Interaction as the Key to Teaching Language for Communication
Students achieve facility in using a
language when their attention is focused on conveying and receiving authentic
messages (that is, messages that contain information of interest to speaker and
listener in a situation of importance to both). This is interaction. Interaction
involves not just expression of one's own ideas but comprehension of those of
others. One listens to others; one responds (directly or indirectly); others
listen and respond. The participants work out interpretations of meaning
through this interaction, which is always understood in a context, physical or
experiential, with nonverbal cues adding aspects of meaning beyond the verbal.
All of these factors should be present as students learn to communicate:
listening to others, talking with others, negotiating meaning in a shared
context . There must be interaction between people who have something to share.
Collaborative activity of this type
should be the norm from the beginning of language study. Part of the teacher's art is to create, or stimulate
student creation of, the types of situations in which interaction naturally
blossoms and in which students can use for actual communication what they have
been learning in a more formal fashion. In this way, they are already engaging
in the central activity for which language is used in human relations.
Why is interaction so important in
language-learning situations? Through interaction, students can increase their
language store as they listen to or read authentic linguistic material, or even
the output of their fellow students. (As teachers, we frequently overlook how
much students learn from their peers.) In interaction, students can use all they
possess of the language - all they have learned in real-life exchanges where
expressing their real meaning is important to them.
Student needs; course design; classroom procedures
How interaction is achieved in
formal situations is a matter of technique or of classroom approach; in less
formal situations it involves imaginative planning with student input. In
either case, the teacher has a number of options. How can teachers select from
this great variety of proposed approaches and techniques? What kinds of
guidelines can they follow?
First, in all teaching, comes the
student. The teacher needs to consider the age of the students, their
scholastic background, their culturally absorbed ways of learning, and their
objectives in studying the language that are largely determining their
motivation. Only after such matters have been taken into account and decisions
made about the kind of course that will
meet the students' needs in their particular situation will teachers begin to
reflect on appropriate ways of selecting and presenting material . Thus,
that the objectives of the students may be achieved.
Furthermore, each teacher has a
personality to express. Teachers are
individuals who teach and interact most effectively when what they are doing
conforms to what they feel most comfortable doing. Teachers should not be
looking for the one best method for teaching languages or helping students
learn languages, but rather the most appropriate approach, design of materials,
or set of procedures in a particular case.
Teachers need to be flexible, with a repertoire of techniques they can
employ as circumstances dictate, while keeping interaction central -
interaction between teacher and student, student and teacher, student
and student, student and authors of texts, and student and the community that
speaks the language.
Comprehension and expression
Whether in oral or graphic form,
comprehension and expression of meaning are in constant interaction in
real-life communication. Some scholars maintain that all that is needed for students to acquire language is
plenty of comprehensible input, and "the ability to speak (or write)
fluently in a second language will come on its own with time" (Krashen and
Terrell 1983: 32); in other words, after a great deal of listening, speech will
emerge spontaneously in a natural order. Intensive listening alone will not
lead to fluent and effective production of utterances. Listening draws on
knowledge of the world and expectations
aroused by the situation and by the persons involved in it. Listeners
have little control over the speech to which they are listening. In
interpreting what they are hearing, listeners are guided by the rhythmic
segmentation of the speech by the speaker and the sequence of semantic
element. If we are cultivating effective
listening skills, we teach students to rely on semantic cues and NOT to focus
on the syntax. What is said here about listening can be applied equally to
reading. Fluent readers draw on semantic cues.
On the other hand, speaking begins
with the intention of the speaker. Unlike the listener, the speaker controls
the level of language and the elaborated or simplified form that will be used. Consequently language
learners, when speaking, can keep within a simplified syntax and reduced
vocabulary to express their meaning.
Speakers need grammar to express
their meaning with any precision and to retain the listener's respect and
attention. Listeners, on the other hand, may bypass much of the grammar by
resorting to semantic strategies. This is the fundamental difference between
listening and speaking. Because of this
difference, neither alone can lead to the other in some incidental,
subconscious, unfocused way. Even with attentive, focused listening, the
listener is paying close attention to details of the content and the
development of thought rather than to specific elements of syntax, except where
there is ambiguity or unclear meaning. The same thing happens with attentive
reading, which is why proof-reading is so difficult.
