Oral Communication: Elements, Rules and Straegies

Oral Communication: Elements, Rules, and Strategies

Introduction

• Oral communication is crucial in the English teaching-learning process.
• Educators must stay updated with evolving teaching methods, especially active methodologies, to cater to diverse learning styles.
• Active methodologies, like cooperative learning, enhance critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• RD 217/2022 (p.131) emphasizes the development of communicative competence in foreign language education.
• Principles of written communication also apply to spoken communication (organization, clarity, grammar).
• Communication involves the exchange of information between individuals using a common code.
• Two basic language functions:
  • Transfer of information.
  • Interactional function (maintaining social relations).
• Written and spoken language are efficient for transmitting information, thoughts, feelings, experiences, and opinions.
• Oral communication is a two-way process requiring both speaker and hearer in the same situational context (except in special cases like phone conversations).
• Speakers and hearers encode and decode messages under time constraints, considering their interaction purpose.
• This complexity leads to syntactic alterations, meaning negotiation, misuse of links, and the use of time fillers (e.g., "um").
• Oral messages are often incomplete, ungrammatical, and include repetitions and overlaps.
• M. Geddes emphasizes the importance of gestures, facial expressions, body postures, and eye contact for interpreting oral messages.
• Paralinguistic codes (pitch, stress, intonation, rhythm) are vital in oral communication.

Elements and Rules of Oral Discourse

Elements

• Oral discourse contains redundant information.
• Linguistic and extra-linguistic elements reinforce spoken words.

Linguistic Elements

• Prosodic elements provide extra information.
  • Stress: Emphasis on certain parts of an utterance.
    • Syllables or words can stand out.
    • Primary and secondary stress within words.
    • L2 students must apply stress correctly to avoid confusing the hearer.
  • Rhythm: Relationship between accents and pauses.
    • Determined by prominent and non-prominent syllables.
    • Quick, monotonous rhythm vs. longer, irregular rhythm.
    • Contrasts in rhythm add expressiveness.
    • Spanish students learning English must pay attention to rhythm to avoid monotony.
    • Pauses:
      • Natural pauses align with rhythm.
      • Unpredictable pauses result from hesitation or false starts.
      • Proper use of pauses keeps attention and allows voice inflection and meaning changes.
      • Improper use can confuse the hearer.
  • Intonation: Rising and falling of voice.
    • Falling intonation in statements; rising intonation in questions.
    • Deviations from normal intonation indicate different feelings.
    • L2 learners must consider intonation to avoid misunderstandings.

Extralinguistic Elements

• Non-verbal communication (facial and bodily gestures).
• The body expresses sympathy, hostility, or indifference through gestures.
• Gestures are universal but also culture-specific and learned.
• Gestures complement or replace words and include:
  • Hand and arm movements.
  • Head and shoulder movements.
  • Conventional gestures (pointing, denial).
  • Descriptive gestures (size, strength, speed).
  • Facial gestures.
• Spontaneity is crucial for effective gestures.
• Facial gestures are often more eloquent than words and can be universal.
  • Raising eyebrows indicates surprise.
  • Nodding indicates agreement.
  • Smiling indicates happiness.

Rules

• Language is a system of interrelated signs.
• The significance of language units is understood within the complete system.
• Discourse depends on phonetic-phonological, morpho-syntactical, and semantic rules, considering communicative function and context.
• A communicative approach to language teaching considers textual globalizing.
• Two types of rules:
  • Rules of usage: Knowledge of linguistic/grammatical rules.
  • Rules of use: Ability to use linguistic knowledge for effective communication.
• Native speakers unconsciously acquire linguistic knowledge (competence), which teachers must help pupils develop.

Rules of Usage

• Language involves speaking and being understood.
• It includes producing and interpreting sounds with meanings.
• Linguistic knowledge is analyzed at four levels:
  • Phonetic-phonological: Producing meaningful sounds.
    • Foreign language teachers focus on teaching which speech sounds occur and how they combine.
  • Morphological: Forming new words using rules.
    • New words can be derivatives, compounds, blends, or back-formations.
    • Morphophonemic rules (e.g., plural morpheme, past tense formation) are affected by both morphology and phonology.
  • Syntactic: Forming phrases and sentences.
    • Syntax is the knowledge of phrase and sentence structure.
    • Only word sequences that follow syntactic rules are well-formed or grammatical.
    • Syntactic rules account for ambiguity.
    • They reveal relationships between words and show meaning differences.
    • Syntactic rules allow speakers to produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences, known as the creative aspect of language use.
  • Semantic: Combining words to produce phrase and sentence meaning.
    • Speakers cannot arbitrarily change word meanings.
    • Understanding sentences requires knowing word meanings and rules for combining them.
    • Semantic rules include:
      • Interpreting prepositional phrases.
      • Understanding semantic relationships determined by verbs.
      • Adverb-verb relationships.
      • Verb-subject number agreement.
    • Violations of semantic rules include:
      • Anomaly: Creating nonsense.
      • Metaphor: Nonliteral meaning.
      • Idioms: Meaning unrelated to the meaning of its parts.

