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Date Posted: 18:43:17 10/16/05 Sun
Author: Kênia Horsts
Subject: Final draft: The Complexity to Speak English as a Second Language

THE COMPLEXITY TO SPEAK ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

Written and spoken language are called productive skills (even though when you are reading or listening you are also producing thoughts). Some traditional linguistic inquiry maintains that speech is primary and written language is merely a reflection of spoken language. But speaking remains the most difficult skill to acquire. Usually here in Brazil, ESL students face a great oral interaction problem. Some students can read or write but often have difficulty with spoken English. The students can understand but are less confident in speech. We are going to see the complexity producing a second language and some strategies we could use in order to improve the spoken language in L2 - English.

There are some problems in oral interaction Brazilian teachers find in classes that is probably most common here than in a foreigner class oversea, where there are students with different native language. The Brazilian students give up easily speaking English as they make themselves understood faster in L1, even if the activity is supposed to be done just in English.

Another problem in oral interaction is, a fluent speech contains use of slang, reduced forms, idioms and so on. The Brazilian students generally try to practice speaking the written grammar they have learned, besides the difficulty to understand a foreigner they sound bookish speaking English. The students should be concern there are different sets of rules between written grammar and speech grammar.

We must consider some characteristics of the productive skills, which are writing and speaking. In accordance with Brown (1994), the permanence is the first characteristic and we will approach it now.

It states that, “oral language is transitory and must be processed in real time, while written language is permanent and can be read and reread as often as one likes”. (WEIGLE, Sara 2002, p.15)

As we see here, it becomes easier to accomplish a better result in the written language before the spoken language because you have the time working by yourself, thus you can improve your production producing a better result. Of course, we must consider the different kind of interaction perhaps a different audience and it makes difficult to compare such productive skills.

The second characteristic, which we can find in the Brown’s summary about these productive skills (speaking and writing), is complexity. It states that; “written language tends to be characterized by longer clauses and more subordinators, while spoken language tends to have shorter clauses connected by coordinators, as well as more redundancy” (e.g. repetition of nouns and verbs).

In the spoken language, you can have a false feeling that you are free to express yourself using short clauses or not paying attention to some formalities. In fact, you do not need to use a formal discourse in order to communicate in spoken language; but you are not free, as you feel, because there are some rules to follow anyway due to the speech grammar. In addition, you must work hard paying attention to stress, intonation, pitch, volume, pausing and in your own accent which demands a phonetic development.

It was really common in the past to see language teaching methodologies focusing in grammar competence only, which is important, but throughout the years it becomes clear the need to balance sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Thus, as Murphy (1991) believes, “the oral teachers should always connect speaking, listening and pronunciation teaching”. (Anne Lazaraton – Goodwin p 104). The students should be trained in “communicative strategies” as circumlocution, hesitation devices and asking for help. Motivation is also an important feature and teachers can develop a range of materials and activities for specific speaking contexts which will increase the motivation of the students.

In short, the importance of correctness in writing as opposed to speaking is especially relevant for writing in academic contexts. However, you can read about the topic and elaborate it in a tranquil way. The complexity displayed on the written language is perhaps more simple to solve than the complexity you will find when you have to get a fluently communication in the spoken language. Thus, spoken language remains the most difficult ability to students of L2 to acquire, as oral skills are vital to have a communication, strategies to speaking improvement should be developed by the teachers on a daily basis.


BIOGRAPHY

WEIGLE, Sara. Assessing Writing. Cambridge: CUP, 2002.

VALÉRIO, Kátia. Habilidades Orais. Faculdade de Letras, UFMG.

WHITE & ARNDT, Process Writing. London: Longman, 1991.

Anne Lazaraton, Language Skills, Goodwin.

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