ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN BRAZIL: TEACHING SPEAKING

Clara Emilia Silva Pinto

When teaching English as a foreign language, many Brazilian teachers focus on written
grammar even when evaluating the student’s oral performance. Learners are submitted to oral tests
in which every written-grammar-based mistake is deducted from their final grade. Such approach
often leads to unsatisfactory results, that is to say, students will produce an oral version of the written
genres instead of more natural spoken genres (PALTRIDGE, 2001, p.74).
In order to reduce this gap between the oral performance of native and non-native speakers,
the teacher/learner awareness of spoken language must be developed. And to do so, not only some
discourse-level features must be considered, but also a change in the pedagogical approach must be
taken into consideration.

Structural features
The transaction, the exchange and the adjacency pair are the fundamental structural units in
spoken interaction. The term transaction is used to identify the markers – such as right, now, well, so,
etc. – that signal the transitions to new topics, new phases in a conversation. They are characterized
by a falling intonation preceding a pause. “Transaction signalling is an important part of behaving
linguistically in the target language” according to McCarthy (1998, p. 50-51). The lack of this feature
can compromise the understanding of the language.
The exchange consists of Initiation-Response (such as an offer and its acceptance or rejection,
a question and its answer) but it can often include a follow-up which “frequently has a
relational/interactional function” (MCCARTHY, 1998, p.53), such as Really!, Oh, right, etc.
The adjacency pair is a unit of interaction that involves the way participants act in relation to
their interlocutors, where “speakers naturally orientate themselves to bring together in the discourse
utterances that mutually condition one another” (MCCARTHY, 1998, p.54).

Interactional features
There are three main interactional features used by speakers that require special attention.
They are turn-taking, as the name says, when the speakers take turns in an interaction, either by
responding or interrupting; discourse markers, that signal functions as disagreement – eg. well –,
shared knowledge – eg. you know –, top shifting – eg. but and so –, among others; and information
staging, when items are placed either before or after the core clause elements – eg. This friend of
mine, she went to Italy last month and… – and the written structure Subject-Verb-Object-Adverbial
is modified.
 Generic constraints
In spoken language, speakers may omit items of the structure or even display low lexical
density since they can be understood according to the context. In some cases, auxiliary verbs and
subjects can be omitted and still keep their meaning, as in Got any juice?. Also, when performing
tasks such as cooking and rearranging furniture, speakers use more function-words than full
vocabulary items. Eg. <S01> Are you adding that? <S02> It’ll go in a minute.

Genres
Being aware of the existence of different spoken genres is very important for speakers to reach
their goal when communicating. Different genres require different structures and “the notion of genre
enables us to identify different types of speaking situation and their characteristics” (PALTRIDGE,
2001, p.73). The speaker needs to know that when in an academic conference or a graduate seminar
they need to use a more formal language than when delivering a wedding speech.

The pedagogical approach

Most teachers in Brazil still use the “Three Ps” methodology (MCCARTHY, 1998) when it
comes to teaching English. It stands for Presentation-Practice-Production and it is based on the Jesuit
pedagogy, a traditional approach that consists of a unilateral verbal presentation of the subject
followed by the solving of repeated exercises in order to acquire the knowledge. It was adopted in the
times of dictatorship, when students’ ideas had to be controlled. However, such approach is no longer
satisfying, especially when it comes to teaching speaking. As pointed out by McCarthy (1998, p.67),
how can one present transactional boundaries, practice narrative evaluation or produce discourse
markers naturally?
A more adequate approach for teaching speaking is the “Three Is”, Illustration-Interaction-
Induction (MCCARTHY, 1998). It is based on a teaching method in which the students are part of
the process of teaching/learning. The Progressive Education is a pedagogical movement which states
that a subject is only internalized when the learner takes part in the whole process. It emphasizes
critical thinking and problem solving, group work and the use of varied sources oppositely to the use
of textbooks only.
Adapting the “Three Is” to teaching spoken language can be simple. Illustrate by using real
data. Such data must be chosen by the teacher along with the students, so that the extracts are
appealing to them. Afterwards, discussions about language take place, when teacher and learners can
share their views. Finally, learners draw their own conclusions based on what has been analyzed. By
doing so, the teacher allows the learners to have a faster acquisition of natural conversational skills
and fluency.
References

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