Rules of Use

• Effective communication involves rules beyond grammar.
• Learning a language includes learning how to use sentences appropriately.
• Text construction follows rules of appropriateness, coherence, and cohesion.
  • Appropriateness: Language varies among speakers and situations.
    • Speakers choose language variety and register based on topic, channel, purpose, and formality.
  • Coherence: Structuring message content logically.
    • Information is organized in a comprehensible way for the receiver.
  • Cohesion: Relating sentences to form a cohesive unit.
    • Four devices in English:
      • Reference: Using a participant or element as a reference point for what follows.
      • Ellipsis: Omitting parts of a clause that are presupposed later in the text.
      • Conjunction: Relating clauses or text segments through semantic relations (opposition, clarification, addition, variation, temporal, causal-conditional).
      • Lexical Organization: Establishing continuity through word repetition or related words.

Conversational Studies

• The study of conversation began around 1925 (according to Coulthard, 1977).
• Three areas of study:
  • Ethnography of Speaking
  • Conversational Analysis
  • Grice’s Principle of Cooperation

Ethnography of Speaking

• Describes the normative structure of oral language and how language is used in oral interaction.
• Communicative norms are often unconscious and become obvious when broken.
• Communication is categorized into different kinds of events with defined boundaries and specific behavioral norms.
• Rules of speaking are defined by particular speech events.
• Elements of a speech event (using the mnemonic SPEAKING):
  • S: Setting
  • P: Participants
  • E: Ends, purposes
  • A: Act, sequence
  • K: Key or tone
  • I: Instrumentalities
  • N: Norms of interaction
  • G: Genre
• Rules of speaking are often broken, especially in intercultural communication.
• Breaking rules is meaningful when parties are expected to share the same norms.

Conversational Analysis

• Focuses on turn-taking and conversational structure.
• Speaker and listener roles change in turns, typically without overlaps or gaps.
• Sacks suggested three degrees of control over the next turn:
  • Selecting the next speaker by naming or alluding to them.
  • Constraining the next utterance without selecting a speaker.
  • Leaving it to other participants to decide.
• Duncan (1973) provided cues to signal intentions:
  1. Intonation: pitch terminal juncture
  2. Paralanguage: drawl on the final syllable
  3. Body motion: hand gesture or relaxation of a position
  4. Sociocentric sequences: stereotyped expressions such as “but” or “you know”
  5. Paralanguage: Drops in pitch or loudness
  6. Syntax: The completion of a grammatical clause
• Adjacent pairs are basic structural units in conversation.
• Sequences consist of chains of different types of pairs.
• First parts include questions, greetings, challenges, threats, warnings, offers, requests, complaints, invitations, and announcements.
• Second pairs can be reciprocal (greeting-greeting) or have only one appropriate response (question-answer, complaint-apology).

Grice’s Cooperative Principles

• Grice (1975) argued that participants cooperate in conversation to produce rational and efficient information exchange.
• Speakers make contributions as required, following four maxims:
  • Maxim of Quality: Contributions should be sincere, based on belief and evidence.
  • Maxim of Quantity: Contributions should be as informative as required.
  • Maxim of Relevance: Utterances should be relevant to the conversation stage.
  • Maxim of Manner: Speech should avoid obscurity, ambiguity, and be brief and orderly.

Linguistic Routines and Formulaic Languages

Definition

• Wray defines formulaic language as prefabricated sequences of words or elements stored and retrieved whole from memory.
• Formulaic language includes idioms, collocations, phrasal verbs, lexical bundles, lexical phrases, phrasal expressions, and pragmatic routines.
• Acquiring formulaic language is beneficial for L2 learners (Boers & Lindstromberg, 2012).

Functions

• Functional Use: Responding to recurring social situations (apologizing, requesting, giving directions, complaining).
• Social Interaction: Engaging in "light conversation" for pleasure or social solidarity.
• Discourse Organization: Signposting the organization of written and spoken discourse.
• Precise Information Transfer: Using technical vocabulary with specific meanings in particular fields.

Oral Communication Strategies

• Selinker introduced the term communication strategy in 1972.
• Learners encounter communication problems due to a lack of linguistic resources.
• Commonly used strategies:
  • Circumlocution: Using different words to express intended meaning.
  • Semantic Avoidance: Avoiding problematic words by using alternatives.
  • Word Coinage: Creating new words for unknown words.
  • Language Switch: Inserting words from the first language.
  • Asking for Clarification: Asking for the correct word or help.
  • Non-Verbal Strategies: Using gestures and mime.
  • Avoidance: Avoiding topics due to lack of vocabulary or skills.

Conclusion

• Oral communication is a powerful tool for developing students’ communicative skills.
• Meaningful and authentic communication builds confidence and effectiveness.
• Active methodologies create a supportive environment where students feel comfortable taking risks.
• Ongoing support and feedback are crucial for continuous improvement.
• Teachers model effective communication and encourage reflection.
• Active methodologies help students express ideas clearly and coherently.