Question-answer Technique and the Development of Speaking Ability
问答技巧与口语能力的发展
Question-answer Technique and the
Development of Speaking Ability
Contents Abstract (1)
Key words (1)
I. Introduction (1)
II. What are the Characteristics of Spoken Language? (1)
III. Difficulty in Improving is Spoken English in Classroom (2)
IV. The Importance of Teaching Spoken English (3)
V. The Teaching Stages to Teaching Spoken English (4)
5.1 Gaining the Students Interest (4)
5.2 Learning the Language (5)
5.3 Producing the Language (5)
VI. Value of Question-answer Technique in Classroom (6)
VII. The Practice of Question-answer Technique in the Classroom (7)
VIII. Question-answer Technique and the Development of Speaking Ability (8)
IX. Conclusion (11)
References (12)
摘要：在英语教学当中，口语在英语中是很重要的部分。每个人学习英语更多的是为了交流。问答技巧在口语中扮演一个很重要的角色。然而，最重要是让学生感兴趣并熟
练使用它。
关键词：问答技巧；口语；发展；能力
Abstract: A brief overview of teaching spoken English, spoken English is very important in English study. Everyone accepts the proposition that language is
means of communication. While question-answer technique, role working is
very useful in oral training, however, the most important thing is to make the
students interested in what they are talking and keep them talk.
Key words: question-answer; speaking; development; ability
I. Introduction
With the rapid growth of China’s economy and interaction with the outside world, there is a growing need among Chinese students to learn English in middle school. However, after eight or more years of English study, more often than not many Chinese students still feel it hard to speak the language. Speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his/her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly. So, as teachers, we have responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom and the testing room.
II. What are the characteristics of spoken language?
Speaking is the skill that the students will be judged upon most in real-life situations. It is an important part of everyday interaction and most often the first impression of a person is based on his\her ability to speak fluently and comprehensibly. So .as teachers, we have a responsibility to prepare the students as much as possible to be able to speak in English in the real world outside the classroom and the testing room.
Speaking is a skill, just like swimming, driving a car, or playing ping-pong. Too often, in the traditional classroom, the learning of English has been relegated to linguistic
knowledge only, e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and grammar rules, with little or no attention paid to practicing language skills. How can we tell the difference between knowledge and skill? Bygate (1987:4) points out one “fundamental different is that both can be understood and memorized, but only a skill can be imitated and practiced one of the characteristics of speech in everyday life is that speech is spontaneous. That is, in most situations, people do not plan ahead of time what they are going to say. Only in more formal situations, such as when a person has been asked to give a speech, do people plan and organize their speech. The fact that speech is spontaneous means that it is full of false starts, repetitions, incomplete sentences, and short phases. So, should we expect the students to produce complete sentences in the language classroom? Bygate (1987:8) points out that teachers may be requiring their students to do more forward thing and planning than native speakers do in real life!
III. Difficulty in improving students’ spoken English in classroom
In Chinese language classroom, many students have great difficulty in improving their spoken English. The reasons are as follows.
Firstly, most of the speaking activities are of the traditional types, such as reading the dialogue, reciting texts, doing translation, and the materials chosen for the students are non-authentic where students feel deadly bored instead of appreciating them and accepting them. Many teachers do not have many ideas of the role of speaking, nor do they know the importance of providing a natural circumstance of speaking.
Secondly, another aspect of producing spoken language is the time-constraint. The students must be able to produce unplanned utterances in real time; otherwise people will not have the patience to listen to them.
Thirdly, although speaking has been included in the National Plan for English teaching in schools in China for the past 15 years, the percentage of time devoted to activities in which students can communicate with each other in English remains small in the whole class. Similarly, the method of giving priority to listening and speaking has been advocated, yet it has had little effect. Both teachers and students think it neither realistic nor necessary to teach or learn speaking. It seems to them that their main objective is reading not speaking. They may also think speaking is not a skill worth cultivating because Chinese students have little chance to communicate with native speakers. And more readily they will admit that whether the students can go to university
or a college mainly depends on the reading and writing, not speaking, for almost all the important examinations do not consist of speaking test.
