3+-+Four+skills


 * 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.

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.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;">
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;">CHAPTER 4 **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;">LISTENING: QUESTIONS OF LEVEL **
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;">Tony Lynch **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">RESEARCH INTO LISTENING **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Modeling the Process **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Information processing which is based on Anderson’s three-stage comprehension model (Perception-Parsing – Utilization) is a very important paradigm in listening comprehension. Listeners can deal with the task by some form of PDP (parallel distributed processing). PDP models of language processes is similar to the work of brain cells, it synthesize the information from multiple sources. Barsalou (1999) one of the critics of this model, states that the purpose of the comprehension is not the same as that of the computers, which is to “archive” information, but to make the individuals ready for real-world actions. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 18px;">

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Phonetic, phonological, prosodic, lexical, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic- these are the levels at which the spoken information is interpreted.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 17px;">Levels of processing **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">The author describes and analyses on the lowest and the highest levels. At the phonetic level speakers should concentrate on certain signals given by interlocutors, which will give some clue about the topic and the overall procedure of the conversation. This is the highest level of interpretation of the spoken language which in its own right gives ground to the understanding of the listener’s experience of their culture in helping them to cope with another culture. After conducting a study with immigrant workers, Bremer et al. (1996) came to the conclusion that high level factors influence understandings and misunderstandings, revealing some linguistic complications, social and cultural distinctions. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Influences on listening Test Performance <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">There are key variables which have great influence on the listening test scores. Some of those are associated with the input, to the task, and to the listener. These issues haven’t been investigated much until the last few years. But during the last few years they have been investigates by several scholars. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">For example, Wu changed the approach of the studies of test method on candidate’s performance from psychometric into mentalistic. And his research results showed that failure in linguistic processing may allow learners make inappropriate decisions with their activated schematic knowledge and also that competence in linguistic processing restricts nonlinguistic activation. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Another investigation was done by Tsui and Fullilove who wanted to find out whether the difference between successful and unsuccessful L2 listening performance can be assigned to failure in either top-down or bottom-up processing. And they found out that Bottom-up processing seemed to be more important in discriminating the listening performance. It can be inferenced from this that less skilled L2 learners are weak at the bottom level, they should rely more on accurate linguistic decoding.


 * Accessing** **the** **Process**

Researchers who investigate issues connected with listening skills have no access to the mental activities of the students. In 1997 Ross introduced a hypothesis that while learning the second language students go through different processing strategies: 1. Noise 2. Distraction 3. Syllable restructuring 4. Syllable identification 5. Key word association 6. Linking with more than one key words 7. Recognition of phrases 8. Recognition of whole utterances. According to Ross, key word association is the most common level among weak listeners. More profecient listeners have an ability to hear key words, keep them in minds and find supporting details for understand the whole message.


 * Factors That Influence Processing**

According to Rubin (1994) there are five factors influencing processing. They are as follows: //text, speaker, task, listener, and process//. But the listener's relevant topical knowledge may also have its influence on processing. According to Lynch (n.d.) listening ability can be viewed as a hierarchy having lower and higher level subskills; so processing includes moving from //decoding// up to //interpretation// and //critical evaluation//. But listening skills are also divided into three types connected with //perception, interpretation,// and //enacting// (Rost, 1990:152-153). Lynch (n.d.) states that learner's listening strategies can be devided into three groups: //metacognitive// (e.g. planning, managing), //cognitive// (such as conscious use of context and schemata), //social and effective// (e.g. requests for clarification).


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">THE TEACHING OF LISTENING: SKILLS AND/OR STRATEGIES **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">According to Brown (1977), in teaching listening we should design a unit of a course which takes into account the so-called “linguistic proficiency” which is the ability to cope with word boundaries, weak forms, elision, etc., and all the other units will put stress on advancing strategy and “metastrategic awareness”. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Field (1998, 2000) argument about the aforementioned points is: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">1. The skills of listening are competencies that native speakers have already acquired and L2 learners still need to acquire. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">2. Strategies are compensatory <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">3. Teachers must help students improve their bottom-up and top-down strategies.