THE SPEAKING SKILL.
Speaking is a productive skill, as mentioned earlier, and is undertaken after the receptive skill of listening comprehension. Learning to speak is comparatively more difficult than learning to understand the spoken language and requires a great period of time to develop as compared to listening comprehension. Listeners catch certain key elements that enable them to understand the message. They do not have to concentrate on each single element. However, the speaker has to provide all these clues. The encoding process requires a complete and readily accessible knowledge of sound, vocabulary and structure which makes it a difficult process. In the following lines we shall discuss some components of spoken skill.
COMPONENTS OF SPOKEN SKILL.
Communication between humans is believed to be a very complex phenomenon There are certain characteristics that the great majority of communicative events share. These characteristics have particular relevance for the learning and teaching of language. We would, therefore, consider some of these here.When two people are talking to one another they probably do so for one of the reasons given in the diagram below:
(1) Speaker/Writer: wants to say something, has a Communicative purpose, selects from language store. (2)Listener/Reader: wants to listen to something interested in communicative purpose processes a variety of language.
In other words, there is an information gap between the speaker and the listener. The speaker is interested in communicating an idea and the listener wants to discover that idea. He wants to know the purpose of communication. So there is a gap between the two in the information they possess, and the communication fills that gap. For successful communication the following elements playa vital role.
(1)The learners knowledge of the language system:
The native speaker of a language is often good at the grammar and vocabulary of that language. He also knows the appropriate use of the language in a given situation. He can, therefore, communicate explicitly and most of the time succeeds in getting his message across. The situation is reverse in case of the speaker of a second language.
(2)The Speaker Knowledge of the language :
The speaker's knowledge of grammar and vocabulary does not always ensure successful communication. Bygate, in his book "Speaking" compares the knowledge of a language with that of the working of a car. "What knowledge does a car driver need? He or she needs to know the names of the controls, where they are; what they do; how they are operated. However, the driver also needs the skill to be able to use the controls to drive the car along the road without hitting the various objects that tend to get in the way. In this way the job we do when we speak is similar. We do not merely know how to assemble sentences in the abstract: We have to produce them and adapt them to the circumstances. This means making decisions rapidly, implementing them smoothly and adjusting our conversation as unexpected problems appear in our path". To continue.with Bygate's analogy, would we be able to learn to drive a car through heavy traffic merely by having the process of driving described to us by someone.else? Would it be sufficient merely to watch an expert driver driving car? Of course not, knowledge can be acquired; a skill has to be learnt and practised.
Levels of Speaking Skills:
An utterance is interpreted by the listeners with the help of the items such as the context in which it occurs. knowledge of the context (i.e, knowledge of who is speaking to whom and about what), recognition of the sounds, strees, intonation, pronunciation. grammar, style or formality of speaking, register etc. I f a listener has enough practice in, at least, some of these elements, he can comprehend the correct form of the utterance.
ACCURACY AND FLUENCY:
Oral practice have two basic objectives, one is to develop accuracy in grammatical construction, and to provide the student 'with a framework which he can use. to generate new utterances which in turn will themselves be grammatically accurate. The other oral practice aims to develop, in the learner an awareness of how' speaking is a dynamic and fluid process. The speaker must respond to what he has heard and do so quickly. The first objective (accuracy) is more concerned with the appropriacy of language/grammar and less with the meaning. The second (fluency), on the other hand, is more concerned with the meaning than with the correct grammatical forms. But in no sense does it imply that fluent language may not also be accurate language and vice versa.
