Spring
2013
Promoting Speaking Skill By Applying A Variety of
Speaking Tasks in ESL/ EFL Classrooms
Ebtesam Alawfi
MA TESL: 508 SLA
Gonzaga University
Promoting Speaking Skill Through ST
Table of Contents
Introduction: ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Literature Review: ................................................................................................................................ 4
A Language Learning Task’s Components and Types: ............................................................. 5
Tasks components:........................................................................................................................................... 5
Types of a language-learning Task:............................................................................................................ 6
Examples of Speaking Tasks: ............................................................................................................ 7
Challenges in Speaking Tasks: .......................................................................................................... 8
Pedagogical Applications: ................................................................................................................ 10
Application for Teachers and Students: ................................................................................................ 10
Application for The Content Area: ........................................................................................................... 13
Conclusion: ............................................................................................................................................ 14
References: ............................................................................................................................................ 15
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Promoting Speaking Skill By Applying A Variety of
Speaking Tasks in ESL/EFL Classrooms
Introduction:
I am Ebtesam Alawfi a MA TESL student in Gonzaga University. I am one of those
people who are interested in any topic related to promoting and developing speaking skills more
than any other skill, as developing this skill was one of my challenges when I started learning a
second language, and it still is. I am interested in reading and learning more about different
strategies that can be applied in EFL/ ESL classrooms to help students going over their different
speaking challenges (e.g. lack of fluency or accuracy) and adopting a variety of speaking tasks is
one of these strategies that I am going to discuss in this paper.
This paper is an attempt to give clear explanation, examples, and applications for
speaking tasks in one place. It also attempts to draw teachers’ attention to the necessity of being
aware of their students’ needs and goals behind learning a second or a foreign language and try a
variety of speaking activities to achieve these goals. If one of the students’ goals was acquiring
the speaking skills that would help them adjust to the world outside or at least deliver
comprehensible messages and get the response that they looking for, teachers should apply
methods that help both of them (students and teachers) accomplish their goals.
There are three research questions that I would like to investigate through this paper:
what are the components and the types of speaking tasks? What are some of the challenges that
language teachers might encounter in speaking activities? What are some applications for
teachers, students, and the content area?
The term ‘task’ could be identified in many different ways and from many different
perspectives. From the pedagogic perspective, Nunan (1991a & 1991b), identified a task as "a
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piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or
interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather
than form” (as cited in Irmawati, 2012, p.10). In communicative and task-based methods,
students give more priorities to deliver the meaning rather than to make use of accurate forms.
However, recent research in the SLA field induces instructors to design activities that focus on
both meaning and form and balance between them.
Another definition is given by Ellis (2000), who identified a task from the
psycholinguistic perspective as “a task is a device that guides learners to engage in certain types
of information-processing that are believed to be important for effective language use and/or for
language acquisition from some theoretical standpoint” (p.197). This definition assumes that a
task has some features encouraging learners to get engaged in processing and producing
language, which in turn is beneficial to second and foreign language acquisition.
In the following sections, I am going to demonstrate tasks’ components and types
followed by some examples of speaking activities that could be applied in ESL/ EFL classrooms.
Next, I am going to explain some challenges that encounter language teachers in speaking
activities, and to conclude with a discussion of some applications for teachers, students, and
content area.
Literature Review:
In this literature review, I will generally attempt to give clearer picture for a language
learning task by identifying it’s components and types and providing some examples, as they
help readers to get better understanding of the notion of a task. Then, I planned to discuss some
challenges that might face teachers who plan to employ some forms of speaking tasks in their
classes and to raise the awareness of the issues that might emerged during these activities.
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A Language Learning Task’s Components and Types:
Tasks components:
Talking about speaking tasks lead us as teachers to think of the necessary components
that each task should have to be efficient and effective. Nunan (1989), pointed out that “the
definition of a language-learning task requires a specification of four components: the goals, the
input, the activities derived from this input, and finally the roles implied for teachers and
learners” (p.47). This paper will be more focused on the first three components that help teachers
selecting and creating their own tasks.
Goals, is the first component identified by Nunan (1989), as “a range of general outcomes
(communicative, effective, or cognitive) or may directly describe teacher or learner
behavior”(49). He pointed out that goals could be explicit or implicit though they often “can be
inferred from an examination of a task” (49). There are many types of goals: communicative
goals, socio cultural goals, “learning how to learn” goals, and “language and cultural awareness
goals” (p.49). Indeed, tasks could be designed to serve one goal’s type or more. For instance, a
task that is created to achieve socio cultural goals, might achieve both socio-cultural goals and
communicative ones.
Input, the second component of a task, refers to “the data that form the point of departure
for the task” (Nunan, 1989, p.53). Sources of data exist everywhere around us; it could be picture
stories, magazines, newspapers, letters, etc. So, teachers can get benefit from daily input
materials that are offered all over around us and use them as the basis for their different forms of
communicative tasks.
