Teaching Talking
“I want to learn how to
talk like you.”
“Like me? How exactly
do you mean?”
“Like that! You know,
how you Americans do… the dah-di-dah-di-dah…”
And so began my
conversation appointment at the Texas A&M University Writing Center. As usual, I had started off by asking my
client what he would like to gain from the meeting. When explaining his goals
for our time together, he used his hands to mimic what he had discerned to be
my up-and-down pattern of speech. A second year graduate student from China,
his concern was that his own speech pattern was coming across as monotonous,
and that this was affecting his ability to communicate ideas in both academic
and social settings.
This appointment was
the first session in a series of five that I had with my client who had just
enrolled in our PLACE Program (The Practice Listening and Conversational
English Program). His concerns were valid and are often shared by many of the
international students who come to the writing center to practice English. As a
graduate student myself, I could empathize. I also struggled to communicate my
research effectively in a way that clearly explained my thoughts and held the
attention of my audience. I could only imagine how this concern would be
compounded by trying to present my research in a second language.
The problem being
relevant and a widely-felt concern, the question then became how to address the
needs of such students in a 45 minute consultation? Before I had the chance to
really research strategies, I tried to think of ways just to get the ball
rolling and conversation started. My first idea was to watch popular TV clips
and discuss the speech patterns that we observed. We began with Friends, noting the elevated pitches and
rapid patterns of speech often used by characters when they were excited. We
also observed how certain sentences were punctuated with pauses to provide
emphasis, and how very often, characters would use hand gestures in paralleling
intonation.
This strategy seemed to
be useful in helping both of us think about what was actually happening with
our voices and how this looked to someone looking and listening in from the
outside. Not only did my client seem
to be having fun with activity, he also became more assertive in our
conversations. I realized that the goal of the conversation appointment should
not be to teach English. Instead, a focus on increasing confidence and
motivation could help to make consultations more productive and focused. As
most students who visit a writing center of their own accord already possess a
personal motivation for improvement of certain skills, the real challenge is in
promoting confidence.
It dawned on me that
the PLACE program would be an excellent venue for such an activity. If in the
first of the five sessions, students were asked to create a short narrative
that would be repeated over the course of the following appointments, the
consultant would then be able to provide constructive criticism and feedback
over improvements in intonation. This strategy could also be helpful in a group
environment, where group members could make observations and offer advice to
one another at each of the storytelling sessions.
In summary, I
determined that regardless of the tactics I used, I needed to make sure my
client understood that my goal was not to teach him how to “talk like me,” but to
help him discover the nuances already present in his own dialogue that would
make his personalized style of speech an effective tool for communication.
Instead of teaching talking, I focused on promoting confidence, and the fact
that my student decided to re-enroll in the PLACE program after the conclusion
of our appointments, was testament to the fact that he at least in part, found
the sessions useful.
Works Consulted
Chiu,
Chien-Hsiung (Scott). "Negotiating Linguistic Certainty for ESL Writers at
the Writing Center." Order No. 3444496 Michigan State University, 2011.
Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Golanka, Ewa M., Anita R. Bowles, and Victor M. Frank. “Technologies for Foreign Language Learning: a Review of Technology Types and Their Effectiveness.” Computer Assisted Language Learning 27.1 (2014) 70-105. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
Jungmin Ko, Diane L. Schallert and Keith Walters. “Rethinking
Scaffolding: Examining Negotiation of Meaning in an ESL Storytelling Task.” TESOL Quarterly
37.2 (2003): 303-324. JSTOR. Web. 25 Mar.
2015.
Quenqua,
Douglas. "They're, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve." Geolinguistics 37 (2011): 103-05. Proquest. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.
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