Teaching Dialogical Speech at Different Levels of Language Acquisition

In pairs choose the situation and make a list of three options for it:

be active and polite.

speak 2,5 – 3 minutes.

use informal language and sport lexis.

Discuss all the options and choose the one you both like [ 32, 5].

 

3.5. Advanced level

Questions and concerns often arise among teachers when it comes to advanced students: just what can a high-level learner do? They have cleared the hurdle of fluency problems, as much of the language has become automatic. In other words, they don't pre-translate and then speak. They also don't get hung up on particular words, and instead can explain around unknown vocabulary. When listening or reading, they don't need to translate, and can often guess the meaning of a new word, phrase, or difficult sentence through context. Advanced learners are able to participate in a conversation. At lower levels, students react to the conversation rather than fully join it. How many conversations have you had, or overheard, that progressed like an interview? One side asks a question, the other answers it, and if no further questions are asked, the conversation ends.  
They also can use speaking strategies. This ties into the above, as they adjust their speaking with intonation, rates of speech, nuance, and vocabulary to color a conversation. Advanced learners can talk at length on personal topics, as well as on current topics. Their ability to narrate and describe events and ideas, and to explain around unknown words or phrases, lets them speak uninterrupted for several minutes if necessary. They can also speak smoothly, and link ideas together, aiding long monologues needed for stories, presentations, or dialogues. With unfamiliar topics, or topics that don't hold much personal interest, lengthy discourse becomes more difficult. Some advanced students may enjoy working together with a partner or in a small group, on a dialogue disclosing an issue of social concern [32, 6].

The practical lesson for advanced students is named “Who do you think?

The aim of this unit is to highlight how the same interaction work can be carried out using different language.

                    Preparation :

The teacher prepare some instructions for her students (A and B) on a task sheet or on separate cards (see below), and make enough photocopies for half the class.

   Procedure:

1) The teacher divides the students into pairs. Then she explains how a discourse chain works. (A discourse chain is used to prompt a dialogue. Individual 
responses can vary but they should serve the same function within 
the frame of the given conversation.) The teacher should be make sure her students 
understand this before giving out the task sheets.

2)   The teacher set the task in context and ask the students to take a role

 each.

            3) Ideally students should make a recording which can be played to 
the rest of the class. If tape recorders are not available, some of the 
pairs could perform the dialogue. The teacher should  get the class to listen critically to each version so as to focus on the appropriacy of the different 
choices.

            4) The teacher can substitute 'language school' in the task sheet for any organization or field of activity her students are familiar with.

Task sheet

Read this introduction:

A and B are colleagues in a language school and they meet in the corridor. A has heard a strong rumour that the Director, Peter West, who is retiring, is going to be replaced by John Stevens. John Stevens was until recently the Director of a rival organization, and A wants to discuss this. B has been given this information confidentially and wants to avoid the subject.

Now go on with the task:

Decide on which role each of you is going to take. Now read through the following model and try to understand your part in the conversation. You have five minutes to prepare what you might say. When you are ready start recording. Review the tape when you have finished and try to correct any expressions which sound inappropriate. Try again as many times as you want, but be ready to play your final tape to the whole class [33, 12]

 

 

Conclusions

       English has undoubtedly become an important – perhaps now the most important – language of international communication in the world. In fact, it has become a lingua franca, which is a common language used for communication over areas where several languages have usually been spoken. The knowledge of English allows to get access to the latest information in different fields and to effectively communicate with people throughout the world.

However, language learning is hard work. One must make an effort to understand, to repeat accurately, to manipulate newly understood language and to use the whole range of known language in conversation or written composition. Effort is required at every moment and must be maintained over a long period of time. Dialogues help and encourage a lot of learners to sustain their interest and work.

Dialogues also help the teacher to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful. The learners want to take part and in order to do so must understand what others are saying and they must speak in order to express their own point of view or give information. Contextual assumptions can, at best, be only partly shared – so that the same classroom interchange can never mean quite the same for any two people or at any two different moments – it may be impossible to move to any greater level of specificity in terms of prescribing good practice in the sense of ‘practice that can be copied’. However, it is at least possible to identify the various kinds of contexts in which classroom dialogue occurs, as a precursor to investigating what seem to be, or have been, rich learning experiences in the classroom.

In dialogic interactions, children are exposed to alternative perspectives and required to engage with another person’s point of view in ways that challenge and deepen their own conceptual understandings. It is the element of ‘dialectic’, understood as logical and rational argument, which distinguishes dialogue from mainstream oral or ‘interactive’ teaching as currently understood by many teachers.

