Speaking as a skill

Speaking is a productive skill. Speaking ensures oral interchange in a foreign language in dialogic and monologic forms. It is directed at one or several persons. Any act of speaking has its own purpose, motive based on the speaker’s needs, subject, product (dialogue or monologue) and result (verbal or non-verbal reaction). The processes of speech production and reception have been deeply investigated by L.S. Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, N.I. Zhinkin, A.A. Leontyev, E.P. Shubin, T.V. Ryabova, I.A. Zimnyayaand others.

The process of speech production has a three-phase structure: 1) the level of the rise of an inner intention; 2) the level of intrinsic thought-formation and its formulation; 3) the level of extrinsic realisation.

1) First, some internal drive causes the speaker initiating an utterance. This indicates the starting point of producing speech and, correspondingly, the speaker’s communicative intention. The communicative intention determines the speaker’s role as an interlocutor and a specific purpose of his utterance: whether he wants to ask or agree, refuse or accept, thank or apologise.

2) At the level of thought-formation and formulation, the speaker already knows what to speak about, he conceives a general concept of his future utterance, which does not yet acquire its complete speech realisation, but already exists in an empirical code. The concept concerns the whole utterance; it outlines the main idea of the future utterance. In other words, the speaker conceives the preliminary integral content plan, which the speaker is specifying in the process of its realisation. Then follows the realisation of the conception through selecting appropriate language means: grammar structures, words, etc. This realisation goes on in inner speech, where a potential utterance speech scheme is constructed. Even the direct conveying of one’s ideas at the moment of their occurrence is preceded by speech kinaesthetic impulses, which forego uttering words, if only by a fracture of a second. Inner speech is elliptic, non-discrete, mosaic, it is not vocalised.

3) At the level of realisation, vocalisation takes place. The previously formed utterance is realised in extrinsic (vocalised) speech by means of articulation and intonation. The process of producing an oral utterance is monitored by audio control, which provides constant feedback. The feedback ensures the realisation of the original conception.

Speaking his mother tongue, the speaker’s thoughts concern only the content of his utterance. He concentrates on what to say and in what sequence. These actions are at the level of consciously performed activity. Separate operations of speech production remain oblivious, as they are completely automated and performed instantly. Speaking a foreign language (in case of insufficient communicative competence), the speaker is aware of the operations due to the absence of reliable ties between the speech conception and language means of its realisation. That is why realisation of speech activity in a foreign language is possible under the condition of the existence of speech automatism, or speech habits: grammatical, lexical and pronunciation (articulation and intonation) ones. These habits taken together make up the operational level of speaking as a skill. However, this whole complex of speech habits is not a proper skill yet, because the skill cannot come to sum of its elements. The skill possesses its own features: purposefulness, productiveness, independence, dynamism, and integrity.

Purposefulness of the skill provides functioning the sphere of thinking: constant correlation of the motive of speaking with its short-term and long-term goals, the interlocutor’s verbal and non-verbal reaction as signals of feedback, knowledge about the setting of the interlocution. Purposefulness also reveals itself in correlation of the speaker’s speech utterance with the result predicted.

Productiveness of the skill concerns both the content and form of the utterance. As far as the content is concerned, it is the whole variety of the facts, knowledge and ideas that are necessary to achieve the goal put forward. As for the form, productiveness is characterised by the number of new combinations based on the acquired language input. In other words, the less there is the language learned by heart in the utterance, the higher its productiveness is.

Independence of the skill to speak a foreign language presupposes that it is independent from the mother tongue. It means that the speaker’s acquisition of the foreign language is sufficient to provide the act of speaking without any returns to his mother tongue as translation. It also means that speaking the foreign language is free from cues as hints. This testifies to self-dependent character of planning the utterance and selection of the corresponding language means.

Dynamism of the skill means the ability to perform skill transfer. It correlates to such a quality of skill as flexibility, but flexibility ensures skill transfer in analogous (similar) communicative situations, while dynamism works in new ones.

Integrity of the skills refers to its quality based on active synthesis of different habits as automated components and on integration of both automated and non-automated skill components: motives, interests, life experience, knowledge and all the characteristics of the speaker’s personality. The latter brings to life an important methodological principle: teaching the skill of speaking is impossible without involving all spheres of the student’s personality.