Vol. 4 Issue 17 – Research Paper: ‘Teaching and Testing Intensive Speaking Skills’ by Mamta Amin & Nitin Pillai

Speaking skills are imperative to develop communication competence. However, the need of the hour is to define the kind of speaking to be taught to the students and helping them gain the expertise through engaging classroom practices and valid testing methods. This paper deals with the different theories of speaking before zeroing in on Intensive speaking and promotes a theoretically sound method of teaching and testing Intensive speaking for beginners.

Introduction

The emphasis on having a communicatively competent generation of English speakers has been well established and has found itself as place in the syllabi of universities all across India. Each course in English, whether it is general English or Academic English, propagates the urgency and the dedication to improving the communicative competence of the students. However, it is a proven fact that what is being advocated in the name of communicative competence is simply the teaching and to some extent the learning of writing in English. Reading and listening also find a place, though negligible, in the language classroom. But, Speaking as a skill is never presented, practiced or produced in the language classroom. Joanna Baker and Heather Westrup in their Work Essential Speaking Skills: A Handbook for English Language Teachers have rightly pointed out that

“Many teachers worldwide have to mainly teach grammar and vocabulary because these areas are tested in the examinations. This means that speaking is a neglected language skill in classrooms. Students may have a good knowledge of grammar and a wide vocabulary, they can use this knowledge to pass exam. But they find it more difficult to speak English outside classroom.”

Problem

The observation of Joanna Baker and Heather Westrup stand true as it has been opined by many amongst the English Teaching community that students fail to “communicate” outside the classroom. The need of the hour is to create space for the speaking skill in a language classroom. Before doing so, the tutors/teachers of English must identify the kind of speaking that they want to equip their students with. Research has to be conducted in the different types of ‘talk’ that are available and integrate the differences to create a type of speaking which is need specific and which aids the student to be ‘competent in communication’. Interesting methods of teaching speaking has to be designed and should be supported by an effective testing method that would statistically prove the success of the teaching. The present research reports the pedagogical base, methods, tools and results of teaching speaking to a sample of 20 students who are doing their Bachelor of Commerce, from Gujarat University. Speaking as an activity may be the most commonly used skill. Students who pass out of their Bachelors in Commerce have to hone their speaking skills as they would be expected to appear for job interviews or participate in speaking activities for their further studies. The article will first focus on the theoretical models of communicative competence and the role of speaking within this framework. After which the emphasis will be on selection of the type of speaking for the research, subsequently leading to the classroom practices and the results of the teaching model developed. The researchers have tried to prove the effectiveness of teaching speaking skills by creating a mix of speaking types and using proven testing and teaching practices.

Literature Review

Every course in English should have, at its core, the ideology and theory of communicative competence. The real life implications of each of the four skills and how they can be developed in the classroom are to be kept at the centre of all English courses.  By communicative competence we mean, not only an understanding of the grammatical rules and regulations, not only an over emphasis on the form but a more organic manner of using these grammatical structures to use language in real life situations (Richards 1985, Hymes 1971). Communicative competence also talks about the ‘what’ of language where the prominence is of the use of language for communication of meaning rather than just the learning and repetition of language structures and forms (Wilkins 1976, Widdowson 1978).  A combination of these views will lead us to the understanding that if the teaching of English has to make any impact in the lives of the students then it has to address their need for the use of language in real life situations and be able to exchange and transfer their ideas to the others in a language which is not theirs.  But at the same time be able to do it effectively to achieve the desired results.

The current research will focus on developing the skill of speaking, as all the other three skills are catered to in some manner during teaching and testing scenario of colleges and universities. However, the impact and effectiveness of these too is a matter of concern. English being the principal language of commerce and communication in India, the need for bettering English Speaking skills is a must. Hence the students need to be able to practice and produce spoken language in real life situations in order to progress in life. However, before we can improve their speaking skill, there needs to be a framework on what it is meant by speaking skills.

