Reduce communicative stress
Students are more likely to communicate if they have a good grasp of what they need to do. Brown and Yule (1983b: 34) list ways in which what they term 'communicative stress' might be reduced in oral classes (see Appendix 1).
Non-threatening measures include:
- working in groups of small size;
- breaking classes down further into pairs or small groups (which of course has the added benefit of maximizing speaking time for individual students and providing listeners of similar standards);
- giving learners a chance to prepare material (or to talk about a familiar topic);
- using activities that have a real purpose.
Many of these points might already seem familiar as they echo the comments made by undergraduates in section 6.2.2.
In order to foster fluency, Ur makes a further suggestion (1991: 121-22):
| In general, the level of language needed for a discussion should be lower than that used in intensive language-learning activities in the same class: it should be easily recalled and produced by the participants, so that they can speak fluently with the minimum hesitation. |
Nothing hampers communication so much as a lack of appropriate vocabulary, so introducing a lot of new words immediately before an oral exercise might be deemed stressful. This is not to suggest that new words and structures should not be fed into oral work, simply that a little time, perhaps a week or two, is given for absorption.
