Speaking is one of the most difficult skills language learners have to face. In spite of this, it has traditionally been forced into the background while we, teachers of English, have spent all our classroom time trying to teach our students how to write, to read and sometimes even to listen in a L2 because grammar has a long written tradition (Bueno, Madrid and Mclaren, 2006: 321).
�speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills� (Bailey and Savage 1994: 7). What specifically makes speaking in a second or foreign language difficult?
Brown (1994) labels speaking as the most challenging skill for students because of the set of features that characterize oral discourse:
� Contractions, vowel reductions and elision;
� The use of slang and idioms:
� Stress, rhythm and intonation;
� The need to interact with at least one other speaker.
Speaking is an �activity requiring the integration of many subsystems�all these factors combine to make speaking a second or foreign language a formidable task for language learners�yet for many people, speaking is seen as the central skill� (Bailey and Savage 1994: 6-7).
We speak for many reasons- to be sociable, because we want something, because we want other people to do something, to do something for someone else, to respond to someone else, to express our feelings or opinion about something, to exchange information, to refer to an action or event in the past, present, or future, the possibility of something happening, and so on (Lindsay and Knight, 2006: 58).
We speak for many reasons- to be sociable, because we want something, because we want other people to do something, to do something for someone else, to respond to someone else, to express our feelings or opinion about something, to exchange information, to refer to an action or event in the past, present, or future, the possibility of something happening, and so on (Lindsay and Knight, 2006: 58).
Harmer. J.also explains that:
When speaking, we construct words and phrases with individual sounds, and we also use pitch change, intonation, and stress to convey different meanings (2007: 29).
Speakers have a great range of expressive possibilities at their command. Apart from the actual words they use they can vary their intonation and stress which helps them to show which part of what they are saying is most important. By varying the pitch and intonation in their voice they can clearly convey their attitude to what they are saying, too; they can indicate interest or lack of it, for example, and they can show whether they wish to be taken seriously. At any point in a speech event speakers can rephrase what they are saying; they can speed up or slow down. This will often be done in response to the feedback they are getting from their listeners who will show through a variety of gestures, expressions and interruptions that they do not understand.
And in a face to face interaction the speaker can use a whole range of facial expressions, gestures and general body language to help to convey the message (Harmer, 2007: 53)
