TOPIC 45 Teaching speaking and conversing.

The complexity of global comprehension

in oral interaction: form hearing to active and selective listening. From imitative to
autonomous production. Methodological strategies to favor oral production.
INTRODUCTION
The speaking and listening skills are the most challenging ones for our Spanish
learners. Have you ever realised the fact that Spanish students can learn English for
years and at the end of the compulsory education are unable to keep a conversation in
the foreign language?
Nonetheless, the teaching of listening and speaking skills has attracted a greater level
of interest in recent years than it did in the past. English has become the lingua franca
worldwide, moreover, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
and our own curriculum set clear objectives regarding foreign languages, in a line: to
acquire basic communicative competence in primary education, which is the stage we
are dealing with.
Therefore, it is our task as English teachers to provide our students with the necessary
opportunities to improve their communicative competence, since, unfortunately,
English presence in the students social context is limited.
In the following lines we are going to study in depth both skills, the oral interactions
and suitable strategies and methodologies to implement in the classroom. Times are
changing and far away is the foreign English classroom based in writing, grammar and
repeating after the teacher, does this methodology sound familiar to any of you?
The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood
Speaking, conversing and listening in English
First of all it should be pointed out that listening and speaking are two interrelated
skills, as social interaction requires both of them. Besides, reception precedes
production, if children do not understand the spoken language, they will not be able to
learn it.
This is why the development of both skills will be closely related and done in a gradual
way; from the use or listening of single words and formulaic language related to
familiar actions or routines children will gradually develop the ability to produce and
interact. (student of the week). In interactions, at least two individuals participate in an
oral exchange in which production, that is speaking and reception, that is listening,
alternate. In this light, promoting the learners classroom interaction seems the most
appropriate way to combine both skills in parallel real life situations.
However, there are a set of relevant principles that we should bear in mind when
teaching listening and speaking skills at early stages.
In the first place, activities should be meaningful for learners, set in a real context, so
that they can quickly use them for their purposes. To raise their curiosity about the
activities we must present them in an interesting and desirable way, which include
movement, senses, objects and pictures, for instance a magic bag from which they
extract objects related to the activity of that day. Before designing them we can find
out more about our students by asking about their preferences, recalling stories, etc.
In short, children need to listen and speak about something that interests them.
(example: vampires stories)
Due to our students age in Primary education and they limited attention span,
activities should be short and varied.
For similar reasons we should avoid an overload of new information, structures or
vocabulary.
Moreover, before using the words in guided speaking, students need to be provided
with plenty of comprehensible input through activities accompanied with non-verbal
language or visual aids, which offer a valuable contextual support (magic bag
previously mentioned). Here we can mention typical flashcards, imitations, miming,
etc.
At the same time, we must consider Vygotskyan concept of Zone of Proximal
Development, that is to challenge our student, with activities which are neither too
boring and easy for them nor too difficult.
It is generally agreed that for students to engage in communicative activities we should
create a safe, friendly and cooperative classroom atmposphere, thus lowerering the
affective filter.
And since we are working with children, why do not we take advantatge of their
natural fantasy and imagination when designing listening and speaking tasks? For
instance making up new endings for well known tales.
We must not forget that interaction also aims to teach students about the social
aspects of language, such as turn waiting, respect, politeness, registers, etc. Therefore,
role plays, for instance getting to a specific point in a map is an example of social
interaction (excuse me.. thank you)
Finally, communicative competence requires to focus on the meaning, not native like
correctness and on the value of the activity, not the value of the language.
Nonetheless, understanding FL and speaking and conversing is a complex process as
we are going to see in the next points.

The complexity of global comprehension in oral interaction: from hearing to active and
selective listening.
There is a world of difference between hearing and listening, while hearing is a
physical process, listening is a cognitive, emotional skill. And we will all agree that the
ability to listen is vital in order to become an effective communicator.
Listening is therefore a complex and active process that involves a combination of sub
processes, such as hearing itself, which is the perception of acoustic signals in which
the learner hears noises and silences; categorization of sounds according to the sound
categories of language; word recognition, and finally, comprehension, which is
integrating the meaning of words into a longer sequence.
Moreover, there are two subskills involved in oral interaction, on the one hand, ear
training skills, aimed to discriminate sounds, stress patterns, stress in connected
speech and intonation patterns. On the other hand, there are the comprehension
skills, aimed at the understanding the global meaning of messages, as well as specific
information.
In recent years there have been two major approaches to explaining the listening
process called the top-down and bottom-up approaches. The bottom-up approach
sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first decoding (or understanding) the
smallest elements of what they hear the sounds. /p/ is recognised as being /p/ and
not /b/, /i:/ as being /i:/ and not /i/ or /e/ and so on. These sounds are then combined
and the individual words are decoded the listener recognises that s/he has heard
/pi:t/ and not /pit/ /bit/ /bi:t/ /bi:d/ or some other word. The words are then
combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning of /pi:t/ : as in I saw
Pete yesterday or I bought some peat for the garden. To this will be added recognition
of features such as intonation and so on, until we finally reach the non-linguistic
context.