Promoting interaction
To promote interaction, individuals
(teachers as well as students) must appreciate the uniqueness of other
individuals with their special needs - not manipulating or directing them or
deciding how they can or will learn, but
encouraging them and drawing them out (educating), and building up their
confidence and enjoyment in what they are doing. Teacher-directed and
-dominated classrooms cannot, by their nature, be interactive classrooms, and
this is what language teachers need to learn. Interaction can be two-way,
three-way, or four-way, but never one-way.
Interactive language teaching
requires a high degree of indirect leadership, along with emotional maturity,
perceptiveness, and sensitivity to the feelings of others. When a teacher
demonstrates these qualities, students lose their fear of embarrassment and are
willing to try to express themselves. Once students feel appreciated and
valued, they are anxious to show what they can do, to propose and participate
in activities.
Whatever promotes student
participation in a relaxed and enthusiastic atmosphere stimulates the
interaction that is essential to successful language learning. The interaction
may be quiet; it may be noisy; it may be alert and dynamic.The interaction can
take place in large groups, small groups, or pairs, but it will be there, with
students deeply involved in tasks and activities that draw on their creativity.
What happens in an interactive classroom?
1. In an
interactive classroom there will be, first of all, much listening to authentic
materials , with no prohibition or
discouragement of spoken response or student-initiated contribution. The
listening will be purposeful as students prepare to use what they have heard in
some way. Authentic materials include teacher talk when the teacher is fluent
in the language. When teachers cannot provide this kind of input, they will
rely heavily on audio and video tapes or, for reading, on written texts.
Authentic materials need not be difficult materials. These materials will
always be used in some productive activity, e.g., as input for a small-group
discussion or debate about controversial or unexpected elements.
2. Students from
the beginning listen and speak in
reacting to pictures and objects, in role plays, through acting out, and in
discussion. They argue about events and positions taken and share points of view.
3. Students are
involved in joint tasks: purposeful activity.
They work together doing or making things, all the time using the
language as they concentrate on the task.
4. Students watch
films and videotapes of native speakers interacting. They observe nonverbal
behavior and the types of exclamations and fill-in expressions that are used.
They also learn how people initiate and sustain a conversational exchange, how
they negotiate meaning, and how they terminate an interactive episode.
Varieties of language, stress, and intonation can also be acquired and
practiced in this type of activity.
5. Pronunciation
may be improved interactively not only while listening and speaking
conversationally, but also in poetry reading and creation.
6. If reading
is the activity, there should be
lively interaction of reader and text
- interpretation, expansion, discussing alternative possibilities or other
conclusions. Often reading leads to creative production in speech or writing,
as students are inspired to write similar texts.
7. What is written
should be something that will be read by somebody, as with a group
composition or an item in a class
newspaper or on a bulletin board.
Dialogue journals are an excellent
example of interactive writing. Students write to the teacher or to each other,
and the reader responds with a fu rther message, thus combining reading and
writing in a purposeful activity.
8. Interaction
does not preclude the learning of the grammatical system of the language. We
interact better if we can understand and express nuances of meaning that
require careful syntactic choices. Learning grammar, however, is not listening
to expositions of rules but rather inductively developing rules from living
language material and then performing rules
(Rivers 1981: 194-6). This process can and should be interactive, with
students internalizing rules through experience of their effectiveness in
expressing essential meanings. Many activities can be developed where students
use particular structures without feeling they are learning grammar.
9. Testing too should be interactive and
proficiency-oriented, rather than a sterile, taxonomic process. Students should
be put in situations where they hear and react to real uses of language or where
what they read is to be incorporated into some further language-using
activity.
