Developing Materials for Speaking Skills PDF

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20 Developing Materials for Speaking Skills Dat Bao T his chapter first highlights some prevalent methodological trends that have influenced and shaped many essential components in the development of material design for spoken language. Second, a practical framework is proposed for designing materials...

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20 Developing Materials for Speaking Skills Dat Bao

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his chapter first highlights some prevalent methodological trends that have influenced and shaped many essential components in the development of material design for spoken language. Second, a practical framework is proposed for designing materials for speaking skills. Then, the chapter presents a rational for effective instructional materials for the discussed skills, proposes a set of criteria for evaluating materials for speaking, and finally throws light on some methodological aspects that deserve further scholarly attention.

Overview Setting the scene: Speaking skills and the need for relevant materials One way to understand the notion of speaking skills, as suggested by Bygate (1987, pp. 5–6), is by viewing them in two basic aspects: motor-receptive skills and interaction skills. The former involves a mastering of sounds and structures not necessarily in any particular context. The latter involves making decisions about what and how to say things in specific communicative situations to convey the right intentions or maintain relationships. This perception can be further understood by observing that these two sets of skills must not represent ‘clear-cut distinctions’ (Littlewood, 1981, p. 16) or ‘two-stage operations’, but from the start structure must be taught in relation to use (Johnson, 1982, p. 22). Moreover, much research on language awareness also suggests that the teaching sequence does not have to be structures before communication of

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meanings, but content-based activities can organize for learners to experience and respond to meanings first. Arguably, speaking skills are best developed when learners learn to eventually take control of their own performance from an insider perspective (e.g. from the learner), rather than being constantly dictated by external manipulation (e.g. by the teacher). Second language materials, as viewed by Tomlinson (2010, 2011), should be created not only by writers but also by teachers and learners, in a creative process which stretches to the real classroom. Tomlinson’s perception coincides nicely with Nunan’s (1989) view that teaching communication should be seen as a process rather than a set of products. It is also closely related to what Breen (1984, p. 47) calls the ‘process syllabus’. According to this syllabus, when materials are scripted by a writer, they appear in the form of a predesigned plan rather than the final production and are open to reinterpretation by the users of that plan, for example teachers and learners. Both the designer’s original construction and the users’ reinterpretation of this plan have the right to join each other in a creative process shaped by participant experiences, attitudes and knowledge. It is through such interaction that predesigned sketches can be best processed and earn conditions to develop into appropriate materials that promote language learning. In other words, task implementation in the classroom serves as a practical tool for relevant materials to be jointly created. This understanding helps explain why many coursebook activities composed from the writer’s own assumptions while disregarding the users of the books often have problems working in the real classroom. It also explains why adaptation of coursebooks is constantly called into play, especially when the writer’s vision of classroom process fails to harmonize with the teacher’s vision, the learner’s needs and the local contexts. Ideally, if materials are constructed for speaking skills, the interactive process by the designer and the users should take place through speaking, since it would be unrealistic for participants to simply sit there and silently imagine how talk might work from a written script. Section 4 of this chapter will return to this issue with proposals for assessing the quality of materials for speaking.

Trends in materials for speaking skills Arguably, trends in material design progress in parallel with trends in methodology. This should not surprise us since activities in coursebooks are precisely where principle and practice are brought together. In fact, materials published over the past five decades have been clear indicators of how the key principles of communicative approaches are incorporated into speaking activities. Although this chapter limits itself to spoken language, it does not seem possible at the moment to separate general trends in materials for speaking from those for other basic skills, since these materials are all subject to similar debates. If in the mid-1960s, the learning of linguistic systems was emphasized as the main method to master a second language (Johnson, 1982), the 1970s witnessed a

