The productive skill “speaking”

There are four skills listening, reading and writing and speaking. The first two skills are receptive and the next two are productive. Why the first two are receptive, because in which we get information. Why the next two are productive because in which we give information. Much research shows there are people who develop reciptive skills. Many are afraid of speaking or writing. From my own experience, I can say that we are more concerned with reading and listening. Speaking is a central component of human interaction and, in addition to listening, reading and writing, is one of the skills that should be developed and trained in foreign language lessons.     When we speak, we pass on information, ask questions, make suggestions, argue or express e.g. wishes, hopes or feelings. All of this must also be learned and trained in the foreign language. We assume that you can only learn to speak by speaking, i.e. by speaking as often as possible in situations that require speaking, as explained in the time-on-task principle. To actively involve the learners in the classroom and to get them to speak as often as possible is a particular challenge for the teachers and the design of the lesson.

Sometimes you speak to make initial contact or to avoid appearing impolite. It is possible to speak without direct reference to the person you are speaking to, but this usually requires special opportunities or situations, for example in presentations or lectures (monologic speaking). Usually, however, one speaks to a partner (dialogical speaking) with whom a relationship is to be established. So speaking is a social interaction. Interaction means related actions.

Depending on the social group in which we move, speaking takes place in more or less fixed, interculturally often very different forms of conversation. We speak differently to our colleagues at work than to friends in a sports club, to our children differently than to our parents, to strangers we speak differently than to familiar people. This not only decides how formal or informal our language has to be (e.g. Siezen or Duzen), but also which expressions, routines and forms of politeness we use ("Leave me alone" you might say to your friend, but not to his) Boss) and what topics we can talk about.

Speaking in and of itself is very complex and has numerous characteristics, including typically face-to-face communication (exception: on the phone) and depends on the respective extra-linguistic context, e.g. on the situation in which the person is speaking, and depends on the prior knowledge of the communication partner. For example, the sentence “Don't you have a trash can?” Is not to be understood as a question, but as an indirect invitation to clean up, which both interlocutors must know in order for the speech act to have an effect.

Other features of spoken language include that

• •    a sentence once spoken can only be corrected afterwards,

• •    you usually have to react spontaneously to verbal statements,

• •    Sentence breaks, incomplete or grammatically incorrect sentences, repetitions or pauses can occur,

• •    non-verbal elements (gestures and facial expressions) accompany and support speaking,

• •    linguistic routines and formulaic expressions are usually used automatically. These characteristics must also be taken into account in speaking skills training in order for learners to be able to speak fluently.

What actually happens in your head when you speak? The best-known model is that of Levelt (1989), who starts from a conceptualization, formulation and articulation phase.

The communication is planned in the conceptualization phase. The knowledge of the world that the speakers have, their knowledge of the respective conversation situation and the way in which one speaks to one another, as well as their addressee knowledge, i.e. they know who they are talking to, help.

In the formulation phase, the words are searched for and the grammatical and phonological structure of the utterance is built up. To do this, the speaker uses his speech memory (mental lexicon), in which the vocabulary, grammar and sounds are stored.

This means that the formulation first exists internally in the head before it is pronounced aloud in the articulation phase, for which we need the voice and the corresponding muscles for mouth and tongue movements, etc.

All mental processes are checked again and again, either by an internal monitor (conceptualization phase) or by the listening comprehension system (formulation and articulation phase). So we always speak the words mentally and check them. The speaker listens in while he is planning and while he is speaking. If we do not agree with what we are saying, we break off the articulation, e.g. if we have made a promise. Speaking without hearing is, strictly speaking, hardly possible. When we speak, we train to hear at the same time.

However, the different processes do not run one after the other, as the model might suggest, but take place simultaneously. When speaking, articulatory, phonological, grammatical, semantic, textual skills and world knowledge have to interact - and very quickly. In contrast to writing, when speaking you don't have time to first look for the right word in your head, then, for example, think about an ending and then connect the word with the next word, etc. The person you are talking to becomes restless when between the words too much time passes when the spoken language is not fluent. Therefore, not only speaking as such, but above all fluent speaking must be practiced in class, as provided by the learning field model.