SPEAKING

Introduction Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words. Listening Situations There are three kinds of speaking situations in which we find ourselves: * interactive, * partially interactive, and * non-interactive. Interactive speaking situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls, in which we are alternately listening and speaking, and in which we have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from our conversation partner. Some speaking situations are partially interactive, such as when giving a speech to a live audience, where the convention is that the audience does not interrupt the speech. The speaker nevertheless can see the audience and judge from the expressions on their faces and body language whether or not he or she is being understood. Some few speaking situations may be totally non-interactive, such as when recording a speech for a radio broadcast . Micro-skills Here are some of the micro-skills involved in speaking. The speaker has to: * pronounce the distinctive sounds of a language clearly enough so that people can distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions. * use stress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough so that people can understand what is said. * use the correct forms of words. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, or gender. * put words together in correct word order. * use vocabulary appropriately. * use the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship to the conversation partner. * make clear to the listener the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatever means the language uses. * make the main ideas stand out from supporting ideas or information. * make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what you are saying.

LISTENING

LISTENING Assessing Listening Abilities Geoff Brindley Over the last two decades, research has highlighted the important role that listening plays in language acquisition (Brown and Yule 1983, Ellis, et al. 1994, Faerch and Kasper 1986, Feyten 1991, Long 1985), and listening comprehension skills have begun to receive a lot more systematic attention in language teaching classrooms. A wide range of books, articles, and materials aimed at assisting teachers to develop learners’ listening skills are now available, and a variety of comprehension-based methodologies have been proposed (see, for example, Anderson and Lynch 1988, Courchene, et al. 1992, Rost 1990; 1994, Underwood 1989). However, although many of the tasks used for teaching listening are virtually identical to those which appear in tests, assessment of listening ability has received relatively limited coverage in the language testing literature.

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