaching of speaking.

As has been said above, our classroom activities fall into two major categories, input and output and the speaking skill is mainly fostered and trained in output ones. But in actual teaching practice, we cannot achieve our purpose without employing the input activities, especially at the beginning of our teaching. According to Stephen Krashen, the only way to acquire language is by receiving comprehensive input and the more the learner inputs information, the more likely he will be able to output.( Krashen, 1982)

Therefore, we can roughly divide our teaching of speaking into three major stages: introducing new language, practice and communicative activities. The three stages may be represented in the communication continuum as the following:

Non-communicative Communicative Introducing New Lg. Practice Communicative Activity Input Input & output output The introduction of new language is often an activity that falls at the “Non-communicative”

end of the continuum. At this stage, the teacher will work with controlled techniques, asking student to repeat and perform in drills. At the same time he will insist on accuracy, correcting when students make mistakes. Although this stage should be kept short and the drilling abandoned as soon as possible, they are important in helping the student to assimilate facts about new language and in enabling him to produce the new language for the first time.

The practice stage falls somewhere between the two ends of the continuum. Now the teacher may slightly intervene to help guide and point out inaccuracy. Students are asked to use the new language in different contexts, often in combination with English the student already knows. The aim is to encourage communication while ensuring that special language items are used. The students may have communicative purpose. As far as possible the use of the language will approximate real life and will be as much like genuine communication as the limitation of the activity permits.

The features of the communicative activities have already been discussed in the previous part. Such activities are vital in the teaching of speaking, since here students can do their best to use the language as individuals, arriving at a degree of language autonomy. In most communicative activities the students will use all the language that they know, they will be forced to retrieve the English that they have in their language store and they will gradually develop strategies for communication. Instead of a concentration on accuracy, the focus will be on the success of the communication. This implies that the role of the teacher should change. If he stops students every time they make a mistake and points this out, students will find it frustrating and de-motivating and then he will destroy the communication that is supposed to be encouraging.

So far we have discussed the purpose of our classroom teaching, the features of communication as well as the communicative activities. These as well as the analysis of speaking serve as the foundation for the suggested stages in the teaching of speaking. These stages are only a rough outline in the teaching. In real teaching practice, we have to adapt according to concrete situation and the students we are teaching.

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