It is important for teachers to correct mistakes made during speaking activities in a different way from the mistakes made during a study exercise. When students are repeating sentences trying to get their pronunciation exactly right, then the teacher will often correct every time there’s a problem. But if the same teacher did the same thing while students were involved in a passionate discussion about whether smoking should be banned on tourist beaches, for example, the effect might well be to destroy the conversational flow. Constant interruption from the teacher will destroy the purpose of the speaking ability.
Many teachers watch and listen while speaking act ivies are taking place. They note down things that seemed to go well and times when students couldn’t make themselves understood or made important mistakes. When the act ivies have finished, they then ask the students how they thought it went before giving their own feedback. They may say that they liked the way student A said this and the way student B was able to disagree with her. They will then say that they did hear one or two mistakes and they can then discuss them with the class, write them on the board or give them individually to the students concerned. In each case, they will ask the students to see if they can identify the problem and correct it.
As with any kind of correction, it is important not to single students out for particular criticism. Many teachers deal with the mistakes they heard without saying who made them.
Of course, there are no hard and fast rules about correcting. Some teachers who have a good relationship with their students can intervene appropriately during a speaking activity if they do it in a quiet non-obtrusive way. But it is a risky enterprise. The general principle of watching and listening so that you can give feedback later is usually much more appropriate.
IV. The importance of teaching spoken English
In my opinion, those who think the major objective of the students is reading not speaking have ignored some obvious pedagogical facts:
Firstly, generally speaking, people have the notion that learning English has something to do with oral English. When one says some students are good at English, people will naturally think he or she can speak English well. It may well be suggested that students come to school to study English with the strong wish that they come to learn to
speak it. For example, children after their first lesson always show their satisfaction when they say “good morning” or “thank you” to each other. Their attitude towards English is very positive and they are eager to learn more. I would suggest that speaking could increase the students’ interest in and enthusiasm for English learning. “The development of oral ability is a good source of motivation for most learners” (Harmer, 1991, 53).
Secondly, oral language can be very useful for the development of reading and writing skills. As Rivers points out, “When we read and write, we call upon what we know of the language orally.” (Rivers, 1968, 20). He goes on to say that there must be a connection between reading and speaking. If the students are reading, then they are using their oral language, too. If a student has poor oral language, his reading ability may also be poor. Similarly, Rivers (1968) argues that writing involves oral ability as well.
Although many teachers with poor oral ability may have some difficulty in teaching English, however, it is by no means impossible for them to do so. It can be suggested that they teach oral language by the indirect method. The teachers who lack oral ability may use a recorder to provide an authentic accent and some authentic materials like dialogue for students to imitate. They can also make good use of class time for active participation by all their students. So the teachers can make up for their deficiency in oral ability by encouraging the students’ participation with well prepared lessons, highly organized activities and effective techniques.
The view that speaking is not a skill worth cultivating because Chinese students have little chance to communicate with native speakers may be judged shortsighted. We would realize that the generation we are teaching will have much more access to English speakers in the future with the further development of the open-door policy. It would be a pity for the teachers to find their students severely inhibited and embarrassed when the opportunity arises for them to speak English.
V.The Teaching Stages to Teaching Spoken English
When teaching a foreign language, there are three main stages that need to be considered during a lesson.
5.1 Gaining the students interest.
During this stage the teacher must provoke the students imagination, gain their interest and help them to engage with the topic they are going to study. The most common method is to set a reading or listening task. The students will read a text or listen to a tape. The task will most probably introduce new vocabulary and grammatical structure or even
provide a model for the students to reproduce. Research has shown that motivation is one of the most important variables in successful language learning. Teachers can do a lot to increase and maintain the motivation of students by the types of tasks that they organize in class. Students are eager to speak when the topics are interesting or there is a clear objective that must be reached. Again great care should be taken to make sure the task is in line with the students’ ability to deal with this task. If the task is too easy, the students may think it is childish and thus lose interest.
