PRODUCTIVE SKILLS
(Speaking/writing)
IMPROVING YOUR SPOKEN LANGUAGE:
Equipped with your well-honed listening strategies and skills, and spurred on by your weekly oral language class successes, you are now ready to venture into the uncharted territory of unstructured real-world conversation. Fear not! There are plenty of non-threatening opportunities out there for you to improve your spoken language, and plenty of tricks to help you along.
Probably the easiest way of all to start is - by talking to yourself. And when you get bored with listening to your own voice, rope in some of your friends. Don't worry about correcting one another's grammar or accent that's what your classes are for, just concentrate on getting your fluency up and improving your comprehension.
Watch and copy the body language used by native speakers, not only to make your own contribution to a conversation appear more authentic, but because certain signs, e.g. Nodding or shaking one's head, are aids to comprehension.
Talk as interaction
Talk as interaction refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and describes interaction that serves a primarily social function. When people meet, they exchange greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences, and so on, because they wish to be friendly and to establish a comfortable zone of interaction with others.
The focus is more on the speakers and how they wish to present themselves to each other than on the message. Such exchanges may be either casual or more formal, depending on the circumstances.
Some of the skills involved in using talk as interaction involve knowing how to do the following things:
- Opening and closing conversations
- Choosing topics
- Making small-talk
- Joking
- Recounting personal incidents and experiences
- Turn-taking
- Interrupting
- Reacting to others
- Using an appropriate style of speaking
Talk as transaction
Talk as transaction refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. The message and making oneself understood clearly and accurately is the central focus, rather than the participants and how they interact socially with each other.
Examples of talk as transaction are:
- Classroom group discussions and problem-solving activities
- A class activity during which students design a poster
- Discussing needed computer repairs with a technician
- Discussing sightseeing plans with a hotel clerk or tour guide
- Making a telephone call to obtain flight information
- Buying something in a shop
- Ordering food from a menu in a restaurant
Talk as performance
This refers to public talk, that is, talk that transmits information before an audience, such as classroom presentations, public announcements, and speeches.
Talk as performance tends to be in the form of monolog rather than dialog, often follows a recognizable format (e.g., a speech of welcome), and is closer to written language than conversational language. Similarly, it is often evaluated according to its effectiveness or impact on the listener, something that is unlikely to happen with talk as interaction or transaction.
Examples of talk as performance are:
- Giving a class report or presentation
- Conducting a class debate
- Giving a speech of welcome
- Making a sales presentation
- Giving a lecture
WRITTEN LANGUAGE CLASSES
Effective Essay Skills
All essays need good starts and ends, lots of support material and a balance of personal research and lecture-based evidence. This usually requires an initial plan, some rethinking, writing, further research, and re-writing. This should be followed by a heavy editing session where the long sentences are ruthlessly pruned and paragraphs broken up, so that each paragraph makes or develops a separate point. The first version of anything you write is a draft, a rough and ready first attempt, requiring development and polish before it is a quality product. Most marks disappear because the first drafts are submitted as the final product.
Four Main Types of Essays
There is a full array of different types of essays. However, the most common classification includes only four major essay categories:
Expository
Descriptive
Narrative
Persuasive/argumentative
Effective writing skills
Spelling
Spelling is a potential minefield - use a spellchecker, but remember that it will not pick up the errors in the following sentences, caused by homonyms (words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings):
'Shogun warriors had to be skilled in the marshall arts.
'In speech, the tongue and the teeth compliment one another.'
'Most academic books have a forward, but very few books have an epithet.'
Abbreviations and acronyms in text
Replacing long words or phrases with initials or abbreviations is regarded as lazy by some tutors. However, with well known and established acronyms and phrases like WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), it is reasonable to adopt this approach.
When using abbreviations the full definition must be given the first time the phrase is used, with the abbreviation immediately afterwards in brackets.
Punctuation and style
The excessive use of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!, of which these authors are generally guilty, is also less than good practice! And never start a sentence with 'And', 'But' or 'BUT'. But having said that, there are plenty of examples of its incorrect usage in this book, where BUT and capitalization are used to emphasize points.
When editing, check that you do not over-use certain words. Find synonyms or restructure the paragraph if repetition is a problem! Keep sentences short and TO THE POINT. Ensure paragraphs address one point only. Be consistent in your use of fonts and font sizes, symbols, heading titles and position, bullet points and referencing. Decide on your style and stick to it.
TOP TIPS
Read and revise everything you write. Make time at the end of an essay to re-read and re-draft, correct spelling, insert missing words, check grammar and insert references.
Check that your arguments are logical.
Read what is written, not what you meant to write.
Work with a friend.
