Oral Communication Skills & Classroom Speaking Performance

ByLuis Carlos Lasso Montenegro

Micro SkillsSkills at the

Sentence Level

They refer to the skills speakers use in conversational discourse

and provide teachers a clear idea of what the learners actually

need to perform in oral communication.

Both Micro & Macro Skills are focused on the forms and

functions of language and can become a testing criteria in

speaking evaluation.

Macro Skills Skills at the

Discourse Level

Reference: Brown, H. (2007). Teaching by principles, an interactive approach to language pedagogy. Third Edition. New York: Pearson Education.

Linguistic Skills in Oral Production

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY RANGE

FLUENCY AND ACCURACY

PRONUNCIATION

Ability to use language system, grammar rules

and lexical units.

Capacity of pronouncing correctly English words

and phrases.

Functional use of spoken language

PRAGMATICS

TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Ability to express ideas using spoken language

and different types of oral production

Ability to interact in a social context.

LANGUAGE INTERACTION

• Produce chunks of language of different lengths.•Orally produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic variants.•Produce English stress patterns and intonation contours. • Use an adequate number of lexical units in order to accomplish pragmatic purposes.•Produce fluent speech.•Monitor oral production and use strategic devices (pauses, fillers, backtracking, turntaking…) •Use grammatical patterns and rules.•Produce speech in natural constituents (appropriate phrases, pause, breathing...)•Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.

Reference: Brown, H. (2007). Teaching by principles, an interactive approach to language pedagogy. Third Edition. New York: Pearson Education.

• Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.• Accomplish appropriate communicative functions according to situations, participants and goals.•Use appropriate registers, implicatures, pragmatic conventions and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations.•Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations (main idea, exemplification…)•Use facial features, kinesics, body language (non verbal) with verbal language to convey meanings. • Develop and use speaking strategies such as emphasizing, rephrasing, providing a context, asking for help, using circumlocutions…

Reference: Brown, H. (2007). Teaching by principles, an interactive approach to language pedagogy. Third Edition. New York: Pearson Education.

Imitation occurs not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some particular element of language form.

Drills (limited practice through repetition) provide learners an opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain strings of language.

Imitative Speaking Tasks• Minimal Pair repetition•Word/phrase repetitions

•Sentence repetition

EXAMPLE

Students listen to the teacher and repeat the pronunciation of English words and expressions such as:

Words: Bus Terminal, police station, desk clerk, information counter, downtown…

Expressions: -Good Morning, may I help you?-Excuse me sir, where can I get a taxi?-How much does it cost?-What time does the bus leave?

Unlike imitative speaking which is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of language, Intensive speaking provide learners the opportunity to “go over” and use certain forms of language through controlled speech production.

Intensive Speaking Tasks

• Directed response Tell me he went home.

•Read-aloud (for pronunciation or fluency)

•Oral sentence completionYesterday, I______

•Oral cloze procedureYesterday, I ______ to the gym

•Dialogue completionA: May I help you?B: ______________•Directed response

What did you do last weekend?

Responsive speaking involves short replies to teacher or student-initiated questions or comments.

These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend to dialogues.

Speech production can be meaningful and authentic.

Responsive Speaking Tasks

• Picture description or elicitation of directions

How do I get to the post office? •Question & Answer

How do you like the weather?•Question elicitation

Ask me about my hobbies and interests.

•Elicitation for instructionsWhat’s the recipe to make a pie?

•Paraphrasing(a short narrative, a phone

message, report…)

TRANSACTIONAL DIALOGUE

Transactional language is an extended form of responsive language which is carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information.

Interactive Speaking Tasks

•Role plays• Oral interviews

• Discussions and conversations

• Games

INTERPERSONAL DIALOGUE

Interpersonal dialogue is carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information.

•Casual register•Colloquial language•Slang•Sarcasm•Emotions

Extensive speaking (Monologues) usually occurs when students are asked to give oral reports, summaries or short speeches.

The kind of register is more formal and speaking performance is carefully produced.

Monologues can be planned or presented without earlier preparation.

Extensive Speaking Tasks

• Oral presentations(Academic or professional

context)

•Storytelling

•Retelling a story or news event

•Reporting information

Which activities can the teacher carry out to get students to speak fluently?

Thanks for your attention!