5.2 Learning the language
Hopefully, the students are now attentive and willing to learn. In successful speaking tasks, the students talk a lot in the foreign language. One common problem in speaking activities is that students often produce one or two simple utterance in the foreign language and spend the rest of the time chatting in their native language. Another common problem is that teacher talks too much of the time, thus taking away valuable practice time from the students. During the second stage they will do most of their learning. Students have to practice the new vocabulary and structures. The teacher may drill the whole class, listen and repeat, set individual tasks or even group work.
Whether the task takes place among the whole class or in small groups, a successful task should encourage speaking from as many different students as possible. The task should be designed in a way so that the outspoken students do not dominate discussions. When necessary. The teacher may interfere to guarantee equal opportunities for students of different levels. The important thing here is to use it in the final stage.
5.3 Producing the language
In a successful speaking task, the language is at the right level. The task must be designed so that students are likely to give up or revert back to the native language. While teaching spoken English, productivity is most important and therefore deserves the vast majority of time during a lesson. Students should have a task to complete that requires them to communicate using the new vocabulary and structures. The students have hopefully learnt the new language, but it remains passive and unusable, locked in their minds. Practice will allow them to become used to using the new language and turns passive knowledge into active, usable language. This is perhaps the most important stage for the students as their knowledge is vast but lacks the ability to use it.
VI. Value of question-answer technique in classroom
The first characteristic of a successful speaking test is that students talk a lot in the foreign language. This is the strongest way for using question-answer technique because it increases the time for each student to practice speaking in one lesson. The only way to become good at a skill is to practice it. Nobody expects to be good at playing ping-pong the first time they try even if they already know all the truth of speaking a foreign language. Since the students will probably not have enough opportunity to practice speaking in English outside the classroom, it is our responsibility as teachers to give them as many opportunities in the classroom as possible. Speaking in question-answer technique is more natural. Because in real life, we spend most of our time talking to one other person or to a few other people, it is usually a more formal situation where we have spent time preparing what we are going to say. Rather than try to include the whole class in a discussion, it is often better to divide the class into groups so that a number of parallel discussions can take place. In this way more students get a chance to speak, although it is more difficult for the teacher to monitor. At the end of the discussion phase there can be a period when the whole class comes together to compare conclusions. Each group can choose a reporter to take notes and report back on the discussion that took place in his or her group. The groups can also report back using a poster to show the others. Different small groups can work at different levels if the teacher groups them according to language proficiency level (Cook&Nicholson, 1992.32). It is inevitable that some students in a class will be more advanced than other students. If teachers modify a given task to make it easier for slower students and more challenging for more advanced students, then all students will continue learning and remain more motivated. Even when teachers do not modify the task, students will naturally perform to their ability more readily in a whole class (Brumfit, 1974:77).
On a broader level, Cooke and Nicholoson point out that question-answer technique helps students learn to work cooperatively and it helps them develop interpersonal skills. When students work with other students who are not their friends, they learn how to work with a wider variety of people and this fosters development of tolerance, mutual respect and harmony (1992:34).
Students often ask that you correct all their mistakes. It is easy to prove them wrong. Correct every single mistake they make whenever they speak to you and they will soon see it’s frustrating, lack of motivating and not very useful. Although students may make many mistakes. The most important thing is for them to communicate their ideas fluently.
Correction is most important. You want the students to hear their classmates make mistakes uncorrected at this stage, it will enforce the mistakes in correct usage. When the
students have learnt the language and realized the common mistakes they can learn to correct themselves. The realization of their mistakes is the key to correction. You can constantly correct a student with absolutely on effect. They have to realize their own mistakes. This is best done at class level rather than individually.
The students need to speak fluently and gain confidence. If they are over-corrected they will lose confidence, especially if the teacher interrupts them while they are making a point or even a joke. At this stage the best form of correction is feedback. This involves taking notes of the common mistakes made during the exercise then feeding back the information to the whole class. With this method mistakes can be explained. The correction can be drilled. The whole class repeats the correct sentence. And the students can take useful notes.
