In the traditional language department, especially at more advanced levels, the colloquial assistant conducts the 'oral expression' classes. This is a useful system which offers certain advantages:

• the teaching groups are often smaller;
• the assistants are usually enthusiastic;
• the assistants represent an on-tap resource, forging a close link with the target country (since in most cases they are only 'on loan' to the L1 country for a single academic year).

This latter point is most important, as native-speaker staff who have been resident in the first language (L1) country for many years, by their own admission, often feel a certain distance from their native country, and occasionally find themselves at a loss when asked to provide up-to-the-minute vocabulary.

However, the colloquial assistant system has concomitant problems:

• the staff concerned often have little or no teaching experience;
• they require close and frequent monitoring;
• they are close in age to the students themselves, which may bring attendant discipline problems;
• students may have the tendency to take oral classes less seriously, having the perception that oral skills have less value since they are not taught by a permanent member of staff;
• colloquial assistants require a lot of guidance in what to teach and how to teach it.

Tutors working in a department that operates a colloquial assistant scheme will still probably be involved in small-group teaching on literary, social and cultural courses where, with post-A level students, participation in the TL may be expected. If a cultural studies seminar is being conducted in the TL, this surely means that, to a certain extent at least, speaking skills are being 'taught', since:

• tutors need to think about ways in which all students can be encouraged to participate;
• there may be error correction from the tutor (whether solicited or not);
• student performance is being measured, if only by participants' ability to communicate their message to others;
• there may be an element of formal testing involving spoken language.

This is why I have called this module 'promoting the development of speaking skills'. It contains useful ideas relevant both to language-based classes and content-based classes, where language development might be considered a side-issue.

Now we've established this, we will move on to what teaching (or promoting) speaking skills actually means.