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‘communicative revolution’ (McDonough, 1993, p. 20) in which ‘meaningful activities’ (Mockridge-Fong, 1979, p. 91) replaced mechanical language exercises. This change, however, was not perceived by many teachers and learners as a beneficial revolution at all since it took away all the confidence learners used to have thanks to what they perceived as systematic and sufficient grammatical input. In view of this, the 1980s saw attempts to make the communicative approach less extreme, so as not to put too much emphasis on use and ignore the learners’ need for linguistic knowledge (Morrow, 1983; Scott, 1983; Swan, 1983, 1985; Dubin and Olshtain, 1986). Examples of the reaction against the strong version of the communicative approach were the criticism that the new methodology was attempting to replace the structural approach (Dubin and Olshtain, 1986); the criticism that in fact the new method had not made the learning of grammatical knowledge any easier than before (Swan, 1985); and the appeal not to deny the value of a structural framework in supporting rules for use (Scott, 1983). Alongside these debates, scholarly efforts were invested in how to harmonize the opposing tendencies, by considering the fact that form and use in second language teaching should not be mutually exclusive. By virtue of this compromise view, the early 1990s saw the idea of a multidimensional syllabus becoming more explicitly and systematically addressed, which opened up new possibilities for encompassing a more comprehensive series of teaching dimensions such as functions and notions, roles and skills, themes and situations. The main purpose of this type of syllabus, as pointed out by (McDonough and Shaw, 1993, p. 50), is ‘to build on a range of communicative criteria at the same time as acknowledging the need to provide systematic practice in the formal proprieties of the language’. The recognition of learner differences and the importance of divergent responses in learning have been reflected in materials developments over the decades. Educators and materials writers alike demonstrated a tendency to resist activities in which discussions invite right and wrong answers because that would reduce learning complexity (see, for example, Turner and Patrick, 2004; Meyer and Turner, 2006; Patrick et al., 2007; Graff, 2009). Learning complexity has also been demonstrated in today’s English language teaching materials when they are no longer represented in a single textbook but come as a multidimensional package (Littlejohn, 1998; McKay and Tom, 1999; Lyons, 2003) and this expanded view is a response to the evolving of pedagogical beliefs (Murray, 2003) as well as a reaction to the implementation of all the technological advances in the industry to the extent that it seems like a standalone textbook could become a thing of the past. The concept ‘textbook’ might imply that teachers are somehow ‘deficient’ in their ability and knowledge and thus have to solely rely on the textbook as their primary source of knowledge. A textbook can become a ‘tyrant’ within the classroom (Williams, 1983), demanding there be no room for deviation from it or for personalized learning. Since the classroom environment is often not heterogeneous but mixed to some degree in linguistic proficiency, interpersonal skill, age, academic background, gender, personality, language aptitude, learning style and other factors (see, for example, Woodward, 2001), one of the major concerns of language materials is the capability of

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‘catering for the diversity of needs which exists in most language classrooms’ (Nunan, 1991, p. 209). Language teaching is full of choices and alternatives (Dougill, 1987; Graves, 2001), and no one is totally sure of which way is right. For an example of this trend, let us examine three activity samples that deal with a similar theme, namely describing objects, taken from three English coursebooks published in 1978, 1991 and 1999. In Streamline English (Hartley and Viney, 1978, 1996), Lesson 6: A Nice Flat (see Figure 20.1) students are asked to describe a room from a given picture. There is no freedom of choice and hardly any peer interaction involved in this task since all information comes directly from the same visual. Every learner performs the same role. In Interchange – English for International Communication. Book 3, Activity ‘Same or Different?’ in Unit 12 (Richards, Hull and Proctor, 1991) students are provided with several sets of pictures depicting different object items and invited to discover how these items differ by asking each other questions. This activity utilizes the decoding and encoding of information gaps, which encourages students to exchange factual data. There is still no freedom of choice but at least learners are given the opportunity to interact for a purpose. There are two different roles to perform: information seeker and information provider. In Language in Use Pre-Intermediate (Doff and Jones, 2002), Activity 1 of Unit 3: Talking about Places (see Figure 20.2) invites learners to look at a picture of five different doors and imagine the rooms behind them. Since there are no right or wrong answers, students are encouraged to process meanings from their own experiences and perspectives. Besides providing freedom of choice, this material takes learners beyond the level of information gap into two new areas: reasoning gap, which involves deriving data by inference and perception, and opinion gap, which encourages personal feelings and attitudes. Many examples like this one can be found across coursebooks over the years. They demonstrate a shift from mechanical rehearsal of language structure to more interactive exchange of factual information, and another shift from interactive exchange of factual information to more dynamic processing of personal opinions. It has to be admitted, however, that changes in course materials do not always represent a move from the out-of-date to the latest, but may happen in reverse. For example, it is observed by Tomlinson (1998) that sometimes a coursebook sells successfully not because it has something new to offer, but because it goes back to what is old. By and large, many conscious efforts for improvement made by course-writers over the decades have enabled materials design to evolve towards increasingly sophisticated levels. Sometimes such evolution causes practitioners to feel worried about how to handle all this sophistication effectively in teaching. For example, in the 1980s, some theorists believed that the more sophisticated the syllabus, the more difficult to implement it in the classroom (Eskey, 1984). However, materials development in recent years tends to prove the opposite: as course design becomes more thoughtful,

