Helping Higher Level Students to Participate More Naturally in Conversation

Fiona Mulcahy

Fiona Mulcahy is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in Seville, Spain. She has been working in this field for five years and has been working in St. James English School for the past three years. As part of her own professional development she has done a lot of research into various areas in EFL.
E-mail: fmulcahy@gmail.com

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Introduction
Analysis, problems and solutions of five conversation strategies:
1. Turn taking
2. Repair
3. Adjacency pairs
4. Opening and closing devices
5. Topic Shift
Conclusion
Bibliography
Articles

What is conversation ¹? Perhaps it is easier to say what conversation is not. It is not, as sometimes thought, any spoken encounter or interaction between people. Conversations need at least two people, but the group must be small. Conversations are two-way - unlike a lecture, for example, which is one-way. There is no audience, everyone is involved, and there is no fixed schedule.

The basis of a conversation is normally interactional, although sometimes it has got an transactional² element to it. Conversations can be used:
- To exchange information
- To create or maintain social relationships
- To decide on something
- To carry out a joint task

There are certain rules or norms which are generally abided by on a sub-conscious level during a conversation. These rules, however subtle, shape the structure of most conversations that take place. They govern who speaks, for how long and when they speak. Alongside these rules there are set formulae and strategies for:
- opening and closing a conversation
- changing the subject
- interrupting
- holding the floor and turn-taking
- repairing conversation

If students are not made aware of these strategies, then having a conversation with native English speakers becomes a more difficult task. Therefore, it is necessary for us to teach learners some strategies to use during natural conversations.

Learners always want conversation help: it is high on their learning agenda. However, they lack exposure to native speaker conversation and also lack practice both in class and with native speakers. Course books tend not to cover conversation strategies well and present the students with scripted unnatural dialogues.

Due to a restraint on words I am going to focus on what I consider to be some of the more important strategies needed at higher levels. I will not look at interrupting, circumlocution, vague language or back channeling in this paper.

Analysis

Turn-taking is the process of alternating between speakers or participants in a conversation. Native speakers automatically recognise opportunities to take or relinquish a turn during conversation and can do this without causing misunderstanding. This also means that two speakers should not be speaking simultaneously for a long period of time. Thornbury (2005:8) suggests that there are two main rules for turn taking:
- long silences are to be avoided
- listen when other speakers are speaking

Turn taking in conversation occurs either through nomination by the speaker:
- "What do you feel about that?"
Or by self selection by the new speaker:
- A: "…I decided to buy a new car with the prize"
- B:"That's amazing!"
- C:"Oh yes, that's marvelous!"

The strategies needed to adhere to the rules of turn-taking include (Thornbury 2005:9):
- Recognizing when to take a turn
- Signaling that you want to speak and interrupting
- Holding the floor during your turn
- Recognizing when others want to speak
- Yielding a turn
- Signalling that you are listening

These skills can be shown verbally or by using paralinguistic features⁴ .

Problems

Turn taking can be a major area of difficulty, especially with students whose turn-taking conventions are very different, for example Asian students. The students are not aware of the rules or skills needed to correctly conduct a conversation and therefore cannot partake properly in it. At higher levels, students mainly have difficulties in the following areas:
- Nominating. The students sometimes are unaware when and how to nominate and if they have been nominated. This cannot only cause the student embarrassment but also breaks the first rule of turn taking (above).
- Formality when signaling they would like to speak. Often, students use inappropriately informal or formal language e.g. "Be quiet a second will you? Let me speak!" (In a business meeting)
e.g. "Would you mind terribly if I added something?"(When speaking with friends)
- Some students lack knowledge of appropriate length of turns, for example in Japan people tend to take much longer turns: they produce lengthy monologues and the more senior person in the conversation speaks first.
- Many classroom activities, such as information exchanges, instigate unnatural alternating of turns i.e. student A monologue followed by student B monologue.

Solutions

McCarthy suggests (1991) that turn-taking does not necessarily need to be taught. However, I believe that turn-taking is very much reliant on cultural differences and is therefore a very important strategy to teach to certain nationalities. Also, by helping students with this strategy, fluency activities can become more successful.
- I find that having the students listen to scripts of natural dialogues between native speakers is one way to help students understand more about nomination during turn-taking. The students can listen and read the transcript and highlight the expressions that are being used. The teacher can help with meaning form and pronunciation as necessary. From this a follow up activity, such as a role play, helps give students freer practice with the language chunks, while practising in a semi-natural environment.
- Formality issues are an area that I find particularly important for higher level students. Many times students are aware of the informal language but do not have the chunks necessary for formal situations. I like to present the students with a variety of situations and a number of phrases which could be used - both formal and informal. The students then have to match the situations to the correct phrase and justify their choice. This helps raise awareness of formality.
- Using video as a resource is very helpful also as the students can see the paralinguistic features of turn-taking between native speakers.
- "I try not to overuse activities which impose unnatural turn-taking")

