1 Introduction

This assignment focuses on a summary concerning to speaking, and it includes

knowledge on speaking skills, speaking characteristics and teaching approaches, transactional
vs Interactional speaking (functions of speaking), some knowledge on Speech acts,
pragmatics, the context in the speech act production, typed of tests, evaluation, aproach to
Classroom Investigation in Language and classroom Investigation tools. These topics were
summerized carefully and meticulously in order to say in brief what has been covered.

2 Knowledge on speaking Skills

According to Bygate (1987, pp.5-6) “Speaking is the production of auditory signals
designed to produce differential verbal responses in a listener. Therefore, it is the combination
of sounds in a systematic way according to language specific principles to form meaningful
utterances”. In addition, Burns & Joice, (1997, p.99) and Luoma, (2004, p.2)
define Speaking in a similar way as being a spontaneous, open-ended and interactive process
of constructing meaning that involves producing speech, receiving and processing
information.

2.1 Speaking characteristics and Teaching approaches

Speaking is characterized as being both sided process which involves two teaching
perspectives namely bottom-up and top-down. In bottom-up teaching perspective, speaking
should be taught by starting with the smallest unit-sounds moving to the mastery of words,
utterances to discourse. While in top-down teaching perspective, speaking should be based on
interactional skills which involve making decisions about communication. That is, top-
down view considers the spoken texts as products of cooperation between two or more
interactants in shared time and shared physical context. So, speaking is not always
unpredictable because it involves language functions (or patterns) which tend to recur in
certain discourse situations which can be identified before end. (Bygate, 1987, p.23; Eckard &
Kearny, 1981, Howarth, 2001, Cornbleet & Carter, 2001, p.18).

2.2 Transactional vs Interactional Speaking (Functions of Speaking)

2.2.1 Transactional Speaking

According to Jones, (1996, p.14) in Richard, (2007, p.23), Brown and Yule, (1983,
p.1); Harmer, (2008, p.343) quoting Thornbury (2005). Transactional Speaking focuses on
what is said and done. Along with that, the message is the central focus where the main aim is
to make oneself understood clearly and accurately. A transactional speaker has to master some
skills like: explaining a need or intension; describing something; asking questions; asking for
clarification; confirming information; justifying opinion; making suggestions; clarifying
understanding; making comparisons; Agreeing and disagreeing. While performing, the
speaker has to use appropriate format, present the information in an appropriate sequence, use
correct pronunciation and grammar, use appropriate vocabulary and appropriate opening and
closing. This type of speaking often has identifiable generic structures and the language use is
more predictable. It has less contextual support and the speaker must include all necessary
information in the text.

2.2.2 Interactional Speaking

Interactional Speaking is used to establish and maintain social relationship. In other

words, language is used to negotiate role relationship, peer solidarity, the exchange of turns in
conversation and the saving of face of both the speaker and the hearer (Brown and Yule 1983,
p.1 and Harmer 2008, p.343). Ur (1999, p.53) holds the same view when he advocates that the
purpose of interactional use of language is for communication as a social issue. These authors
argue that the speaker should be equipped with a range of linguistic features such as voice
quality effects, as well as use facial expressions, postural and gestural systems in order to
clear up the meaning of the words he speaks and communicate successfully. This view is
supported also by Fairclough (2001, p.22) when she argues that spoken discourse involves
visuals. Apart from what is stated by Brown and Yule, She goes further when she asserts that
visuals can accompany the talk and help to determine the meaning. Or visuals can substitute
for talk as a perfectly acceptable alternative. For example, head-nodding, head-shaking and
shrugging one’s shoulders can be used by both speaker and hearer for “yes” or “no” and “I
don’t know” answers.

2.3 Some knowledge on Speech acts

A speech act is defined as an action performed by a speaker with an utterance to show

an intention or idea (George Yule 2010, p.133 and Fasold 2003, p.44). It is used to describe
acts such as request, command, question, order, promise, inform, apology, refusal, assertion,
regret, permission, denial, and so forth. According to Yule (2010, p.134) a speech act can be
direct or indirect.

a) Direct speech act is that which most of the time asks for direct information like
interrogatives.
b) Indirect speech act, the structures have no direct relationship with their functions.
They depend on the speaker’s intension and context. For example, if somebody says
“I will be there at six” he seems to be performing the speech act of “promising”.

