Interaction in learner interlanguage: An approach to the practice and self-assessment of oral skills

Abstract

This paper discusses the teaching and learning of oral communication skills in English through the analysis of spoken data and explicit metapragmatic instruction for learners. I describe some methods and approaches to teaching and learning employed in my oral skills classes over the past few years, and report on the classroom-based research I have conducted into the teaching and learning of English as a second language. This research analysed the conversation of a group of learners of English from different language backgrounds focusing on ways in which they interacted and negotiated conversational discourse in classroom conversation tasks. Before discussing the more practical aspects of the study, the paper first reviews some of the approaches and analyses of the spoken language which have been used to describe English as spoken by native speakers of English. I then outline some of the research into learner 'interlanguage' and discuss some issues that have been raised in the study of second language acquisition related to pragmatic development. Finally I look at the use of the learners' own spoken data as a pedagogic tool and the perceptions the learners themselves have of their difficulties and preferences for learning the spoken language.