Analysis

Sometimes when we speak we say something we do not mean. We make slips or do not convey meaning clearly which can cause confusion for the listener. If this occurs we need to utilize some repair strategies⁵ . Repair can be done immediately after the mistake occurs or using a retrace - and - repair sequence⁶ .
There are three main ways in which we repair a conversation:
- Speaker repair strategies:
Giving clarification, e.g. "What I meant was…"
Re-telling or re-explaining, e.g. "Sorry, I meant to say the TOP shelf, not the bottom shelf". (Notice the contrastive stress on TOP)

- Listener asking for clarification:
Asking for clarification, e.g. "Sorry, what do you mean, exactly?"

Problems

- Non-native speakers are more likely to make mistakes or slips when speaking but are not aware of the strategies necessary to repair these. They also evidently have problems understanding and may not be able to ask for clarification.
- Some students may feel embarrassed to admit a problem of understanding and so may not want to use repair strategies during a conversation.
- Conversations that are not face to face cause more problems for students: in this case repair strategies are vital.

Solutions

- Making students aware that even native speakers make mistakes during conversation is very important. Again a recording of native speakers using some of these strategies is important for the students. After a "noticing"⁷ activity such as this I like to give students role cards with some phrases, such as "Sorry?", "What do you mean?", " What I meant to say was..", on them and get them to decide in which situations these phrases would be used. The students then can categorise these phrases into a) the speaker clarifying their own utterances or b) the listener asking for clarification. Then they practise them in a fluency activity.
- One of the best ways to deal with this problem of the telephone is to use realia. If the school has got an internal phone system, the students can "call" each other and be purposefully unclear and use some repair phrases which you have provided them with. If there is no internal phone line, I like to get the students to sit back to back and hold a conversation in the same manner as mentioned.

Analysis

McCarthy (1991) defines adjacency pairs as "pairs of utterances that are mutually dependant". The second utterance in a pair is usually predictable or automatic. Some types of adjacency pairs are:
- Greetings - Greeting:
"How are you?"
"I'm fine thanks, and you?"
- Requests - Acceptance:
"Can you open the window, please?"
"Yes, of course."
- Invitations/ offers - Acceptance:
"Would you like to come to my party?"
"Yes, I'd love to."
- Question - Answer:
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from ______"

Sometimes it is possible for a three-way exchange to take place. This is known as an IPF exchange⁸ . This is often a feature of both everyday conversations and in the language classroom, for example:
A: "See you on Wednesday."
B: "Ok, bye."
C: "Bye".

Problems

- Higher level students usually know a very limited selection of adjacency pairs which were taught at lower levels. They need to be exposed to more adjacency pairs appropriate to their level, for example:
"What are you up to tonight?"
"Not much"
- Often, as teachers, we only teach one form for these pairs, such as:
"Is this a new coat?" "Yes, it is"
and ignore using the more natural exchanges such as:
"Is this a new coat?" "I got it in the sales. Do you like it?"
By doing this we may promote unnatural classroom exchanges.
- We, as teachers, tend to teach flat question-answer-question-answer sequences.
When students then use these in natural situations they sound bored and uninterested to the listener and need help upgrading their use of adjacency pairs.

Solutions

- Giving students cards to create a type of dominoes game is a very useful device to use. The students have to try to use as many expressions as possible to continue the IPF exchange in a logical way. This helps illustrate more natural exchanges and helps the students practice in a more controlled manner.
- Noticing activities are the most successful activities to use. The students need to be aware of the importance of stress and intonation in adjacency pairs. An activity I like to use is from Conversation (Nolasco & Arthur 2001:69) is putting the students into pairs and giving them a short dialogue. Each pair is then given an emotional state, for example happiness, anger or frustration, in which to conduct the conversation. They then have their conversation and the other students must identify the emotion. After the emotions can be swapped, giving each pair more practice. For example the students have to conduct a Greeting - Greeting adjacency pair sounding frustrated.

Analysis

Opening and closing devices are used to start and finish a conversation. Many conversations are opened and closed by using adjacency pairs (above). However, in reality, the opening devices that are used by native speakers are very different to the ones which we teach in the language class. In L1 classrooms, it is often the case that students are taught opening devices by asking a direct question, e.g. "what's your name?" making them sound rude. Some ways in which we open conversations are:
It's hot today, isn't it?
Have you seen the new film on in the cinema?
I was thinking…</p>

Also, we tend not to teach other phrases than "goodbye", which again can seem rude to a native speaker. Native speakers usually wind down the conversation until there is no one left speaking such as:
Ok then
Right
Well, I suppose
Erm, I'm afraid

Problems

- As I mentioned above one of the biggest problems for students is not knowing how to open and close a conversation without sounding rude or abrupt. They need to be taught a range of phrases, both formal and informal, to do this.
- Sometimes, native speakers use rather obtuse ways of signing off, for example:
"Well, you look busy…"
Non-native speakers do not catch the proposed meaning and may respond with something like:
"Oh no, not really"
It is particularly important to point out these idiosyncrasies to higher level students.