Turn-taking mechanism
(Kramsch, 1987, pp 22- 27)
Control of turn-taking mechanism is
important for effective classroom interaction. In teacher-oriented interaction,
the teacher selects the next speaker and automatically selects him- or herself
for the succeeding turn. There is little motivation for students to listen to
one another, and the only motivation to listen to the teacher is the fear of
being caught short on an answer. Teaching students how to take turns, as easy
as this might seem, requires teaching a number of skills that are not automatically
transferred from the mother tongue. Students must learn to listen to the
utterance of the previous speaker across its delivery, process it as it is
spoken, interpret it, create and formulate a reply as they listen, find a
natural completion point in the speaker's discourse, and take the floor at the
appropriate moment. This requires a concentration
and combination of listening and speaking skills that need
to be practiced.
In group-oriented interaction, the
teacher should systematically encourage the students to take control of the
turn-taking mechanism by adopting some of the features of natural discourse
• Tolerate
silences; refrain from filling the gaps between turns. This will put pressure
on students to initiate turns.
• Direct your
gaze to any potential addressee of a student's utterance; do not assume that
you are the next speaker and the student's exclusive addressee.
• Teach the
students floor-taking gambits; do not grant the floor.
• Encourage
students to sustain their speech beyond one or two sentences and to take longer
turns; do not use a student's short utterance as a springboard for your own
lengthy turn.
• Extend your
exchanges with individual students to include clarification of the speaker's
intentions and your understanding of them; do not cut off an exchange too soon
to pass on to another student.
By moving toward more
group-controlled forms of turn-taking, classroom interaction also gives the
group more practice in the management of topics.
Examples of Activities to promote interaction
Decoding of a text
A reading has been assigned
overnight as individual homework. Students sit in a circle; the teacher acts as
recording secretary. The group brain-storms lexical items they find important
toward nderstanding the story (time limit: four minutes). Students can take the
floor if and when they wish; the teacher writes all contributions on the board
in their correct form, without evaluating them. During the time allotted, the
students are in total control of the discourse. After the brainstorming, the
teacher suggests linking the separate items to make coherent "islands of
under-standing." The students again take over and suggest which items can
be linked in which way. The teacher draws the links on the board and
recapitulates at the end the suggestions made.
Face-Saving Gambits
The teacher explicitly
sensitizes the students to the routine
of group conversation and the mechanics of perceived fluency: appropriate ways of
opening and closing conversation, and polite ways of interrupting, making a
request, or making a negative comment. Three or four alternative gambits are
written on the board, such as "I have a question.", "May I ask a
question?",. "May I interrupt for a second?", "I would like
to ask something." The group repeats these to practice appropriate
intonation. The students then practice them individually by addressing the
teacher or a fellow student as opportunity arises within the limits of the
lesson.
Peer observation of discourse
Three or four students lead a
five-minute debate on a topic of their choice in front of the class. One-third
of the class observes the turn-taking routine, one-third the way the topic is
steered from speaker to speaker, and the other third the way in which errors or
misunderstandings are repaired and how. Instructor and students then
conduct a fifteen-to twenty-minute debriefing.
Finding key sentence
Pairs of students are assigned the same paragraph of a given text. They have
to read it silently, check each other's understanding, and agree on and
underline one key sentence that best conveys the intent of the passage.
Comparison and justification of the underlined sentences among the groups serve
as a basis for a whole class interpretation of the paragraph
Conclusion
Language learning and teaching can
be an exciting and refreshing interval in the day for students and teacher.
There are so many possible ways of stimulating communicative interaction, yet,
there are still classrooms where language learning is tedious. Grammar rules are
explained and practiced; vocabulary and paradigms are learned by heart and tested
out of context. As teachers, we
need to set up classrooms where students are comprehending, communicating, and creating
language that is meaningful, even original and stimulating. In these classrooms
students are interacting in the language.
Sources : Rivers (ed). 1987. Interactive Language
Teaching
1. Interaction as the Key to Teaching Language for
Communication (Rivers, pp 3 - 15).
2. Interactive Discourse in Small and Large Groups
(Kramsch, pp 22-27).
0 Comments