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FIGURE 20.1 A nice lat. Source: Hartlet, B. and Viney, P. (1996), Streamline English – Departure (38th edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

it also tries to make language teaching easier in the classroom by aiming for less teacher preparation (e.g. by improving teachers’ manuals). Examining publishers’ claims over several decades is another way to recognize change in materials development. It shows us a gradual transfer from a strictly communicative focus towards a more balanced view in teaching both grammar and communication, justified on the grounds that form and use are not necessarily two opposing areas. For example, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, such expressions as ‘real-life contexts’, ‘functionally based’, ‘meaningful and effective communication’ are seen to fill publishers’ claims; then since the early 1990s, the key concepts have included ‘systematic development in combination with other three skills practice’, ‘core grammar structures’ and ‘different learning styles and teaching situations’ (McDonough and Shaw, 1993, pp. 22, 25, 46). Textbooks in today’s context, apart from being communicative, have a tendency to focus on themes of global significance and harmless topics to suit as many contexts as possible. They take care not to touch on cross-culturally sensitive and controversial topics that may cause damage to any set of cultural values (see, for example, Sampedro and Hillyard, 2004). However, in trying to be culturally harmless and free from provocation, materials often remove excitement (Leather, 2003), romanticize the world (Banegas, 2010) and introduce

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FIGURE 20.2 Talking about places.

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aspirational language rather than truthfully reflect a variety of real-life spoken styles (Gray, 2002, 2010).

A proposed framework for developing materials for spoken language This section proposes an approach comprising five recommendations to guide how materials can be developed for speaking skills, namely: (1) conceptualizing learner needs, (2) identifying subject matter and communication situations, (3) identifying verbal communication strategies, (4) utilizing verbal sources from real life and (5) designing skill-acquiring activities.

Conceptualizing learner needs Materials design should begin from who learners are in order to link language study not only to learners’ future use but also to their present receptivity. As Brindley (1989, p. 70) indicates, it is important to look at both subjective needs and objective needs in the learner. The former comprises such areas as learners’ speaking proficiency and difficulties plus real-life conversational situations outside of the classroom, all of which will help the teacher decide what to teach. The latter includes such aspects as personality, learning styles, cultural preferences and expectations of the course, all of which will help the teacher decide how to teach. As an example of needs, research on English materials in Korea and Japan has shown that many Korean learners enjoy learning English in order to express themselves while many Japanese learners prefer to learn it to understand and discuss foreign cultures (Yuasa, 2010). Needs assessment, as suggested by Graves (1996), should be viewed as an ongoing process which takes place before, during and after the course. Seeking to know learner needs, after all, does not mean describing learners but more importantly, it means actually involving learners in the process of developing materials and giving them a voice in their materials.

Translating needs to subject matters and communication situations Knowledge about learner needs will serve as the foundation on which experiential content is selected for instructional materials. As learners reveal what they want to do with the target language, they also directly or indirectly imply the type of environment where the language is to be used. It is now important to also explore the context of such environments and form some idea of what skills their society requires of an effective speaker. The more specifically learners state their needs, the more appropriately the

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subject matter can be established towards appropriate sets of topics, situations, functions, strategies, registers, and key structures; as well as the sources to build all these components with. In general, this step is a preliminary effort to outline the instructional content of the target material. Among the more difficult components to search for are perhaps communication strategies, and authentic sources for composing features of natural speech. To support these endeavours, the sections below will discuss some helpful techniques to make these tasks possible.

Identifying verbal communication strategies An interesting experiment on spoken English is reported by Tay (1988). In this study, samples of real, spontaneous speech by ten Singaporean university students were played for 100 British listeners (who were from London and had never been to Singapore before) to listen to and rate their intelligibility. Five speakers scored more than 80 per cent, two more than 70 per cent; the highest was 89.1 per cent and the lowest 56.4 per cent. As factors that impair intelligibility were sought and analysed, it turned out that the main obstacle was not predominantly pronunciation. Instead, some of the more striking problematic features were identified as interaction strategies, styles and registers, whose implications should be considered for transferring to materials design for oral communication. Conversational strategies must be incorporated in teaching materials because they are essential tools to serve the communication of meanings. One way of doing so is by designing tasks for learners to act upon their interlocutor’s speech rather than merely concentrating on their own. For example, learners can be helped to practice building talk upon talk, dealing with interaction pressures such as stealing and sustaining turns, handling unrehearsed discourse, controlling their level of diplomacy and courtesy, choosing when to move on to a new topic, winding down a conversation, recognizing signals when their partner wants to leave the conversation and so forth. Research has demonstrated that when learners are helped to be aware of the use of speaking strategies they will go a long way in improving speaking skills (Huang, 2006). It is therefore essential to build into materials many practical devices that can help facilitate oral production and overcome those communication difficulties arising under time pressure. Bygate (1987, p. 14) suggests five of them: (1) using less complex syntax, (2) making do with short phrases and incomplete sentences, (3) employing fixed conversational phrases, (4) adding filler words to gain time to speak and (5) correcting or improving what one has already said. These techniques have meaningful implications for instructional materials since they help materials designers become more aware of what is the normal process of speech production. They also help learners realize how temporary and flexible spoken language can be and how therefore imperfection can be tolerated as part of the interactive process.

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