Editorial
This article was first published in Modern English Teacher Vol 14 No 3 2005

Conversation Skills: Why and How?

David Heathfield, UK

David Heathfield is a freelance storyteller and teacher trainer, who is particularly interested in creative approaches in language education www.davidheathfield.co.uk . His teacher resource book Spontaneous Speaking is published by DELTA. E-mail: david@davidheathfield.co.uk

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Introduction
Focusing on conversation skills
Raising student awareness
Anticipating difficulties
Learning through doing
Showing interest: listening skills
Reciprocal self-disclosure: exchanging personal information)
Conclusion
Example activitity: showing interest and reciprocal self-disclosure
References

Introduction

Increasingly I have tried to ensure that the courses I teach are much more than about verbal language. In order for students to communicate effectively in English with speakers of other languages, it is important for them to study language incorporated into the broader spectrum of communication skills. The difficulty is in deciding how to go about dealing with what can be a culturally sensitive issue. Many students need to be able to speak and listen to native speakers in their present or future social, work or study context. Many more need English to communicate with international speakers of English, where there is no single fixed culture of communication. It is not our role as English Language Teachers to impose our own cultural values regarding communication on our students. Nevertheless, students comment in feedback that they benefit a great deal from exploring similarities and differences between cultures of communication, especially when they are already using English extensively in their real-world context.

Focusing on conversation skills

Over the years communication skills activities have started to appear in coursebooks, e.g. ‘How to have a great conversation’ in Gairns and Redman’s Natural English Upper Intermediate. We can supplement such coursebook material with drama-based activities. The intention in this article is to explore what are commonly held by most people from Western English-speaking parts of the world (i.e. from the UK, Ireland, North America, Australia, New Zealand ) to be positive oral communication skills in a social context. I will refer to these as “conversation skills”, as opposed to more formal skills such as those used in meetings and for public speaking.

Raising student awareness

After students have had the opportunity to identify and then practise these skills, they can decide for themselves the extent to which they feel it important to incorporate these into their own English conversation practice. They may simply regard the activity as an opportunity to compare and contrast. Of course these skills are not generally learnt consciously, but are part of the huge amount that language students learn in a non-conscious way. Nevertheless, actually focusing on these skills in a language course draws attention to their importance and will help students to understand the rationale of the teacher on the occasions when they do fluency activities in the classroom without focusing on accuracy.

Anticipating difficulties

Conversation features which some students may have difficulties with include:

Opening conversations
Closing conversations
Non-verbal communication
Showing interest (Listening skills)
Reciprocal self-disclosure (Exchanging personal information)
Hesitating
Holding the floor
Turn-taking
Interpersonal distances

Learning through doing

An effective way of exploring these features is through drama-based activities. Avoiding written prompts and giving students the opportunity to put the ideas directly into face-to-face practice is a powerful way for them to experience the differences as opposed to simply learn about them. Subsequently students are in a much stronger position to be able to say how they want to apply this experience in their English-speaking contexts outside the classroom.

The team-teaching lesson included in this article focuses on showing interest and reciprocal self-disclosure. It is suitable for adult and young adult learners from all language and cultural backgrounds.

Showing interest: listening skills

People typically spend more of their waking hours listening than speaking, reading or writing. When people are asked what the main purpose of listening is, most answer ‘to get information’. However, in the invaluable publication A Handbook of Communication Skills, Voncile Smith describes ‘the importance of listening as a creative activity essential to establishing relationships with others’.

Ekman and Friesen identify 5 categories of behavioural acts to define nonverbal communication behaviour, one of which is termed ‘regulators’. ‘These nonverbal acts serve to regulate conversation flow between people. Regulators may be culture-specific and may be subtle indicators to direct verbal interaction, such as head nods, body position shifts and eye contact. Because of their subtle nature, regulators are often involved in miscommunication and inappropriate responses among people of different cultures or ethnic backgrounds.’

A basic list of regulators suitable for most students includes body language (open posture, leaning towards, nodding); facial expression (eye contact, raising eyebrows, smiling); vocalisations (mm, uh-huh, ah); verbal regulators (yes/yeah, right, OK, sure, oh, really). In the case of the latter two features, intonation plays a very significant role.

People also listen for a number of different reasons. Two of the most important, according to Smith are; ‘to empathise’ – to feel with emotions the thoughts of the other; ‘to be acknowledged’ - the listener has importance in the speaker’s frame of reference.

Reciprocal self-disclosure: exchanging personal information)

Self-disclosure is defined by Stewart as ‘the act of verbally and nonverbally sharing with another some aspects of what makes you a person, aspects the other individual would not be likely to recognise or understand without your help’. The issue for many students is how much to reveal about themselves in different contexts. Of course, native speakers vary hugely in the amount we disclose, but it is generally accepted that, if it is reciprocated, self-disclosure enables people to start and develop social relationships. Owen Hargie describes ‘the need for a high degree of openness between individuals in many contexts’, and illustrates ‘the potency of self-disclosure as a technique for encouraging deep levels of interpersonal sharing.’ It is ‘a useful indicator of listening and attention, wherein the listener follows up a self-disclosure made by the speaker with a related self-disclosure.’ This may be so for native speakers, but students from cultural backgrounds where it is considered inappropriate or even presumptuous to tell other people details about personal interests and relationships often struggle with this and, as a result, can find it hard to build friendships with others from cultures where greater self-disclosure is expected. Some students may wrongly be perceived as shy or, if they overcompensate for this cultural difference, they might seem overwhelmingly frank.

