A FRAMEWORK FOR COMMUNICATIVE SPEAKING

Frequently, when students express frustration with their speaking, they frame it as a problem with the environment.

'People don't give time to think.'

'My classmates don't let me speak, they just talk.'

Some re-frame this as a problem with themselves:

'I can't think quickly enough.'

'I don't feel good interrupting other people.'

But few have the insight to see themselves as the cause and the solution:

'I need to find ways to give myself extra time to think. I wonder what phrases i could use? Should i use gesture more? Maybe it's my expression. Perhaps i need to make it more clear than i'm thinking.'

'What is it about me that finds it is so uncomfortable to interrupt others. Are there any methods that i could use which would feel easier to me?'

Most frequently, in conversations with students about issues they’re having with their studies, I have to try and get them to understand themselves better: to take more control over what they do and how they do it.

Me: ‘It seems to me, watching the conversations, that you’re happier listening. You don’t show any signs of frustration. You sit back from what’s being said.’

Student: ‘Really?’

Me: ‘That’s how it seems.’

Student: ‘Oh. So what should I do?’

Me: ‘Well why do you think you do that?’

Student: ‘I don’t know.’

Me: ‘Well I’d say that’s what you need to find out.’

Or with a lower level student

Me: ‘You watch people speak.’

Student: ‘Yes?’

Me: ‘Why?’

Student: ‘I think slow.’

Me: ‘Why no sound?’

Student: ‘Sound?’

Me: ‘Next time, watch other people. Listen! Tell me what sound. Also think. Why no sound you?’

This is a difficult approach – for both teachers and students to take. But one of the ‘Elephants in the room’ when it comes to communicative teaching, is that what we are encouraging is intensely personal. The issues that students have with communication are often rooted in their own character. Yet much though we may know our students as individuals few teachers are willing to ask students to reflect more about what it is about themselves that is preventing them from communicating, and to suggest that such reflection is at the heart of improvement.

 by Oxford University Press ELT