Numerous attempts have been made to categorize the functions of speaking in human interaction. Brown and Yule (1983) made and interesting distinction by classifying speech in following three categories:

• Talk as Interaction
• Talk as Transaction
• Talk as Performance

Talk as Interaction has a social purpose. It focuses more on speakers than the message (Eg: Small talk, choosing topic, reacting to others, recounting personal experience etc). Talk as transaction focuses more on the message and involves two types of talk: One where focus is on exchange of information, what is said and achieved. Second where the focus is on obtaining goods/services.  Some of the examples of talk as transaction are classroom discussions, group discussions, making a telephone call, obtaining flight information, asking someone for directions on the street, ordering food at a restaurant.  Talk as Performance focuses more on form and accuracy of message and the Audience. Talk as performance is judged on the basis of the effect/impact on listeners. It is more of a monologue. It is predictable and closer to written language. E.g.: Welcome speech, giving a lecture, a report etc.  Out of the three types of speaking mentioned above, it has to be noticed that the interaction and performance can only be suitable if the learners have had some prior training in the use of language. At entry level students will not be able to display or use talk in the form of a performance or as interaction for social purpose because it requires sustained production of grammatically correct sentences with highly contextualized vocabulary. Hence for beginners of language use, it would be advisable to take talk as transaction where a particular need, arising from a particular context, is being fulfilled with the aid of talk.

Speaking can also be considered as an organic process where meaning is created, exchanged and understood in a particular context. Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information (Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997). Burns and Joyce have proven that there can be spoken discourses that occur in particular situations and these can be charted according to the differences in the situations. The view of Burns and Joyce emphatically points out the importance of situations and their implications on the teaching of speaking. It draws a parallel with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment and also matched with the Can Do Statements given by the Association of Language Testers in Europe. This leads us to the understanding that to improve speaking skills, a tutor can first select situations which have a set of register in the form of language functions that appear in that particular situation and then teach students how to excel in the use of speaking skill for the given situation.  If the proper set of situations are selected and students are trained in each of the situations for speaking skills, then the collected language functions of all the situations would lead to the improvement of overall communicative competence.

Oral production or speaking can also be categorized as Intensive (Brown, 2004). This type of speaking involves producing short chunks of language with an aim to display only limited competence in language functions.

‘Intensive speaking is the production of short stretches of oral language designed to demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical, phrasal, lexical or phonological relations.’ (Brown, 2004).

The emphasis, in this type of speaking, is in the production of smaller sentences with limited vocabulary so as to communicate effectively with the other. Such type of speaking is very useful for students who are beginners in the use of English language as they can focus more on the exchange of meaning for the fulfillment of the communicative needs rather than worrying about the length and variety of sentence structures which is normally accompanied by difficult grammatical structures.

Thus, speaking, for the scope of this study, can be defined as a transactional skill which employs short and limited language functions, related to a particular situation, with an aim to successfully exchange information to achieve a desired result.

Research Methodology

From the literature review it was decided to teach speaking of the intensive and transactional kind, where the students are expected to produce short sentences and use selected vocabulary. Based on the Common European Frame of References, ALTE Breakthrough Level was selected for the teaching and assessment of speaking. A student in the ALTE Breakthrough Level or A1 level can be summarized as having a basic ability to communicate and exchange information in a simple way. This can be explained through a simple Can Do statement that a student in this level ‘CAN ask simple questions of a factual nature and understand answers expressed in simple language.’ To have some more clarity the CEFR for Languages and ALTE, Can Do statements were taken as references and it was decided that students will be taught speaking related to specific contexts of Social and Tourist situations. The selection was based on the assumption that the sub situations of the context are something that the student would always encounter in real life. Situations such as asking or giving directions are a part of the Social and Tourist context and hence these were selected for teaching and assessment.

