Learner Observation of, and Reflection on, Spoken Discourse: An Approach for Teaching Academic Speaking

Abstract

L anguage teaching courses often target speaking skills and aim to improve students' ability to interact orally in a range of situations. One aspect of teaching speaking is creating practice tasks. This aspect has been well served by the current range of communicative activi-ties, such as role-play, simulations, and information and opinion gap tasks. Another aspect of teaching speaking is raising students' awareness of the features of spoken language. Methodological options here have been more limited. However, one option is for teachers to design tasks that put students in the position of discourse analysts, observing language use in recordings and transcripts, and also reflecting on their own use of language. This option can be used as a way to reveal to learners features of spoken language that they may be partially or completely unaware of and that go unnoticed unless attention is directly drawn to them.