Activities, the third component, was identified by Nunan (1989), as “what learners will
actually do with the input which forms the point of departure for the learning task” (p.59). In
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communicative tasks, different activities serve different learning purposes. Activities could be
designed to promote students’ fluency, to promote students’ accuracy, to enable students to
practice specific forms of L2 or the kind of language they might encounter outside their classes,
and to increase students’ mastery of some skills generally.
Types of a language-learning Task:
Pattison (1987), set out seven activity types as the following: “questions and answers,
dialogues and role-plays, matching activities, communication strategies, pictures and picture
stories, puzzles and problems, discussions and decisions” (as cited in Nunan, 1989, p.68).
Questions and answers activities rely on the idea of designing an information gap and ask
students to use a language item list to make choices, “which all fit into given frame” (Nunan,
p.68). These kinds of activities could be used to provide students with plenty of chances to
rehearse any function or structure.
Dialogues and role-play activities require students to perform a scenario (e.g. a potential
conflict between a bank teller and a student who newly opened an account) and to formulate their
own sentences regarding that scenario. Nunan indicated that students become more motivated
when they create their own scenarios and dialogues rather than repeating a given one.
Matching activities are identified by Nunan as, the activities in which learners match
items to complete pairs or sets. ‘Bingo’ and ‘matching given phrases’ are two examples of this
type.
Communication strategies could be identified as the communication activities in which
students are encouraged to practice some strategies of communication, as paraphrasing and
simplifying (Nunan).
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Pictures and picture stories are the activities that require students to describe a picture, to
find the differences, or to reorganize a group of pictures to create a logical story. These activities
are widely used by teachers and students in ESL/ EFL classrooms to foster students’
communication.
Puzzles and problems activities require students to reason, imagine, guess, and draw on
their personal experience and knowledge. These kinds of activities are very beneficial for
students, and they encourage them to get involved in long conversational interaction, as they can
relate them to their experiences and prior knowledge.
Lastly, discussion and decision activities need students to “collect and share information”
to make a decision “(e.g. decide which items from a list are essential to have on a desert island”
(Nunan, p.68). Applying some or all of these speaking tasks in classrooms assist students to
speak the target language willingly and enthusiastically. Furthermore, students will feel more
comfortable to speak as most of these activities are structured in pairs or small groups. Three
examples of speaking tasks that could be used in different classrooms will be provided next.
Examples of Speaking Tasks:
Here are some examples of three different speaking tasks that could be used in ESL/ EFL
settings to promote students’ oral production. The first one is an example of a “situational roleplay for the creation” of ‘Original dialogues’ in classrooms as Krashen (1983), mentioned: “You
are who is sixteen years old. You went out with a friend at eight O’clock. You are aware of the
fact that your parents require you to be at home at 11:00 at the latest. But you return at 12:30 and
your father is very angry. Your father: ‘Well, I am waiting for an explanation. Why did you
return so late?’ You: ‘_______’”. So, students need to compose a dialogue between the father
and the daughter/son that goes along with this scenario. Indeed, this activity or similar activities
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are good examples “of increasing comprehensibility of the input” as Krashen indicated (Data
source: Krashen and Terrell, 1983, p.101, as cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2002, p.105)
The second example of a language-learning task is “a photo-story, consisted of the
narration of a story based on the students’ photographs”. “They inquired about classmates,
family, childhood, elementary and primary education, and the most important celebrations”
(Gutiérrez, 2005). This is a great task where learners have a good opportunity to talk about their
cultures, families, and personal experiences, which an important aspect that should be taken into
account while designing a learning task in general and speaking task in particular, as many
researchers emphasized.
The third task is designed by Virginia Samuda (2001), which an example of focusing on
form (expressions of probability and possibility) through discussions and decisions activities.
Students work in groups to speculate on the identity of an unknown person (for example, age,
gender, occupation) “by looking at a set of objects thought to come from that person’s pocket”(as
cited in Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p.174). Students may produce forms like: ‘maybe it’s a
boy’ and ‘ it is possible that he has no job.’ The idea of this task helps learners to practice
producing such expressions or some forms that they already have learned like adverbs of
sequence. Yet, there are some issues that might emerge during these tasks, which could prevent
students from getting the best benefits from, which I am going to cover in the following section.
