Teaching by Principles H. Douglas Brown

1. Teaching Speaking
Chapter 19

2. Contents
• Oral communication skills in pedagogical Research
• Types of spoken language
• What makes speaking difficult?
• Micro- and macro-skills of oral communication
• Types of classroom speaking performance
• Principles for teaching speaking skills
• Teaching conversation
• Teaching pronunciation
• Focus on form and error treatment
• The role of feedback
• When and how to treat errors
• Assessing speaking in the classroom
• Item types and tasks for assessing speaking
• Evaluating and scoring speaking tasks

3. Oral communication skills in
pedagogical research
Some current issues in teaching oral communication:
1) Conversational discourse:
The benchmark of successful language acquisition is
almost always the demonstration of an ability to
accomplish pragmatic goals through interactive discourse
with other speakers of the language.
Some parameters of CD transactional vs. interactional
conversation; rules of topic nomination, maintaining a
conversation, turn taking, interruption, and termination;
sociolinguistic appropriateness; style of speech;
nonverbal communication

4. Some current issues in teaching oral
communication:
2) Teaching pronunciation:
While majority of adult learners will never
acquire an accent-free command of a FL, should
a language program focus on tiny phonological
details of language?
How much emphasis should be put on them?

5. Some current issues in teaching oral
communication:
3) Accuracy and fluency
4)Affective factors & language ego
5)The interaction effect & interlocutor effect
6) Question about intelligibility (Are NNSs
intelligible ? )
7) The growth of spoken corpora (data from
spoken Englishes)
8) Genres of spoken language

6. Types of spoken language
1) Interpersonal or interactional dialogue
2) Transactional dialogue

7. What makes speaking difficult?
1. Clustering (Fluent speech is phrasal, not word by word.)
2. Redundancy (Through redundancy ,the meaning can be
clearer.)
3. Reduced forms (contractions, elisions, reduced vowels)
4. Performance variables (hesitations, pauses, backtracking,
corrections)
5. Colloquial language
6. Rate of delivery (RD is salient factor of fluency.)
7. Stress, Rhythm and intonation
8. Interaction

8. Micro- and macro-skills of speaking
• See page 328

9. Types of classroom speaking
performance
1. Imitative (e.g. drills to loosen the tongue)
2. Intensive (self-initiated or part of group work to
practice phonological and grammatical aspects)
3. Responsive (e.g. short replies to the teacher)
4. Transactional dialogues (conveying information)
5. Interpersonal dialogue (maintaining social
relationship) e.g. p.330
6. Extensive (monologue) e.g. short speeches

10. Principles for teaching speaking skills
1. Focus on both fluency and accuracy
2. Provide intrinsically motivating techniques
3. Encourage to use 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
(e.g p. 332)

11. Teaching Conversation
1. Direct approach: involves planning a
conversation program around the specific micro-
skills, strategies, and processes that are involved
in fluent conversation.
2. Indirect approach: Learners set more or less
loose to engage in interaction or meaningful
tasks like TBLT.
Nunan (2004) + Ellis (2003) + Willis (1996) 
emphasize on inclusion of focus on form (FFI)-
analysis and practice of language forms as an
integral part of every task (e.g. pp.334-339).

12. Teaching Pronunciation
• ALM of 40’s and 50’s
• CLT and balance between accuracy and
fluency  pronunciation a key to gain full
command of communicative competence
Bottom-up approach starts from teaching
phonemes and allophones …
Top-down approach give primary attention to
stress, rhythm and intonation

13. A question?
• Should the ultimate goal in pronunciation be
accent-free speech that is indistinguishable
from that of a native speaker?

14. A question?
• Should the ultimate goal in pronunciation be
accent-free speech that is indistinguishable from
that of a native speaker?
• Such goal is not only unattainable for virtually
every adult learner, but in a multilingual,
multicultural world, accents are quiet acceptable.
Native accents have become almost irrelevant to
cross-cultural communication.
• Focus should be on clear, and comprehensible
pronunciation.

15. Factors affecting pronunciation
• Native Language: being familiar with sound
systems of both languages helps diagnosing
the difficulties.
• Age: Children under the age of puberty have
an excellent chance of ‘sounding like native
speakers’; ‘the younger, the better’ is a myth.

16. Factors affecting pronunciation
• Exposure: The quality and intensity (not mere
length of time) are important.
• Innate phonetic ability (= having an ear for
language): whether or not u have a ‘knack’ for
pronunciation, with some effort and
concentration, u can improve your
pronunciation.

17. Factors affecting pronunciation
• Identity and language ego: the learner’s
emerging identity + positive attitude towards
the language and the speakers of the language
• Motivation and concern for good
pronunciation: intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation

18. Focus on form and error treatment
The role of feedback (Vigil ans Oller, 1979,
p.345)
1)Affective feedback 2)Cognitive feedback

19. Focus on form and error treatment
When and how to treat errors
When (Hendrickson, 1980):
Global vs. Local errors:
Examples
For hotel description: There is a French widow in
every bedroom.
The different city is another one in the another
two.
The grammar is the basement of every language.

20. Focus on form and error treatment
When and how to treat errors
How?
Error correction vs. error treatment
p.347
Williams (2005): the best way to help a learner
to repair malformed utterance is, first to assist
the learner in noticing an incorrect form and
second to initiate repair.

21. A model for treatment of classroom
speech errors
• Page 349  the flawchart

22. Assessing speaking in the classroom
• P.351 item types and tasks

23. Evaluating and scoring speaking tasks
• 6 possible criteria:
1. Pronunciation
2. Fluency
3. Vocabulary
4. Grammar
5. Discourse features (cohesion, sociolinguistic
appropriateness, etc.)
6. Task (accomplishing the objectives of the task)