Though most dialogues are easy to prepare and to administer, they should not be viewed as mere warm-up activities or time fillers. They merit a planned place in the lesson. Unlike most learning activities, dialogues can be as short or as long as teacher wish, so they are easily fitted into any lesson plan. This gives teacher lots of flexibility. For example, when planning lesson, teacher may find that she or he need only half of the full lesson time. Teacher can now choose areas of dialogue for enjoyable review or even present and playfully practice an entirely new but potentially useful structure. In this way, lessons become less predictable. Variety enhances the interest of the learning process.

Dialogues provide not only samples of spoken language which the learners need in order to build up their oral ability, but also a framework for using them: they show the learners how speakers interact.

In order to talk, we need something to talk about – a topic of some kind – and dialogues in course books, especially in the early stages of a course, rarely provide a vivid talk.

Nevertheless, it does not mean that dialogue is less effective then other methods of teaching foreign language. Advantages of dialogue:

a) it presents the spoken language directly in situations in which it is most commonly used;

b) it permits and encourages the learners to practice the language in the same way;

c) it encourages active participation in the lesson.

There have been discovered some problems in approaching to use dialogues. For instance, a lot of teachers pay a little attention to communication including dialogue. Instead of it  they sometimes emphasize on grammar, rules or writing activities. The next problem lies in preparation. Dialogue should be considered taking into account the level of knowledge of the learners. Sometimes children do not feel enough motivated to make a long dialogue with the complicated structures they have learned and their dialogues contain only the simplest phrases. So, the teacher should be a rather creative person to find the proper motivation for the learners and to help them make their dialogues variable. It makes clear that some teachers avoid conversation because they do not like to speak or in opposite they speak the whole lesson so as no one can say a word.                                                                    

The very important thing for a good dialogue is to know types of questions in order to manipulate with them freely. We have already mentioned some of them: yes/no ; question tag; either…or; simple factual; descriptive; narrative; speculative; hypothetical; justification of opinion questions. To learn them and to know in what situation they may use can help the practice. The teacher takes a step in this direction when he or she makes the learner adapt his language so that it reflects some aspects of nonlinguistic reality, such as the concrete situation, a picture, or personal knowledge. It is vital to help learners to use their knowledge in communication about different subjects. Question-and-answer activity based on the classroom situation or on visuals, which is so integral a part of “situational language teaching”, requires the learner to relate language to nonlinguistic reality in a similar way. It can be oral test which begins with a question and answer routine which deliberately asks about hobbies, interests, past experiences and other.

The realism and relevance of this language offer obvious advantages. In   particular, they help to sustain learners’ motivation and make the activity more appropriate to their probable communicative needs in the future.

Using different types of dialogues in teaching English has a lot of advantages. The student learns to communicate about different subjects, to manipulate with different language characteristics, to express his own opinion and to listen to speaker carefully.

We have already mentioned different ways in which the teacher can introduce the dialogue. Thus, very useful are: cue cards, role cards, interview and blank dialogue. The teacher can adapt the level of difficulty of dialogue to the knowledge of the learner.

Taking into consideration all the methodological principles and aspects, it should be singled out that depending on the level of the learner different strategies and types of exercises are applied in the teaching process. At the elementary level we use interview, blank dialogue; at the intermediate and advanced levels we use role cards, cue-cards or interview. Composing micro-dialogues or quite big dialogues can also help learners to develop their skills and create the subject or situation in which some event takes place. This task the teacher can introduce to the learners at the elementary level (composing micro-dialogues), at the intermediate level (composing quite big dialogues), at the upper-intermediate level (composing guided dialogues) or at the advanced level (composing complex and big dialogues) with expression of their opinion, showing agreement or disagreement, doubt, pity.   

The most efficient communicator in foreign language is not always the person who is best at manipulating its structures. It is often the person who is most skilled at processing the complete situation involving himself and his hearer, taking account of what knowledge is already shared between them (e.g. from the situation or from the preceding conversation), and selecting items which will communicate his message effectively. Foreign language learners need opportunities to develop these skills, by being exposed to situations where the emphasis is on using their available resources for communicating meanings as efficiently and economically as possible. In the same way as for comprehension, the learner needs to acquire not only a repertoire of linguistic items, but also a repertoire of strategies for using them in concrete situation.

Hence, it goes without saying that any teacher must be able to teach his or her pupils through communication. To be exact, it is the axiom because it was proved long time ago. At the same time the very dialogue requires the learner to develop a moderate degree of independence in using the language he has learnt.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resume

  Методологічною основою роботи слугували праці провідних вчених з даної проблематики, а саме: Л. А. Алмазової, Л. С. Головчинскої, Т. В. Яхотонової, Дж. Еліот, Дж. Муна та багато інших, в яких розроблено принцип використання ефективних завдань у процесі викладання іноземної мови.