Challenges in Speaking Tasks:
There are some challenges that teachers might encounter in speaking activities. Kathleen,
a teacher for beginning students (2013), in Gonzaga University explained some of these
challenges in the interview that I made with her. Kathleen mentioned that some students are
reluctant to participate in speaking tasks either because of their lack of self-confidence or the
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influence of some personal traits. For instance, there are many students who are naturally do not
feel comfortable to speak in front of others even in their native language. Thus, the problem
becomes worse with speaking in second language. Other ESL students might be unable or
unwilling to participate in class discussion or to interact with their classmates, which might be
attributed to some cultural inhibition (Ferris & Tagg, 1996, p.310). For example, in some Asian
cultures, students’ main role in their classes is to listen carefully to what their teachers say, and
they are seldom being asked to answer questions or to convey their voice. Furthermore, she
demonstrated that students’ anxiety towards speaking English in front of others (the teacher and
classmates) is one of the main issues that language teachers suffer from and have to deal with.
Teachers should try several strategies to reduce their students’ anxiety and to make them feel
more secure and encouraging students to work in pairs or groups is one of these strategies.
Moreover, Kathleen indicated that second language learners sometimes tend to speak L1 during
speaking activities with their classmates who share the same L1. In role-plays activities, groups’
presentations, and similar tasks, student have to come to the front and to speak English to the
whole class, but this is not enough for students to achieve linguistic competence, and to lead
them to be aware of the necessity of speaking English all the time in the class. Indeed, students
think of such activities as a way of assessing their performance not as a way of promoting their
second language acquisition. Finally, Kathleen pointed out that some classes are too big so,
teachers cannot integrate all students in group-work activities, as the time and the space are not
always sufficient. Group work activities in big classes as in some EFL sittings lead to restrain
students’ dynamic and motivation because teachers themselves find difficulty in dealing with
these group activities and in motivating all big group students to get involved in these different
speaking tasks.
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Pedagogical Applications:
Application for Teachers and Students:
Through this section, I attempt to emphasize how applying a variety of interactive and
communicative activities in task-based method are considered as a great mean for helping
students promoting and developing their English speaking skills and ending up with acquiring
this target language. In addition, I will state some helpful applications and suggestions for both
teachers and students. Because there is a strong correlation between teachers and students in the
educational process, I felt that it is better to talk about them together in one place and to not
separate them.
As I mentioned previously in my literature review, speaking activities provide students
with many opportunities to interact and to communicate in L2, which in turn would facilitate
their second/ foreign language learning/acquisition. Another good point is that most speaking
activities provide learners with chances to carry out their personal experiences (Gutiérrez, 2005),
so they might feel more comfortable and more willing to get engaged in these activities and to
practice the target language. To get the maximum benefit from such activities, teachers should
pick topics that are global, of interest, and can be discussed from different cultural and linguistic
perspectives. In addition, teachers should be aware of their students’ knowledge of the
second/foreign language, and to what extent they can communicate effectively and conveying
their voices and opinions successfully.
Teachers are required to pre-teach the vocabulary and the common expressions that
students need to deal with in these activities. They also need to teach them the skills and the
strategies required to communicate effectively. Kumaravadivelu (2003), pointed out that because
“learners have only a limited command of the target language,” teachers need to teach them the
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necessary communicative skills to exchange ideas, to express personal points of view, and to
reduce mismatches, which cannot be avoided but they can be manageable (p.82-90).
Teachers’ assessment and feedback could be very beneficial for learning/acquiring a
second/foreign language. They assist students to notice, to remember, and to avoid their mistakes
that in turn lead to improve their oral production in future. Using these two procedures guide
teachers to highlight their students’ points of strength and weakness, and then to set an adequate
plan by which students can work on and overcome their speaking obstacles. Bear in mind,
teachers should not correct students’ every single mistake instead they need to correct more
serious errors because much correction distract students, lead them to frustration, and hamper
their enthusiasm. Implicit correction could be much preferred by students than the explicit one
and asking clarification and eliciting questions like ‘what do you mean?’ or ‘could you give
more explanation?’ is a good way of providing feedback to students and enabling them to speak
more as well.
Because high anxiety in task-based activities prevent students from concentrating on
what they say, speaking well, and learning the target language in general, teachers should adopt
strategies that help their students to be less anxious during these activities. For instance, it is
better for learners to work in small groups rather than as a whole class, which in turn contribute
to reducing their affective filter and improving their oral outcomes at the end. Horwitz & Cope
(1986), investigated students’ anxiety in group and class work through a questionnaire that was
given to students. Findings indicated that “a student who feels anxious when giving an oral
presentation in front of the whole class,” does not feel it when “interacting with peers in a groupwork” (as cited in Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p.61). Moreover, in group-work, teachers should
walk around to help students, evaluate their performance, and to be sure that they are walking on
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the right track. If students experience difficulty in some aspects of a specific task, teachers need
to provide more opportunities for drilling these challenges and to put in more time and efforts to
assist learners going over them.
Motivation has a crucial role in learning/acquiring a second/foreign language.