VII. The practice of question-answer technique in the classroom
It is important to give the students a variety of speaking activities so that they will be able to cope with different situations in reality, designing a variety of activities is that the students have different learning styles, so some kinds of activities may suit some students, while other activities may suit other students. Littlewood (1981:20) divides communicative speaking activities into two types: functional communication activities and social interaction activities. For beginners, Littlewood points out that it is necessary to also include what he calls pre-communicative activities, which are more structured and allow the learner to practice the forms of the language as much as possible, however, we should make speaking tasks communicative. Question-answer technique is the most efficient and useful task in any speaking. The students get the chance to communicate with each other, and it is possible for the teacher to visit and talk with every group in a single 50-minute lesson. This gives the students the greatest chance to speak to each other and to communicate. It is also possible to feedback to the whole class in a short time as well. Many tasks are suitable for question-answer technique. The students can be asked to design posters and leaflets for the products and a group presentation including introducing themselves, describing their products and companies and performing a television style commercial.. In the example of the customer and shop assistant, the students will learn some useful phrases or even hear or read a dialogue. The phrases can be taught in many different ways. This is the learning stage; the students will be given a task, and they actually have to communicate with each other to achieve a result. This is very important,
and makes the difference between a student with a lot of knowledge and a student who is able to speak English.
Teachers of English generally make three basic level distinctions:
Beginners: beginners are those who don’t know any English. Success is easy to achieve at this level and easy for the teacher to arrange. But then so is failure! Some adult beginners find that language learning is more stressful than they expected and reluctantly give up. However, if things are going well, teaching beginners can be incredibly stimulating and great fun. It may be restricting for the teacher, but the pleasure of being able to see your part in your students, access is invigorating.
Intermediate students: success is not so easy to perceive here. Intermediate students have already achieved a lot. Gone are the days when they could observe their progress almost daily. Sometimes, it may seem to show students what they still need to learn without being discouraged. One of the ways of doing this is to make the tasks we give them more challenging and to set clear goals for themselves so that they have something to measure their achievements.
Advanced students: they already know a lot of English. There is still the darer of the plateau effect so we have to create a classroom culture where learning is not seen as learning a language little-bit-by-little-bit. At the advanced level, we need to be able to show students what still has to be done and we need to provide good clear evidence of progress. We can do this through a concentration not so much on grammatical accuracy, but on style and perception of appropriate, commutation and inference, helping students to use language with more subtlety. It is at this level, especially, that we have to encourage students to take more and more responsibility for their own learning.
VIII. Question-answer technique and the development of speaking ability
The aim of communicative activities is to encourage purposeful and meaningful interaction between students. Communicative tasks are designed so that students have a reason or a purpose for speaking: they are bridging information or opinions of their fellow students. Not only are those activities motivating in the classroom, but also they offer a challenge that mirrors real-life interaction. Speaking activities need to be very carefully structured at first, especially at lower levels, so that the students have few demands on them. It is often difficult for students to come up with ideas at the same time as having to cope with the language. They need something to speak about, such as a picture; or a
purpose, like performing a role-play from the context of a reading text. As they become used to doing controlled and guided activities, students become surer of them and more adventurous so that free activities can be attempted.
Question-answer technique enables the students to talk about themselves and to communicate their own needs and ideas; these activities are usually designed to give either creative practice opportunities for predicted language items, or general fluency practice, where the specific language focus is less relevant. The students are given the opportunity to experiment, to see how far they can communicate in situations where the people speaking makes all the choices of language used; to practice the fluent use of language they know. In general these activities both increase the students’motivation. Since the students talk for themselves, it helps bridge the gap between the rather artificial word of the classroom, with its controlled language practice, and the real world outside. Of course, any situation the teacher sets up in the classroom for such experimentation will, to a certain extent, determine the language used, for any limited communicative situation one can predict some of the language items likely to occur and teachers often plan a free stage to follow the introduction and more controlled practice of language items. For example, a discussion about favorite television programmers can follow the presentation and practice of vocabulary items. The most important point remember is that the students must have a reason for speaking in order for the activity to be filled-----either an opinion gap or an information gap. The existence and bridging of this “gap” must be carefully planned for a successful speaking lesson.
Question-answer techniques are an organic part of the whole process of English language teaching. They are not isolated activities, but an integral part of the lesson in which they are used. As an indispensable supplementary form, they are the continuing and deepening of classroom teaching. Question-answer technique can help students enrich their knowledge, broaden their view and develop their intelligence and abilities. They can also help to teach students in accordance with their aptitude, cultivate their interest and give full play to their skills, thus to enable them to learn in lively and active way.