An experimental mode of research was conducted where the students were first evaluated on their speaking skill in the given situation. Post this; there were practice sessions in the classroom where the tutors helped the students in the understanding and production of context specific language. A post test was conducted to see whether the students were able to speak in the same context, after the classroom activities and teaching or not. The sample size was of 20 students in their 1^st year of Bachelor of Commerce. The research design was as follows:

• Pretest
• Developing Teaching Materials
• Classroom Activities
• Post Test

As the success of any experimental study depends on the evaluation of the results, a proper test had to be developed which would capture all the aspects of speaking as defined afore. The researchers chose the Map-cued elicitation developed by Brown and Sahni (1994) as a testing tool. It was also decided to employ the same Map-cued elicitation as a teaching tool. The selection was based on the objective of teaching speaking of the intensive kind, where students are expected to produce short sentences and use limited vocabulary in order to exchange meaning effectively within the situation of giving and asking for directions.  As student’s performance in the developed test would be either short sentence or just one word it was decided to follow the simple evaluation of “correct” or “incorrect” based on a 3 point rubric as mentioned by Brown (2004):

Scoring Scale for Map-cued elicitation

2: Comprehensible, acceptable target form

1: Comprehensible, partially correct target form

0: Silence, or seriously incorrect target form

It has also to be mentioned that the aspects that were chosen for the evaluation were task (accomplishing the objective of the elicited task), vocabulary and comprehension.

The same map-cued elicitation method was employed as the base to develop materials for the teaching of speaking. As the students were all beginners in the use of language, it was decided that the test and the practice tools be kept the same so that the students would be more comfortable in the use of both.  Vocabulary that was to be used in the tasks has been taken from English Vocabulary in use (Pre-intermediate) by Stuart Redman. The following vocabulary was selected and integrated in the classroom activity:

Classroom Activity

The classroom practices saw simple approach, where students were paired in groups of 4 each and were then given the task. Each group would nominate a member who would take the centre stage. The remaining team members would be given the blank handout, which was the map for a city (Appendix I). The objective of each task was for the nominated members to successfully guide their team members to the destination given by the researchers by using short and simple sentences. During the classroom activities, the researchers would pitch in with the needed help and would guide the students in the use of correct vocabulary and correct sentence structures. Teaching of speaking was a part of the classroom activities and as each team was competing with the other, it also kept the motivation level at a higher level.

Findings

The pretest conducted showed alarming results, where most of the students scored very less on the rubrics mentioned above. The results of which are as follows:

Table 1                                                                            % Have Been Rounded Up

As the table shows many of the participants failed to complete the task and where not able to display skilled use of vocabulary. 11 out of the 20 students have scored a Zero in all the three components, whereas 6 are in the range of 10 -30 %, 1 student falls in the 30- 40 % range and barely 2 students reached above 40% range. It has to be noticed that none of the students were able to reach the 50% range or cross it. If the rubrics and the evaluation is any indication of the speaking skill, then it is proven that the students are unable to speak and complete the given task of giving directions to their teammates and hence were not able to use intensive speaking.

An observational method was used to judge classroom practices, where the researchers taught the use of specific vocabulary and sentence structures that can be used to give short directions to others. The vocabulary mentioned afore was then integrated with the Map-Cue Elicitation method and materials were developed (Appendix I to IV). These were then employed in the classroom and were taught to the students by the researchers. Multiple rounds of activities were possible with the same maps as every new activity can have a new starting point and a new ending point. The researchers were able to utilize the same maps but with different direction needs which would ensure a varied use of vocabulary. The researchers found that the students were quick in understanding the concepts and were able to retain them in the successive classes. Some of the students also mentioned that they had tried using intensive speaking and tried giving directions to others outside the classroom and had found it relatively easy and felt that they could ‘speak English’.

After the classroom activities, where multiple rounds of intensive speaking skill were practiced by the students with the help of the researchers another test was conducted of the same manner. The results of the post test are as follows. (Table 2)

As is clear from Table 2, the performance of the students has increased in the post test. They were evaluated on the same parameters as before and were given the test of same difficulty. However, this time the students performed better than before. Each member of the team, who was nominated, was able to convey the directions effectively using short and simple sentences. The researchers also found that the students were far more involved during the tests, because they were able to see the real time significance of the conducted activity. 2 students did not show any improvement, while 2 are in the range of 60-70%, 5 are in 70-80%, 8 are in 80-90% and 3 students are in the 90-100% range. A comparative analysis of the pre and post test would clearly indicate the impact on students’ performance in the use of Intensive speaking. The comparative analysis is present below:

Table3