Researchers in the second language acquisition field have indicated that motivation and language
proficiency are found to be positively correlated. They are interested in identifying the relation
between motivation and language proficiency, and they usually select groups of learners and ask
them to take a questionnaire to measure their degree and type of motivation (instrumental or
integrative) and then to take a test to assess their proficiency in second language. Scoring both
the questionnaire and the test showed that “learners with high scores on the motivation
questionnaire will also have high scores on the language test” (Lightbown & Spada, p.45-65).
Generally, high-motivated students might pay much effort in learning a new language; they
might adopt as many strategies as they can to accelerate this process and to improve the quality
of their outcomes. For instance, they might build friendships with native speakers, watch and
listen to useful programs, do some extensive reading, etc.
Lightbown and Spada (2006), demonstrated “Lessons that always consist of the same
routines, patterns, and formats have been shown to lead to a decrease in attention and an increase
in boredom. Varying the activities, tasks, and materials can help to avoid this and increase
student’s interest level” (p.45-65). Therefore, teachers should be aware of their students’ learning
preferences and to keep an eye on any developments in teaching field to serve this goal. Lastly,
teachers could have a talk with their students openly and explicitly about what they prefer or do
not prefer and work together to make classrooms as comfortable and efficient as possible for
learning a second or a foreign language.
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Teachers should encourage their students to speak L2 all the time in class by raising their
awareness of the advantage of such behavior. To raise students’ awareness of the necessity of
being involved verbally in classrooms’ activities, teachers can send messages to them: “their
voice counts and they, too, are partners in the joint production of classroom discourse”
(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p.49).
Finally, teachers are expected to create as many chances as possible for learners to
interact and to communicate in the second language. However, Kumaravadivelu (2003),
indicated that learners should take a positive role in maximizing their learning opportunities in
their classes through meaningful involvement. By doing that, “they will be able to find their own
path to learning, and the teachers will be able to create the optimal environment necessary for
learning to take place” (p.48). In the next part, I am going to discuss some applications for the
content area.
Application for The Content Area:
Task based activities are usually shown as a way of promoting fluency more than any
other aspects of language. However, teachers can maximize students’ learning opportunities
from these tasks by using them not only to promote students’ functional language and fluency,
but also to serve other lexical and grammatical purposes as well. As I mentioned in the examples
section, teachers and learners can practice some grammatical points like expressions of
probability and possibility (e.g. might, could, must) as well as adverbs of sequence (e.g.
sometimes, usually, often, etc.) in some of these tasks. Samuda’s (2001) previous study that
focused on creating activities that encourage ESL learners to form some expressions (probability
and possibility) showed how these activities could be used efficiently to draw students’ attention
to some forms and features of language (as cited in Lightbown and Spada, 2006, p.174).
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Different research has shown “learners may make slow progress on acquiring accurate and
sophisticated language if there is no focus on form” (Lightbown & Spada, 2006, p.176).
Classroom speaking tasks should be built on providing students with the opportunities to engage
in meaningful interaction in addition to focusing on forms and giving feedback when it is
appropriate as they are very essential elements for acquiring and developing the target language.
Conclusion:
Finally, teaching speaking skill is a very necessary part of learning a second language.
Learners’ ability to communicate and to convey efficient and clear messages in L2 contributes to
their success in that language. Thus, it is important for second language teachers to put in more
efforts and to pay more attention to teaching this skill.
Speaking tasks contribute a great deal to promoting students’ learning/acquiring for a
second/foreign language and developing their different communicative and interactive skills
required to understand others and to be understood easily as well. “In communicative and task
based approaches there are more opportunities not only for a great variety of input but also for
learners to engage in different roles and participant organization structures” such as pair and
group work (Lightbown & Spada, 2006, p.103). These activities provide second language
learners with ideal opportunities to respond to a wide range of interactive functions in a fun way.
In addition, they offer a great chance for language learners who could not be exposed to the
functional language outside classrooms to do similar practice inside their classes. Lastly,
speaking tasks create rich and confident environment where students feel less anxious to
communicate fluently and accurately through these activities and to learn/acquire the target
language as well.
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Keys:
The yellow color means editing or adding more deteals
The gray color means sentences moved up or down
References:
Ellis, R. (2000). Task-based research and language pedagogy. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 193-220.
Ferris, D., & Tagg, T. (1996). Academic listening/speaking tasks for ESL students: Problems, suggestions, and
implications*. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 297-320.
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Gutiérrez Gutiérrez, D. (2005). Developing oral skills through communicative and interactive tasks. Profile Issues in
Teachers Professional Development, (6), 83-96.
Irmawati, N. D. (2012). Communicative approach: An alternative method used in improving students’ academic
reading achievement. English Language Teaching, 5(7), p90.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2002). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching: Macrostrategies for
language teaching Yale University Press.
Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned Oxford University Press Oxford.
Nollenberger, K. (2013, April 25). Challenges in Speaking Activities. (E. Alawfi, Interviewer) Spokane, WA, U.S.
Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom: David Nunan Cambridge University Press.
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