T E S O L

TEACHING ORAL

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

M I F TA H U L FA J R IM U S F E R A N A R A VA D I A

P U T R I M A R N I S AT I T I N H A J R I

K 4 - 1 3

ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN PEDAGOGICAL RESEARCHSome issues about teaching oral communication are:

• The place of pronunciation teaching There are some controversy about the role of pronunciation. The question is, since the adult learners will never acquire the “accent free” command of a foreign language, should a language paradigm that emphasize whole language, meaningful contexts, and subconscious acquisition, focus on these pronunciation details?

• Accuracy and fluencyBoth of accuracy and fluency are important goals in CLT.

However, the question that arises is, how shall we prioritize the two clearly important speaker goals of accurate (clear, articulate, grammatically and phonologically correct) language and fluent (flowing, natural) language?

Accuracy may be an initial goals of language teaching, while accuracy is achieved by focusing on the element of phonology, grammar, and discourse in their spoken output.

• Affective factorsOne of the impacts of “language ego” is leaners feel afraid

about the risks of blurting things out that wrong, stupid and incomprehensible. Therefore, teachers should provide the kind of warm, embracing climate that encourage students to speak in their new language.

• The interaction effectLearners feel more difficult in the interactive nature of

communication instead of the multiplicity of sounds, words, phrases, and discourse forms. As in conversation, the participant are engaged in the process of negotiating of meaning, they feel problematic about how to speak something, when, and other discourse constraints.

TYPES OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE• There are five types of spoken language, they are

interactional, referential, expressive, transactional, and phatic. • When you plan to implement your techniques in your

interactive classroom, make sure that your students deal with these types of spoken language.• These types will help them on delivering their speech better.

WHAT MAKES SPEAKING DIFFICULT?• ClusteringBecause the fluent speech is phrasal, learners should organize their output both cognitively and physically through such clustering

• RedundancyThrough redundancy, speaker has a chance to make his speech clearer

• Reduced formsStudents who don’t learn colloquial contractions such as contractions, elisions, reduced vowel etc. can sometimes develop stilled, bookish quality of speaking that in turn stigmatize them.

• Performance variablesThe process of thinking is one advantage of spoken language because learners can learn how to pause, hesitate, backtracking, and corrections.

• Colloquial languageYour students should understand the colloquial language in order to able to use it in their speaking practice.

• Rate of deliveryDelivery is another salient characteristics of fluency. Your job is help the learners to achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency

• Stress, rhythm, and intonationThe stress-timed rhythm of spoken English is the most crucial characteristic of English pronunciation because it convey important message

• InteractionLearning to produce waves of language in a vacuum (without interlocutors) would rob speaking from its richest component: the creativity of conversational negotiation.

MICRO-SKILLS OF ORAL COMMUNICATION• Produce chunks of language of different lengths• Orally produce differences among the English phonemes and allophonic

variants• Produce English stress pattern, words in stressed and unstressed position,

rhythmic, and intonational countours• Produce reduced forms of words and phrases• Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) in order to accomplish

pragmatic purposes• Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery• Monitor your own oral production and use various strategic devices to

enhance the clarity of the message.• Use grammatical words classes, systems, word order, patterns, rules, and

elliptical forms.

• Produce speech in natural constituents• Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms• Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse• Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to

situations, participants and goals• Use appropriate registers, implicatures, pragmatic conventions,

and other sociolinguistics features in face to face conversations• Convey links and connection between events and communicate

such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification• Use facial features, kinesics, body language, and other non

verbal cues along wth verbal language in order to convey meaning• Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies.

TEACHING PRONUNCIATION: THEN AND NOW• Language was viewed as a hierarchy of related structures and at

the base of this hierarchy was the articulation of phonemes and their contrasts within English and between English and natives languages. • Pronunciation classes consisted of imitation drills, memorization

of patterns, minimal pair exercises, and explanations of articulatory phonetics. • Nowadays, pronunciation starkly contrasts with the early

approaches. Instead of attempting only to build a learner’s articulatory competence from the bottom up, and simply as the mastery of a list of phonemes and allophones, a top –down approach is taken in which the relevant features of pronunciation—stress, rhythm, and intonation—are high priority. • Rather than teaching only the role of articulation within words or

phrases, we teach its role in a whole stream of discourse.

FACTORS AFFECTING PRONUNCIATION LEARNING

• The ultimate goal of many foreign language learners is “accent free” speech.• Our goal as English teacher should be focused on clear, comprehensible

pronunciation.• At the beginning level, learners surpass threshold beneath which

pronunciation detracts from their ability to communicate.• At the advanced level, pronunciation goals can focus on elements that

enhance communication: intonation features that go beyond basic patterns, voice quality, phonetic distinctions between register, and other refinements.

SOME VARIABLES THAT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED:

1) Native Language2) Age3) Exposure4) Innate phonetic ability5) Identity and language ego6) Motivation and concern for good pronunciation

A MODEL FOR CORRECTION OF SPEECH ERRORS

• When and how should I correct the speech errors of learners in my classroom?

AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE FEEDBACK

Teacher’s job is to discern the optimal tension between positive and negative cognitive feedback: providing enough green light to encourage continued communication, but not so many that crucial error go unnoticed, and providing enough red lights to call attention to those crucial errors, but not so many that the learners is discouraged from attempting to speak at all.

• Hendrickson advised teachers to try to discern the difference, in learners’ language between “global” and “local” error.• Global errors hinder communication; they prevent the hearer from

comprehending some aspect of the message.• Local error, because they usually only affect a single element of a

sentence, do not prevent a message from being heard; context provide keys to meaning.• It seems quite clear that students in the classroom generally want

and expect errors to be corrected. However, some method recommend no direct treatment of error at all.

ERROR TREATMENT OPTIONS BY KATHLEEN BAILEY

7 Basic Options1) To treat or to ignore2) To treat immediately or to delay3) To transfer treatment (to say, other learners) or not4) To transfer to another individual, a subgroup, or the whole

group5) To return, or not, to original error maker after treatment6) To permit other learners to initiate treatment7) To test for the efficacy of the treatment

8 Possible Features1) Fact of error indicated2) Location indicated3) Opportunity for new attempt given4) Model provided5) Error type indicated6) Remedy indicated7) Improvement indicated8) Praise indicated

• Learners are indeed creatively operating on a second language constructing, either consciously or subconsciously, a system for understanding and producing utterances in the language.• Teacher’s job is to value learners, prize their attempts to

communicate, and then to provide optimal feedback for the system to evolve in successive stage until learners are communicating more clearly.

TYPES OF CLASSROOM SPEAKING PERFORMANCE

1)Imitative2)Intensive3)Responsive4)Transactional5)Interpersonal (dialogue)6)Interpersonal7)Extensive

PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING SPEAKING TECHNIQUES

1. Techniques should cover the spectrum of learner needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning, and fluency.

2. Techniques should be intrinsically motivating.3. Techniques should encourage the use of authentic language

in meaningful contexts.4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction.5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening.6. Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication.7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies.

Techniques for Teaching Oral Communication Skills1. Pronounciation : Rhyhm and thought groups (wong,

1987: 46-47)

2. Prounciation : intonation (wong,1987: 61-64)

3. Prounciation : stress (nolasco & Arthur, 1987 : 67, 68)

4. Pronounciation : meaningful minimal pairs

9. Individual practice : oral dialogue journals

6. Discourse (nolasco & arthur, 1987: 40, 41)

5. Grammar (nolasco & arthur, 1987 : 45, 46)

8. Interactive techniques

7. Strategy consciousness raising (nolasco &arthur, 1987: 105, 106)

1. Pronounciation : Rhyhm and thought groups (wong, 1987: 46-47)

The following sentences, all on the topic of contemporary superstitions and popular beliefs, illustrate the use of pauses to separate prepositional phrases and clauses. These sentences can be used with advanced level students; for students of intermediate proficiency, more appropriate sentences should be selected. Heve students’ listen as you read the sentences that follow and pause only at the points marked by a slash. Bthen have them practice in pairs with the listener monitoring for pauses only at the places marked.

• Listening for pitch change exercise no. 1• Listening for pitch change exercise no. 2• Rising and falling pitch exercise no. 1• Rising and falling pitch exercise no. 1

2. PROUNCIATION : INTONATION (WONG,1987: 61-64)

3. Prounciation : stress (nolasco & Arthur, 1987 : 67, 68)

4. Pronounciation : meaningful minimal pairs

Traditional minimal-pair drills, used for decades in language teaching go something like this :T : okay, class, on the board, picture #1 is a “pen”, and picture #2 is “pin” . Listen : pen (points to #1). Pin (points to no #2) (several repetions). Now, i’m going to say either #1 or #2. you tel me which ready? (pause) pin.Ss : #2T : good. Ready. PinSs :#2T : okay, (pause) penSs : #1

5. Grammar (nolasco & arthur, 1987 : 45, 46)

6. Discourse (nolasco & arthur, 1987: 40, 41)

7. Strategy consciousness raising (nolasco &arthur, 1987: 105, 106)

8. Interactive techniques

Interactive techniques are almost impossible to categorize, but here few of possible types, gleaned simply from the table of contents of friedenk klippel’s highly practical little resource book, keep taking : comunication fluency activities for language teaching (1984):• Interviews• Guessing games• Jigsaw tasks• Ranking exercises• Discussions• Values clarification• Problem-solving activities • Role play • simulations

9. Individual practice : oral dialogue journals

For extra-class practice, aside from recommending that your students seek out opportunities for authentic use of english , several teacher trainer (celce-murcia and goodwin, 1991; macDonald, 1989) recommended using oral dialoque journals. Written dialog journals (where the student records thoughts, ideas, reactions, and the teacher reads and responds with written comments have bee n use for some time.

Thank you