Goals and problems in teaching speaking

Of all the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), speaking seems intuitively the most important. People who know a language are referred to as ‘speakers’ of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing. And many, if not most, language learners are mainly interested in learning to communicate orally. Classroom activities that develop students’ ability to express themselves through speech – mainly informal conversation – would therefore seem an important component of a language course.

It is very difficult to design and administer procedures that actually get students to talk: more so, in many ways, than to get them to listen, read or write. So let's start by defining the main goals of classroom activities that are designed to promote oral interaction, and the accompanying problems.

Goals

The students should actually talk a lot. As much time as possible during the activity should be taken up with talk by the students themselves. This may seem obvious, but in many activities, a lot of the time is actually filled with teacher explanations, pauses, reading texts or instructions, or classroom management issues.

The language used should be of an acceptable level. Students should express themselves in language that is relevant, easily understandable and reasonably accurate. This does not mean that everything has to be absolutely correct, only that it is free from pronunciation, lexical and grammatical errors that interfere with the fluent communication of meanings. (For a discussion of the teaching of pronunciation, see the last section of this chapter.)

Pause for thought

What, in your experience as either student or teacher, are some of the problems in getting students to talk in the classroom?

Comment

Some of the main problems I have come across are the following:

• Reluctance to speak in English in the classroom. A very basic problem is students’ lack of willingness to communicate (WTC) in English (Yashima, 2012). This can be rooted in a number of factors, including shyness, lack of confidence, aversion to speaking in front of an audience, fear of making mistakes or of losing face.