Question-answer techniques are not simple repetition of classroom teaching. They have the following features: first, as a supplement, they must be based on textbooks and combined with classroom teaching. The purpose of conducting question-answer technique is to make up the limitation of classroom teaching and help to fulfill the teaching tasks, that is, to consolidate students basic English knowledge and to improve their abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Through this activity, the students can memorize
many professional names in everyday life and have a good command of the ways of expressing one’s profession. In this way, what the students have learned from their textbooks is consolidated.
Secondly, question-answer technique is varied and full of fun. In classroom teaching, the activities are usually routine-based and appear to be dull and uninteresting for the students. While they are sitting in their fixed seats and listening to the teacher carefully, they may feel a bit nervous and their attitude towards English study is not very active.
Thirdly, question-answer technique must be designed to combine learning value with interest and enjoyment. By learning value, we mean that activities must be useful for the achievement of certain aims in language learning. For example, the learning of an English song may be useful for practicing pronunciation, rhyme and rhythm, or structure.
Fourthly, question-answer technique can help to train and improve students’ ability of using English. Since the time set for classroom teaching is relatively fixed and limited, students do not have many chances or not every students has the chance to practice English in class. To enable students to use English and to provide them with more chances of practicing English, the teacher can design various question-answer techniques on the basis of the teaching materials.
Fifthly, question-answer technique must be suitable for students’psychology, age and level. Middle school students are relatively young, but they are vigorous, curious and have a wide range of interests. They are always ready to learn, to ask and to imitate. They are inclined to show themselves and easy to cooperate with. Their way of thinking is at the stage of transforming from thinking in images to abstract thinking. Actives that are too simple or too complicated or, too dull will undoubtedly fail to live up to expectations.
Sixthly, question-answer technique is student-centered. This is a more highly organized technique and keeps the whole work in pairs or in groups or in mingles most of the time. This makes them feel secure and can especially help shy students who would never say anything in a whole class activity. The teacher serves as an organizer and instructor. He adopts effective ways intentionally and consciously to motivate students’internal initiative.
Seventhly, a time limit is usually set for question-answer technique. As mentioned above, question-answer technique is a supplement to classroom teaching. Therefore, question-answer technique should not take up too much of students’ time. They should be planned carefully and reasonably. Otherwise they will distract students’ attention and do harm to their classroom learning and the learning of other courses. Moreover, the time
limit for each activity should be appropriate. If an activity lasts unreasonably too long, the students may feel dull and talk about other irrelevant things.
Lastly, question-answer technique should be easily obtained and inexpensive things. The activities themselves should not be too complex. Otherwise, it will be very difficult for students to operate and the activities will become meaningless. The teacher has to search for some more interesting, more charming and more instructive ways of teaching as a powerful supplement to textbook learning and classroom teaching. Question-answer technique is actually one of such ways. They are an extension of classroom teaching, and an effective way of motivating students to learn more actively. Thus the designing of question-answer technique becomes very important. This activity intends to create a real life communicative situation and to help students practice language. It aims to develop students’ communicative ability.
IX. Conclusion
The trick in teaching speaking is to provide a chance for students to speak and make them speak. Although the teacher’s talk can be good modeling and useful input, it is best to keep the teacher’s talk at a minimum level. There is a belief that students should not be forced to speak when they are not ready yet. So our problem is not having anything to say but not knowing how to say things. And this result from the lack of opportunities to speak is one of the central tasks for language teachers.
Due to limited space, we could only present a few types of speaking activities in this part. We hope that these ideas have stimulated you to think of more creative ways to give the students as much time to practice speaking as possible. At least now you should be able to better analyze the speaking tasks provided by the textbooks and adapt them when necessary to make them more communicative. The most important aspect of preparing students to speak in real life is to give them as many opportunities as possible to practice producing unplanned, spontaneous and meaningful speech under time pressure.
References:
1. Harmer, J. 2004. How to teach English. [M]. Foreign language teaching and research
press.