One main feature of self-disclosure is, according to Ivey and Authier, the use of the first person singular ‘I, my, mine’ e.g. ‘I find interviews stressful’ rather than ‘interviews are stressful’. This can also be referred to as expressing commonalities, which often signals that the listener is taking over the role of speaker. These typically begin with phrases like ‘Oh really? Actually I…’ or ‘Oh, so you know Pete too…’ or ‘Well you’re not going to believe this but I…’

Conclusion

Students who are given the opportunity to dedicate course time to conversation skills are well-equipped for real-world social interaction. Some are reassured because their existing skills are affirmed, some become more aware of cultural differences and all are provided with some basic strategies to develop their conversation skills if they wish to do so. These core skills are addressed in many training contexts for native speakers. We need to ensure that sufficient attention is given to them in language teaching.

Example activitity: showing interest and reciprocal self-disclosure

This kind of activity should be seen as part of ongoing oral skills development, and can be adapted and repeated and frequently referred to as the course continues. Here is a suggested lesson procedure.

Preparation

Arrange to team-teach with another teacher (alternatively invite in a guest conversation partner). Agree to introduce and practise the principal conversation skills involved in Showing Interest and Reciprocal Self-disclosure to the students involved in a lesson prior to this. (More example activities can be found in Heathfield 2005.) Depending on space, student numbers and the class profile, this may be a lesson where you bring two classes together.

If this is your first experience of having a conversation in front of your class, you might decide to have a brief rehearsal. However, it is important that it is not the same as your conversation in the lesson itself, which needs to be improvised and appear natural.

Set out the room with two chairs at the front for two teachers so that the students have as clear a view as possible. You may wish to set up video or audio recording equipment so you can use the conversation for follow-up work.

Procedure

• Elicit and demonstrate (with your fellow teacher) positive conversation skills associated with Showing Interest and Reciprocal Self-disclosure (as explained above).
• Point out that we can broadly divide social conversations into two simple categories:
  1. those where one, some or all parties have a consciously pre-planned agenda, e.g. planning a weekend away or asking to borrow a power drill;
  2. those which are unplanned, e.g. a social chat.
• Explain that you, the two teachers, are going to have an unprepared social chat for about 15 minutes and that the students should observe and note your conversation skills. Name four equal-sized groups A, B, C and D and set their tasks. Students in Group A observe and note how Teacher 1 shows interest, Group B do the same for Teacher 2, Group C observe and note examples of what Teacher 1 says to reciprocate self-disclosure, Group D do the same for Teacher 2. You can prepare worksheets for your students to fill in and tick or your students can make written notes or just observe, depending on the class profile and individual learning styles.
• For many students this is a unique opportunity to closely observe a model of positive conversation skills in English. Your conversation should appear natural and spontaneous, so relax and do not worry about ‘getting it right’. After a couple of minutes, you might even forget that there is an audience of students. A good starting point is a simple greeting, e.g. ‘All right Pete? How are things?’ As the conversation goes on, focus on Reciprocal Self-disclosure and avoid asking too many questions. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that a natural conversation is not a series of questions and answers.
• After the exchange, invite some initial reactions from students. These might be about the content, the tempo or any other feature. Each group A, B, C and D talks through their observation task. Group members are likely to have noticed different features, so they should be encouraged to note other members’ comments.
• Divide the students into new groups of four, each with a representative from all four previous groups A, B, C and D. They share their feedback and compare and contrast the conversation skills and styles demonstrated by the two teachers.
• Invite structured whole-class feedback, first on Showing Interest, then on Reciprocal Self-disclosure and finally on students’ ideas about how this might affect their own approach to English social conversation.
• In the same groups of four, ask A and B to have a short conversation. Students will probably need to be given an initial conversation topic such as ‘a recent activity’. Point out that the conversation can go off at any tangent and the subject can change. Fix a time limit appropriate to the class. C observes A, and D observes B, focusing specifically on Showing Interest and Reciprocal Self-disclosure. It is important to make it clear that the role of the observer is not to criticise but to observe and give factual and supportive feedback (ideally this will already be an established feature of the course).
• After feedback, A and B exchange roles with C and D.

References

Hargie, O. et al, (1986) A Handbook of Communication Skills, Croom Helm

Gairns, R. and S. Redman (2002) Natural English Upper Intermediate, OUP, pps 16-17

Heathfield, D., (2005) Spontaneous Speaking: Drama Activities for Confidence and Fluency, DELTA Publishing

Please check the Methodology for Teaching Spoken Grammar and English course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Drama Techniques for Creative Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.