Posted by Kaleigh Bangor on Monday, November 18, 2013 in News.

Reaching communicative competence goes beyond the linguistic demands towards a comprehensive discursive, strategic, and sociolinguistic understanding of a foreign language. The ability to assess the social situation, actively contribute to the conversation, and side step communication breakdowns increases the proficiency skills of the L2 learner. In meeting these goals, students need to be taught in such an environment that maximizes their communicative development. Through task design and implementation as well as fluctuating group dynamics, the interpersonal classroom can be a place where speaking in a foreign language is developed and oral communication is expounded upon.

The in-class tasks play a critical role when targeting both speaking and communication. Ample opportunities to engage in active interaction need to spur discussion. Going beyond tasks that are simply “found” in the target country towards a more broad-ranging comparison of cultures and beyond to, what I would call, inherently problematic and debatable circumstances work to incite the L2 learner to communicate orally. The question then becomes, which types of prompts entice an almost guttural response and provide sustained material for discussion?

The criteria for such a prompt first and foremost needs to involve direct oral communication among students and between the teacher and the students as well. This is the premise of an interpersonal classroom. However, prompts that involve a general goal, such as planning an event, can then result a second communicative activity—the event itself. These sorts of prompts, which spur further opportunities for discussion are crucial for the scaffolding of a lesson and instill a sense of confidence in the speakers. Lastly, however, there are certain types ofactivities that inherently engage students to speak. These prompts almost always have a shock factor: teaching students how to lie, deciding which sick person deserves a heart transplant, or deciphering who, amongst those facing deportation, should remain in a country. Such highly problematic situations coerce students into having an opinion and furthermore, to expressing this opinion orally.

Behind this motivating prompt, must be a well-devised plan to help the students articulate their thoughts. Practicing aloud (since the emphasis is on orality) certain phrases and chunks that express opinion can work to balance, harness, and control the thoughts in the discussion. Complementing these teaching techniques are then spatial group orientations that guide the flow of the activity and lower the affective factor, often heavily present in the beginner’s classroom, of social anxiety. Planning a class trip to the target country might demand that certain groups delegate subtasks. Organizing class interactions in a jigsaw manner helps to foster this type of hierarchical communicative event. If each group is responsible for planning the same trip, and the groups are delegated in to similar subtasks, the groups can rearrange to discuss their specific task,  for example booking the hotel, while the others discuss how they will schedule the flights, make dinner reservations and sightseeing opportunities. Once the students become experts in this field, they can report back to their initial group and smoothly add the finishing touches to the lesson. This type of structuring attempts to combat apprehension that arises in many students as it varies the group dynamics within one cohesive lesson, and yet the simple act of reporting, not to the instructor, but to a second group of students, also lowers the stress the accompanies oral communication.