According to Austin quoted by Locastro (2003, p.166) there are three acts enacted
simultaneously with each speech act as sentence locutionary act, utterance illocutionary
act and perlocutionary act.

1. Sentence locutionary act: deals with the basic meaning of the proposition, the lexico-
grammatical meaning that has true value and sense. That is, the proposition or
sentence describes a state of affairs and has determinate meaning.
2. Utterance illocutionary act : deals with the speech force showing the intension of the
speaker in how the act is to be understood by the addressee.
3. Perlocutionary act is the effect on the addressee, unpredictable and possibly
nonlinguistic.
2.3.1 Pragmatics

Pragmatics is defined as the study of invisible meaning or how people recognize what
is meant even when it is not actually said or written. Pragmatics is also defined as the study of
the use of context to make inferences about meaning (Fasold, 2003, p.119). There are
different kinds of contexts namely linguistic context and physical context. In their turn, they
are related to aspects like deixis, reference, inference, presupposition and implicature which
will be dealt with later in this chapter.

a) The linguistic context or co-text of a word is a set of other words used in the same
phrase, sentence or utterance. The surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we
think the word probably means. For example, the word “bank” might mean the place
where people deposit money or the bank of a river and so on.
b) The physical context is the surrounding of what people read or hear. It is tied with
aspects of time and place in which linguistic expressions are encountered. It is related
with deixis which are very common words in people’s language that cannot be
interpreted at all if people do not know the context, specially the physical context of
the speaker.

2.4 The context in the speech act production

Brown and Yule (1983, p.25) define context as an environment or the circumstances
where the language is used or where a piece of discourse occurs. According
to Hymes (1964) quoted in Yule (1983, p.38) a context is related to a situation in which
involves some contextual features that help the realization of the speech event. The speaker
and the listeners should be aware of some aspects like reference, presupposition, implicature,
explicature, and inference in order to be successful in their interaction.

2.4.1 Reference

Lyons (1968, p.402) quoted in Yule (1983, p.27) and Fasold (2003, p.121) argue that
“reference” is the relationship that exists between words and things. In addition, Yule (2010,
p.131) defines reference as an act by which the speaker or writer uses language to enable a
listener or reader to identify something. The former theory showed some limitations because
it was simply describing the relationship between language and the world. The same author
came up with some innovations in the later theory stating that “reference is the speaker who
refers… he invests the expressions with reference by the act of
referring…” Strawson (1950) quoted in Yule(ibid) claims that “referring” is not something
that an expression does, it is something that someone can use an expression to do.

2.4.2 Presupposition
Givón (1979, p.50) quoted in Yule (1983) and Fasold (2003, p.121) define presupposition as
the assumptions that the speaker makes so that the hearer can accept without challenge.
People design their linguistic message on the basis of large-scale assumptions about what the
listeners already know (Yule, 2010, p.133).

2.4.3 Implicature

Implicature is also one of the aspects which has to do with pragmatic

meanings. Blakmore (1992, p.58) quoted in Locastro (2003, p.185) considers implicature as
an aspect of cognitive theory of pragmatic meanings that has to do with mental
processing. Grice (1975) cited by Brown and Yule (1983, p.31) and Fasold (2003, p.128)
state that implicature is a way of accounting for hat a speaker can imply, suggest or mean as
distinct from what the speaker literal says. Brown and Yule (ibid) argue that the
conversational implicature derives from a conversation plus a number of maxims or
conventions which the speaker will normally obey.

2.4.4 Inference

Inference is the additional information used by the listener to create a connection

between what is said and what must be meant (Yule, 2010, p.131).

Brown and Yule (1983, p.33) state that in inference the hearer has no direct access to
the speaker’s intended meaning in producing an utterance. He often has to rely on the process
of inference to arrive at an interpretation of the connected utterances. Yule (ibid,
p.131) asserts that a successful act of inference depends more on the listener’s ability to
recognize what is meant by the speaker than on the listener’s dictionary knowledge of the
words which are used.

