Speaking Skill

Speaking as an interactive process of constructing meaning (Celce-Murcia &

Olshtain, 2000) requires “simultaneous interaction of producing and processing spoken discourse under time constrains” (Martinez-Flor, Uso-Juan & Soler, 2006, p.139). It takes place in the presence of a listener because listener responds to the speaker’s communication.

As Byrne (1986, p. 8) defines “oral communication is a two-way process between the speaker and the listener and involves the productive skills of speaking and the receptive skills of understanding”. Among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) speaking is viewed to be at the heart of second language learning (Egan, 1999).

According to Ur (1996, p. 120) speaking is considered as the most important skill because “people who know a language are referred to as speakers of that language”, which indicates that using a language is more important than just knowing about it. This is precisely the point that “there is no point knowing a lot about language if you cannot use it” (Scriener, 2005, p. 146). As cited by Brown (2000) successful oral communication in the target language serves as a display of successful language acquisition.

When the development of oral language acquisition considered, it is easily seen that it is “a natural process, heavily influenced by home literacy and preschool experiences”

(Nyman, 2009, p. 10). Since children have innate abilities to hear and speak, they progressively work through the rules of the language on their own. Development of the language rules takes place as children hear and practice correct spoken language used in their environment (Nyman, 2009).

In this sense, speaking fluency appears to develop with increased exposure to language input. In spite of the generally agreed belief that input is very crucial for language acquisition, it is not sufficient unless it is not followed by interaction and output, because the processing of comprehension differs from the processing of production. That is, mere ability to

understand the meaning conveyed by sentences does not make it possible to express it. When input is negotiated and children produce output in interaction, they find the right way in a linguistic system to express themselves (Swain, 1985 as cited in Zhang, 2009).

With regard to foreign language learning, communication is a challenge for young learners because they have limited lexical and grammatical knowledge. The reason behind this is that they rarely encounter target language in or outside school in EFL settings

(Cameron, 2001). They frequently rely on adults to manage conversation for them (Scarcella

& Higa, 1981). If they are away from an adult partner, they have problems in the process of communication both as a speaker and listener. The ability to take full responsibility to

communicate independently requires both understanding and expressing utterances, and grows with age gradually. However, it does not mean that such growth will automatically lead to perfection in performance and skills. Excellence in this field may need some more efforts.

As Zhang and Kortner, (1995) indicated speaking can be more effective with particular attention and continual practice.

The nature of children’s interactional patterns in second or foreign languages have been examined by the studies in different contexts (e.g., Ellis & Heimbach, 1997; Mackey &

Oliver, 2002; Mackey et.al., 2003; Oliver, 1998; 2000; 2002; Van den Branden, 1997 as cited in Pinter, 2007) so as to understand their ability to manage interactional processes that

contribute to acquisition. Generally, the findings from these studies indicate that the way children manage their interactions is partially different from the way adults do. For instance, Oliver (1998; 2002) reached the conclusion that there were considerable differences between children (8-13 year of age) and adults in their application of negotiation strategies, i.e.

children are rather behind adults in using comprehension checks. She also found that although the same sort of strategies is used by children and adults, they differ from each other in rates.

Oliver's view over this is that “possibly because of their level of development and their purported egocentric nature, primary school children tend to focus on constructing their own meaning, and less on facilitating their partners’ construction of meaning” (Oliver, 1998: 379).

Of the conclusions about children between the ages 8-13 point out that despite some resemblance in patterns of thinking and talking in many ways, they may “share some of the vulnerabilities of younger children” (Garbarino & Scott, 1992, p. 65). Research studies conducted by (Clark, 1978; Halliday, 1975; Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Romaine, 1984) suggest that “10-11-year-old children still show some weaknesses as conversational partners. ….. For example, 10-year-olds’ ability to talk coherently and explicitly without the immediate support of the context is still developing” (Pinter, 2006, p. 617). Menyuk and Brisk (2005, p. 120)

suggest that 9-10-year-old children’s “conversational interaction is still far from being lengthy or fully responsive to what has been said previously”.

Besides such developmental reasons, there are certainly many variables that cause difficulty in speaking such as children’s affective states, their parental attitudes, curriculum, teaching environment, language context, and impractical teaching methods, materials, techniques etc. As one of these factors that contributes to the existence of such difficulties, teaching methods and materials need careful consideration, because classroom environment is a place where the development of strategies is mediated in effective ways (Coyle, 2007;

Donato & McCormic, 1994). Although spoken form of the language in young learners’

classroom acts as a prime source of language learning, communicative use of the language has been almost neglected.

In consideration of the 2005 curriculum revision which adopts a communicative view to ELT, there have been many objectives which must be recognized in practice including various types of syllabi, selection of appropriate teaching materials, principles of a

constructivist approach with a learner and learning centered classroom, and process oriented instructional approach with a number of interactional activities (Ministry of National

Education [MoNE], 2006). Even the curriculum provided opportunities to involve learners in speaking the central examination system left teachers no choice but to miss speaking

opportunities and to teach the form of the language through grammar and vocabulary-oriented tasks focusing mostly on reading and writing skills.

However, with the latest English language teaching programme (ELTP, 2013) many changes are strongly based on the development of communicative competence in English. The main emphasis is given to listening and speaking skills over reading and writing skills, which are introduced at the third grade. The well-recognized fact that directs the curriculum

designers to put emphasis on oral skills is that most students in Turkey graduate from schools

without the ability to engage in successful communication in the target language. For this reason, it has become necessary to focus on how LLSs can help them learn language more effectively, which would lead them to take charge of their own learning and become autonomous. That is, such developmental sequence brings into question Rivers’ (1983, p.

134) idea of “any learning is an active process”. Since the behaviour and the thought process of the learner is the key to success (Rubin & Tamson, 1982), the learning environment acts as important instance to get them closer to develop strategic behaviors. As stated by Coyle (2007, p. 65) the students’ strategic behavior develops through “the classroom culture, scaffolded learning and the creation of learning opportunities”.