У даному дослідженні  розглядається методика викладання діалогічного мовлення на різних рівнях мовного сприйняття,  яке є  основою комунікативного методу навчання спілкуванню.

У розроблених  матеріалах  запропоновані різні типи вправ, що містять комунікативні ситуації, діалоги, які спрямовані на розвиток діалогічного мовлення зазначеної категорії студентів, а також на покращення знань з граматики англійської мови.  Зокрема, виокремлено дидактичні аспекти діалогічного мовлення в контексті комунікативного підходу до вивчення іноземної мови.

 Матеріал, викладений у цьому дослідженні, може практично застосовуватися у процесі навчання студентів початківців та студентів з досвідом вивчення англійської мови, а також може слугувати практичною порадою вчителям, які викладають у школі.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

1. Алмазова Л. А. Как научиться говорить по английски: Диалоги и упражнения. – Москва: Высшая школа, 1977. – 112 с.
2. Аничков И. Е., Саакянц В. Н. Методика преподавания английского языка в средней школе. – Москва: Просвещение, 1966. – 248 с.
3. Головчинская Л. С. Пособия по розвитию навыков усной речи на английском языке. – Москва: Высшая школа, 1971. – 144 с.
4. Кирилова Е. П. Беседы на бытовые темы. – Москва, 1976. – 144 с.
5. Леонова Л. В. Реестр “готовых” предложений современного английского бытового диалога. – Калинин, 1972. – 112 с.
6. Ляховицкий М.В. Методика преподавания иностранных языков. – Москва, 1981. – 159 с.
7. Рогова Г. В. Методика обучения иностранным языкам. – Москва: Просвещение, 1983. – 351 с.
8. Рогова Г. В., Верещагина В. А. Иллюстрированные ситуативные диалоги на английском языке. – Москва: Просвещение, 1977. – 159 с.
9. Скалкин В.Л. Коммуникативные упражнения на английском языке. – М., 1983. – 128 с.
10. Скалкин В. Л. Обучение диалогической речи. – Киев, 1989. – 158 с.
11. Старков А. П. Обучение английскому языку в средней школе. – Москва: Просвещение, 1983. – 256 с. 
12. Yakhontova T.V. English Academic Writing for Students and Researchers. –Львів: Видавничий центр ЛНУ ім. Івана Франка, 2002. – 220с.
13. Brown G. Listening to spoken English . – Longman, 1990. – 178p.
14. Byrne D. Teaching Oral English. – Edinburgh, 1986. – 140p.
15. Davis P. Ways of doing. – Cambridge, 1998. – 171p.
16. Doff A. Teaching English. – Cambridge, 1993. – 215p.
17. Elliot J. Child Language. – Cambridge, 1996. – 194p.
18. Ellis G., Sinclar B. Learning to Learn – Cambridge, 1991. – 154p.
19. Knowles G. Patterns of Spoken English. – Longman, 1990. – 262p.
20. Kramsch C. Context and culture in Language Teaching. – Oxford, 1996. – 290p.
21. Littlewood W. Communicative Language Teaching. An introduction. – Cambridge, 1991. – 107p.
22. Maley A. Resource books for teacher. – Oxford, 1989. – 165p.
23. Moon J. Short courses L works hops. – London, 2001. – 183p.
24. Nolasco R., Arthur L. Conversation. – Oxford, 1989. – 148p.
25. Nunan D., Lamb C. The Self-Directed teacher. Managing the Learning. – Cambridge, 1996. – 296p. 
26. Prodromon L. Mixed ability cases. – London, 1992. – 168p.
27. Revell J. Teaching Techniques for Communicative English. – London, 1991. – 98p.
28. Scrivener J. Learning Teaching. – Oxford, 1994. – 218p.
29. Selington P. Helping students to learn. – London, 1998. – 96p.
30. Thornbury S. About Language. – Cambridge, 1999. – 226p.
31. Underhill N. Testing Spoken Language. – Cambridge, 2000. – 117p.
32. Ur P. Discussion that work. – Cambridge, 1991. – 122p.  

33. Villins G. Better English. – London, 1964. – 224p.

34. http://www.eslprintables.com/printable.asp?id=226943#this

35. http://www.eslprintables.com/printable.asp?id=296057#this

36. http://www.eslprintables.com/printable.asp?id=195488#this

37. http://festival.1september.ru/articles/519544/