3 Testing

3.1 Types of tests

According to Harrison (1983, p.72) and Heaton (1987, p.17-32) tests can be
subdivided into the following:
 1. Placement Test: It has to do with placing new students in the right class in a school.
Here, students can be tested on different aspects related to the syllabus of the specific
level. The test can cover grammar and vocabulary knowledge and assess students
receptive and productive skills.
2. Diagnostic tests: While placement tests are designed to show how good students’
English is in relation to a previous agreed system of levels, diagnostic tests can be
used to expose learners’ difficulties, gaps in their knowledge, and skill deficiencies
during a course. Thus, when English teachers know what the problems are, they can
do something about them.
3. Progress or Achievement tests: These tests are designed to measure learners’
language and skill progress in relation to the syllabus they have been following.
Achievements tests only work if they contain item types which the students are
familiar with. They are administered at the end of a term to reflect students’ progress
and not failure. They can also help teachers decide on changes to future teaching
programs where students do significantly worse in parts of the test than teachers might
have expected.
4. Proficiency Tests: These tests give a general picture of a student’s knowledge and
ability rather than measure progress. They are frequently used as stages people have to
reach if they want to be admitted to a foreign University, get a job, or obtain some
kind of certificate.

4 Evaluation

Basically when we talk about evaluation in the teaching process, it has to do with
examining seriously through the day-by-day teaching process in order to find out if you are
indeed helping your students’ learning. Evaluation is done by questioning yourself on school
physical conditions, teaching materials, teaching and learning methods and methodologies,
lesson designing and the on-going circumstances during a lesson. This evaluation process
reaches its end after teaching a lesson. Here is where you sit down and start doing some kind
of play-back of what you did in your lesson. Anything which did not go well, you need to find
possible solution so that in the next lessons you can solve it (Sumila, 2023).

4.1 Aproach to Classroom Investigation in Language

 Many years of teaching on your own may not bring any tangible changes in the
classroom. Change in classroom practices and teacher development as well as the
improvement of quality of teaching is very likely to occur when teachers think about what
happens in the language classroom. This thinking exercise has to be done in
a systematic and cyclical manner. In this way, you will be starting to investigate the classroom
and engaging in reflective teaching.

Cross in Richards (1996) asserts the process of reflection can be regarded as “…the
study by class teachers of the impact of their teaching on students in their classrooms. The
basic premise of classroom research is that teachers should use their classroom as laboratories
to study the learning process as it applies to particular disciplines: teachers should become
skilful, systematic observers of how the students in their Classroom learn.

4.2 Classroom Investigation Tools

According to Richards (1996) in his book “Reflective Teaching in Second Language

Classroom” investigative tools are to improve teachers’ strategies so that they can become
more systematic and effective. These are: teaching journals, lesson reports, observations and
action research.

4.2.1 Teaching Journals

These are written or recorded accounts of teaching experiences, which serve two main
purposes: record ideas or events for later reflection and trigger insights about teaching since
writing can also be seen as a discovery process.

4.2.2 Lesson Reports

These are written accounts of the relevant features of the lesson, which would allow
the teacher to monitor what happened during a lesson in terms of time spent on different parts
of the lesson as well as the effectiveness of the lesson as whole. What distinguishes a “lesson
report” from a “lesson plan” is that while a lesson plan gives a description of what the teacher
intends to do in a given lesson, a lesson report gives a description of what actually happened
during the lesson from the teacher’s perspective.

4.2.3 Observation
 This is about observing a cooperating teacher’s class or peer observation: this can be
done by a teacher visiting a colleague’s class in order to observe different aspects of teaching
and share experiences.

4.2.4 Action Research

Action research can be defined as teacher-initiated classroom investigation with the

main purpose of deepening teacher’s perception of many aspects inherent to teaching and
learning process. In this deep understanding that may help the teacher to bring about
innovation regarding classroom practices. It is made of an “action plan” which comprises four
main steps: planning, action, observation and reflection.

5 Conclusion

To say that it was not easy to reach this part, the writer had to read meticulously to
bring a summary of the topics. So, speaking is a crucial skill because it makes the
communication easier. ELS students should be submitted to speaking activities as much as
possible so that they can develop their communication skills. However, A speech act is
different from a sentence and it is not to be identified with any unit at any level of grammar. It
gets its status from the social context as well as grammatical form and intonation. It is a part
of speech event which in its turn is a part of a speech situation which occurs within a speech
community. A speech event is viewed as a part of a conversation which takes place at
a speech situation (for example a party).