Initiating and Maintaining Learners’ Talking Time through Problem Solving Situations

Abstract

Learners need practice in producing comprehensible output using the language resources at their disposal and already acquired. It has been also well cemented in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) practice that being pushed to produce output allows the production of more accurate and appropriate language. However, speaking courses are probably the most daunting. The major challenge persists with engaging learners into student-to-student interaction and maximizing the talking time. The current paper spots the light on the integration of problem solving situation, built upon the Facebook game " Criminal Case " framework as teacher own produced material to initiate and sustain learners' talking time during speaking courses in classes described as large. The paper pays close attention to learning opportunities generated by peer interaction compared to teacher-fronted classroom interaction. Using problem solving situations wherein learners are required to play the role of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and get on the case to solve it proves to generate opportunities for learners to talk, maximize their talking time and build their confidence to use the target language in front of a jury (audience). Last but not least, interactional feedback from their interlocutors and negotiation for meaning push learners to further refine their output and adjust their grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation towards correct utterances. Introduction A daily challenge of classroom teaching is to get students to do most of the talking in the speaking courses wherein teacher talk is minimized to its lowest rate and occupies most of the time instruction giving and corrective feedback provision needless to mention supplying vocabulary and language forms to use. The literature suggests that teacher talk should be 20% of the whole classroom student-teacher interaction. Therefore, the input; that is to say instructional material used throughout the speaking course, to which students are exposed is the ultimate stimulus to get learners to talk. However, the debate of recent years has been over the types of tasks and instructional material that could be used to get students to talk instinctively rather than being pushed to communicate. There is not unfortunately a ready-made recipe that could guarantee students' interaction to keep going and going with turn taking conventions. Teachers, thus, may find it helpful to devise their own material through integrating more than one item into a well-welded speaking task. Three notions are so important to the success of speaking tasks: gaming, role playing and primarily problem-solving. Online games have won unprecedented popularity among youth since their first release. The advent of Facebook has also revolutionized social interaction throughout a bundle of proposed games wherein a group of users set themselves as a team and get started on a mission. Moreover, players get immersed in a virtual second life wherein they could choose a nickname and an avatar. Problem solving games such as Criminal Case remains one of the most preferred. Despite the fact that internet access remains out of reach in some Algerian public universities, the famous game Criminal Case could be replicated into the classroom with some minor changes.