The top-down approach starts from the opposite end : it sees understanding as
starting from the listeners background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of
working down towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively interpret what
they hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the world in general. For
example, imagine I tell them:

McKenzy brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried it in
the garden. I think Im going to have to put a bell round his neck.

they will certainly understand all the words in this passage, but do they understand the
meaning?
I can help you by giving them some contextual or situational knowledge : McKenzy is
the name of my cat. Combine that with their knowledge of the world (the habit cats
have of bringing their owners presents of half dead birds and mice which theyve
caught, and the fact that the noise of a bell will prevent the cat from creeping up on
them unheard) and they have the meaning of the passage.

However much help they did or didnt need, you can see that in understanding the
passage a lot more was going on than just passively decoding the sounds, then the
words, then the sentences. The mind was working actively to interpret the passage,
and using a large amount of non-textual information to do so. And how easy it was will
depend on how close to the forefront of their mind that information was. If, as they
hear the passage, their cat was sitting on their lap, they probably tuned in
immediately. If they have never owned a cat, it may have taken longer.

In recent years it has been the chief approach to listening comprehension in the EFL
classroom, and has led to teachers telling students things such as You dont need to
understand every word, What would you expect him to say? or Try and identify the
main ideas and guess the rest.
Now, taking theory in more practical terms, and more especifically from hearing into
active listening in our primary school lessons.
As we have seen, listening is a complex process, even more for young children. At early
states, listening monopolizes much of the time of learners tasks since they have not
fully developed written abilities and they may be immersed in the so called silent
period. The use of formulaic language (routines, greetings, songs with rhymes for the
weather, tales that repeat the same lines: run run as fast as you can, you cant catch
me, Im the gingerbread man!, etc) is essential to help young learners feel confident
and develop a sense of achievement.
It is important to take into account that the more enjoyable the activities are, the more
engaged and motivated students will be. For instance, we can use puppets with 4 and
5 years students, which will catch their attention.
In order to help learners progress in their ability to understand, we need to show them
some strategies they can use when listening, so that they can move from just hearing
to active listening and understanding.
On the one hand there are the direct strategies, divided again into three categories,
memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies.
In memory strategies we could mention relating images and sounds, for example by
using flashcards or any visual means, as well as employing actions, such as acting out a
new expression: swimming.
Cognitive strategies involve practicing, that is repeating, predicting sounds and
recognizing patterns, receiving and sending messages, such as a role play, inside which
they can use skimming to distinguish the main idea and scanning for specific
information; as well as analyzing and reasoning an expression to understand the
meaning out of key words and then translating.
They also may use compensation strategies to allow the understanding of new
language trough inference of meaning despite limitations in knowledge, such as
guessing, predicting and inferring meaning from the context. They can also overcome
limitations by looking at gestures, mimes or just asking for clarification.
On the other hand, there are the indirect strategies, which aim at clarify the meaning
by the use of social strategies, in which students ask for clarification an cooperate with
others and affective strategies, which intend to lower students anxiety through
positive feedback and reward.
Before talking about more specific activities to use at schools, the organization of a
listening task should be mentioned. There are three stages that should be taken into
account: the pre-listening task, in which students can predict, guess, infer meaning,
look at the context, at non linguistic clues such as illustrations, etc. and by which the
teacher tries to engage them in the activity.
A while listening task, that requires active listening, as they should show
undernstanding through specific actions such as drawing, physical actions, gestures,
completing words, etc.
Having talked about strategies and organization of a listening task, let us go on with
the specific listening activities. They can be classified into three main sections,
according to Littlewood (1981).
Firstly, activities that involve any kind of physical task. The learner here must look for
specific meanings related to a task which he or she must perform. This encourages
selective listening and it is essential to insist on the idea that not every single word
must be understood, but the construction of meaning to accomplish the
communicative purpose is what matters.
Possible activities include bingos, hold a picture, listen to three descriptions and
choose the corresponding one, sequencing, that is identify successive pictures being
described and place them in the correct sequence, locating (place items in the correct
place on a plan of a house=), drawing and constructing, which means to draw a scene
that one listens, to construct a pattern or model, etc. and finally listening and acting
out, as in Simon says.
Secondly, there are activities that involve transferring information. This activities are a
step ahead and here learners are required to extract relevant information and then
transfer it to some other form of text, such as a table, chart or diagram. Moreover, the
information obtained in these activities provides a background for further language
activity, for instance, after listening to several interviews they may be asked to
interview each other to obtain similar information.
Finally, we should mention activities that involve reformulating and evaluating
information. For example, a natural development of the information-transfer activities
would be to give learners a more global task, such as reformulate the important
content in their own words.
To finish with this section, Littlewood also mentions a series of factors that a teacher
must consider when gradually increasing the range of understanding, such as linguistic
factors, for instance complexity and degree of formality,; performance factors such as
accents, speed, fluency and clarity; situational factors as background noise and
acoustic conditions and the type of text, e.g. dialogues, reports, descriptions, etc.
All in all listening is a complex task that precedes speaking and is very related with oral
production, as we shall see in the next point:

From imitative to autonomous production:
Communicating involves oral production as well as listening, since interaction means
negotiating meaning and reach a mutual understanding between speakers. This is
what we aim to achive in our lessons, students negotiating meaning and
communicating. However, often speaking is seen as the most demanding and
challenging skill. Maybe this is due to the many issues that are required to successfully
developing the communicative competence, such as:
Ability to articulate phonological features of the language comprehensibly
Mastery of stress, rhythm and intonation patterns
An acceptable degree of fluency
Knowledge of the basic communicative components, functions, grammatical rules, etc.
Skills in management of interaction, as turn taking.
And finally, skills in negotiating meaning, such as paraphrasing, asking for clarification,
etc.
In the way from imitation to autonomous production, the classification of activities
established by Littlewood in 2004 is especially relevant. In the language learning
process, children go through a series of stages, from simple imitation to more complex
demands and this author proposes a set of five types of activities ranging from form-
focused to meaning focused ones:
a) Non communicative activities, focusing learners on understanding and mastering
the formation of meaning and structures.
b) Pre communicative language practice activities: engaging learners in the practice
of language with some attention to meaning, but not communicating new
messages to others, such as in question-answer practice.
c) Communicative language practice activities, which deal with the pre-taught
language in a context where students communicate new information, as in
information gap activities.
d) Structures communication activities: in which learners use FL to communicate in
situations which elicit pre-taught language but with some unpredictability, such as
simple problem solving activities or guided role plays.
e) Authentic communication activities, in which learners use the FL to communitate
in situations where the meanings are out of prediction, such as creative role plays,
complex problem solving and discussions.
These range of activities are useful because they start from words to authentic
communication in FL. However, in primary education, free production is in most of the
cases out of reach for children at these ages, so greater focus will be placed on the first
four types, leaving the last step for upper grades.
Children are required not to imitate a native like pronunciation with no mistakes, but
to communicate, to interact in the FL, even if they are not a 100% accurate, because
we are focusing on the meaning, on being understood and be able to keep a
conversation going. In a role play we are not going to correct all their mistakes, but
engage them in the conversation and see if they are able to understand each other and
get to the right direction or to get the menu in a bar.
However, how do teachers take these theoretical aspects into practice at early stages?
What methodological strategies can we implement to favor oral production?
Initially, children benefit from activities requiring repetition since they can memorize
vocabulary easily and acquire pronunciation in a natural way. This process emerges
after the so called silent period, which should be respected until children are ready to
orally produce in the FL. In this sense, it is important to give them time to listen and
get used to the sounds in the FL before participating.
Creating a sense of achievement is relevant particulary at early stages, for this reason
it is advisable to begin with simple and familiar concepts.
Firstly, English teachers should center on the use of formulaic language. The repetition
of this language will get students to learn it quickly and have the impression they can
speak a lot. For instance, simple greetings, routines (whats the date), classroom
language: listen, repeat, sit down, be quiet, ect. Asking permission and communicaton
strategies: can you repeat that, please?
First they will repeat it through imitation and gradually use them autonomously.
Then we can move on to the use of flaschards to engage them in oral production, by
repeating the name after the teacher and them all alone.
A step further are the functional communicative actities, among them we can mention
identifying similar pictures with a difference, games in which students need to guess
the card on their back: is it a? and discovering missing information or secrets through
yes/no questions.
Already in communicative activities we could mention the sentence round activity, in
which students in a circle choose a sentence starter and have to complete the
sentence and follow up the story.
Then we have the typical simulations and role plays, for example by creating a
classroom market with stalls and students interacting assuming the roles of customers
and shop keepers.
Further activities that can be implemented are dicsussions, in a basic level they could
just express their preferences and opinions, for instance, about food.
Acting out activities, in primary level should be guided, for instance in a classroom
fashion show, in which they dress up with borrowed clothes and then others describe
what their classmates are wearing according to a script.
Finally, we can mention surveys, with questions and anwers created by them.
CONCLUSION
Throughout this topic we have dealt with the listening and speaking skills, two of the
most challenging and demanding ones for Spanish speakers. As we have seen
interaction is a key word and both skills are interconnected, although listening
precedes oral production.
Europe, as well as the Spanish curriculum sets as one of the main objectives to
communicate in English. However, what is learning a language about? Precisly
communicating, This does not mean that leaners need to reproduce native like
pronunciation with no mistakes, but they do need to be able to communicate, keep a
conversation going and be understood. It is our task in primary schools to search for
the right strategies, some of them mentioned above and new ones which engage our
students in communicative tasks.
Bibliography
Cameron, L Teaching languages to Young learners, Cambridge University Press 2001.
Ellis R Second Language Acquisition, Oxford
Brewster J. ; Ellis G and Girard, D. The Primary English Teachers Guide, 1992. London
Penguin English. New Edition 2002.