Solutions

- Notice the gap activities are quite useful for this problem. If the students are presented with two dialogues - one natural and one not - they can then become more aware of the other openers and closers used in English. Also, it is important to drill the intonation of the closing devices (above) as they generally use a rising intonation in these situations.

"Ok, well see you later"

- New Cutting Edge Upper Intermediate uses opening and closing devices in an awareness activity. The students have to decide how to open a conversation firstly and finally listen to two people having a conversation and answer questions on the conversation. This shows the students the importance of opening and closing a conversation politely.
- Categorisation activities are also a useful activity for students. I like to give the students a list of opening and closing devices which they must then classify into:

Analysis

A topic is the subject of a conversational exchange. Utterances used to introduce a topic often consist of a two-part structure. The first part introduces the topic and informs the listener about what they are going to be talking about and the second part is known as the comment, which is what we want to say about the topic. For example:
"Talking of……, yesterday I…"

During a conversation there are generally two reasons why someone may want to change the topic of the conversation. These are:
- They do not want to continue the current theme
- The theme reminds them of something else that has happened.

If a speaker or listener wants to change the topic there are certain phrases that can be used, such as:
That reminds me...
By the way
I'm sorry but can we change the subject
It is important to point out to higher level students that we do sometimes change the topic without using these phrases, but these expressions are common.

Problems

- When students want to change the topic of a conversation they often lack the strategies to be able to politely change the topic of a conversation. Instead of using one of the phrases (as above), students will often transfer an expression from L1 or simply change the topic without using any topic shift markers.
- Cultural differences can also cause the students some problems with changing the topic of a conversation. Students need to acquire a sense of "taboo" subjects to avoid offending the listener.

Solutions

- "Conversation Gambits" (Keller & Warner) has got some activities which pre teaches the expressions they need to use, such as that reminds me…, and then they have to change the subject using these expressions. By giving the students these expressions it helps them become aware of their uses.
" In multilingual and monolingual groups it is important to make the students aware of taboo subjects, particularly in English speaking countries. From this you can play a game whereby the students have to match the taboo subject to the country.

Conversation is one area that students are always asking to practise in class. As teachers it is out responsibility to equip students with the strategies to carry out a more natural conversation with native speakers.

The students need to be exposed to natural English, to natural phrases and to be made aware of what to do and what not to do during a conversation. If students are aware of these areas they will be more successful at conquering the language and have less problems interacting with native speakers outside the class and in a natural way.

Thornbury S. 2005 How to teach Speaking Pearson Education Ltd. Essex
Nolasclo R. & Arthur L. 2001 Conversation Oxford University Press Ltd. Oxford
Bygate M. 2004 Speaking Oxford University Press Ltd. Oxford
Kippel F. 2000 Keep Talking Cambridge University Press Ltd. Cambridge
McCarthy M. 1991 Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers, Cambridge University Press Ltd. Cambridge
Burns A. 2001 Analysing Spoken Discourse: Implications for TESOL Routledge, London Cambridge English Dictionary 1998 Keller E. & Warner S. 1988 Conversation GambitsLanguage Teaching Publications
Cunningham S. & Moor P. 1999 Cutting Edge: A Practical Approach to Task Based Learning: Upper-intermediate Student's Book Longman Publishers Ltd, Essex

Lynch T. ETP The Listening-Speaking Connection
Dornyei Z & Thurrell S Jan. 1994 ELT Journal Vol 48 Teaching Conversational Skills Intensively.Attention and awareness in foreign language teaching and learning (Technical Report No. 9) (pp. 1-64). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Notes

¹ "Talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information are exchanged". The Cambridge English Dictionary (1998: Cambridge)

² "Transactional interactions are those primarily involving the exchange of some form of good or service, or information, while interactional interactions primarily involve the creation, maintenance and extension of personal and social relations". Burns (2001:126)

³ Many books use the terms strategies and skills interchangeably, but I will refer to them as only strategies in this paper

⁴ Messages that do not consist of words per se: eye contact, facial expression and body language.

⁵ Repair strategies can be defined as correction by a speaker or listener of mistakes made by himself or the interlocutor.

⁶ "The speaker retraces or rewinds an utterance, starts again, but with a different sequence of words or phrases" (Thornbury 2005:6)

⁷ Noticing is, according to Schmidt (1995, p. 20), "the noticing hypothesis states that what learners notice in input is what becomes intake for learning.

⁸initiate-respond-follow up

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