Speaking


 * Chapter 3 **
 * SPEAKING **
 * by Martin Bygate **

There is a distinction between //language as a system// and its //use in certain contexts//. Language as a system can be decontextualized, but in order to communicate speakers should use those resources (grammar) in real contexts for real purposes. How and why speakers conform systematic knowledge to real-life situations, judge the appropriateness to discourse. There can be different //intentions// for speech production, such as asking information, apologizing, and so forth.
 * Aspects of Spoken Language **

Levert (1989) notes //four levels// of decision making: //discourse modeling, message conceptualization, message formulation,// and //message articulation.//
 * An Integrated Model of Oral Language Production **

Choosing of discourse is based on different intentions.and relationships between/among speakers. First aspect to be considered is the kind of identity and formality. Cross-cultural perspectives should also be taken into account. Another dimension is content knowledge, which should be relevant to a manage communication (Selinker & Douglas, 1985). Speakers generally identify preferable discourse features for themselves to facilitate communication, the process that is called "converging" or "diverging" from one's (Spolsky, 1998; Preston, 1989)
 * Discourse modeling**


 * Formulation **

During formulation the speaker chooses a language and conveys her/his message's content. That means to access student’s language store by making meaningful decisions. According to Levelt et al. (1999) there are the following processes:
 * The selection of lemmas
 * The formation of a rough syntactic frame on the basis of initial awareness of the word classes needed
 * The selection of relevant lexemes as well as multiword items
 * The selection of grammatical lexemes
 * The accessing of inflections
 * The preparation of a phonological plan for the utterance

Many decisions depend on speaker and listener especially is short-term memory .For instance, in the productions of anaphoric or cataphoric markers. However, time pressure and the complexity help us to understand why spoken language is less dense that the written one as well as why pause patterns change as soon as speakers become more proficient. All in all, the appropriate practice will allow speakers to become decision makers in the task of formulation. It is evident that rote repetitions cannot give the relevant practice.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Processing Demands and Quality of Performance **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">In this part of the chapter Skehan (1998a) is introducing the idea of language processing in terms of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. He suggests two kinds of memory involvement in this process. These are //extensive memory store// and //lexico-grammatical repertoire//. The former is in charge of accumulation of lexical items (as well as formulaic chunks), which learners resort to in order to make up a quick production of speech. This item store enables students to maintain fluency of speech. The second type of memory, that is lexico-grammatical repertoire deals with production of new utterances. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">This taxonomy has its //limitations//, such as the one that lexical items may not be appropriate to any particular situation, or they might contain inaccuracies hindering learner’s evolvement. However, in the process of generating new utterances it seems more likely to monitor the accuracy in output and elaborate new ways to express ideas. //Interchange// in a //limited capacity model// is another weakness Skehan puts forward, according to which effort of each fraction (accuracy, fluency, and complexity) can affect learner’s capacity to process the other ones. However, Robinson (2000) argues that by manipulation of task factors in case of a //multiple capacity model// the improvement of fluency and complexity is more likely to take place without loss of accuracy. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Though this issue needs more investigation and further development, there are //three main points// to be considered. //First//, the exchange of all the three elements (accuracy, fluency, and complexity) should be managed at the same time. //Secondly//, language application is a mixture of formulaic and generative processes. And //third//, “complexity” of language may involve complex matching of simple language and new concepts.


 * Forms of oral language**

There are different speech conditions that may affect the speech style. They can affect the use of grammar and vocabulary in oral language. The author includes in his chapter four main conditions. The first condition is the lack of time for the speaker, which leads oral language to be less lexically dense. The second condition is that both the speaker and the listener may be at the same time and at the same place. In this case the speaker can refer directly to the environment and to the same context without having to make these points of reference explicit (Chafe, 1985). The third speech condition is the involvement of both the speaker and the listener in the speech. It means that the speaker have an opportunity to refer directly to the listener, use second person pronouns, can expect the listener to talk, etc. The last speech condition explained in the chapter is the fact that the speaker may know the listener and it enables informality in speech style. Thus, the above mentioned speech conditions enable a wide rage of informality in speech style. (Preston, 1989).

The author highlights that while education needs to consider the informal speech, formal forms of oral language are also important for learners. So, the formal speech style should not be neglected

Pedagogy The author notes that teaching speaking skills received emphasis late in the 1940s. The reason was that many language teaching/learning approaches underestimated the role of the spoken language in the foreign language classroom minimizing it to that of introducing the new grammatical material in the foreign language. Spoken interaction did not extend to anything more than question-answer series. With the emergence of the audiolingual approach it was suggested that at the initial stage of language learning both speaking and listening skills should be stressed on. However, audiolingualism did not leave much room for meaningful communication. Speaking was seen as a way of practicing grammatical structures and phonological patterns and of enhancing memorization skills (Fries, 1945). Teaching a foreign language teachers have to pay equal attention to four main skills. However the teaching of spoken language was not always involved in language teaching. It began to emerge only in 1940s. We know that, for example, in grammar-translation method the speech was ignored and the main focus was on the use of texts, its translations in sentence level, without considering the context. However European reform movement changed the main principles of language teaching considering the speech primary issue and the oral methodology central in the classroom. In this period spoken discourse was mainly represented through question answer interactions or the use of written dialogues. Similar attitude had also audio-lingual approach, which came into existence in 1940s. This approach insisted that new language should be taught initially through listening and speaking. However in this approach spoken interaction was neglected. It mainly used oral activities as a way of teaching pronunciation skills and grammatical accuracy. So in 1960s it became evident that these kinds of drills were inadequate for real-world needs and real-life situation dialogues and authentic materials must be integrated in language teaching in order to have more accurate and effective teaching. The emergence of more interactive and realistic drills and exercises (role play activities) taught learners to express a range of speech functions in different situations. All these approaches focused on the nature of spoken language omitting however the interactive grammar and discourse pattern of speech, that is less importance was paid on typical communicative use of language. Concerning that the language is, first of all, a tool for communication, this problem is crucial enough not to be neglected. So communicative approach came to complete this omission focusing mainly on the fluency of language and not just accuracy. This approach contained activities that give learners possibility to communicate with each other in order to resolve some problems. In order to make language learning more interesting and meaningful other supplementary interactive materials such as jigsaw or opinion-gap tasks involving pair and group works were also involved in language teaching.