Table Of ContentTeaching Listening and
Speaking in Second
and Foreign Language
Contexts
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Using Literature in English Language Education, edited by Janice Bland
Teaching
Listening and
Speaking
in Second
and Foreign
Language
Contexts
Kathleen M. Bailey
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Contents
Acknowledgments vi
1 Teaching Speaking and Listening: An Introduction 1
2 Teaching Speaking and Listening through the Ages 17
3 Language Proficiency and Communicative Competence 31
4 Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Speaking and Listening 45
5 Teaching Listening in a Second or Foreign Language 61
6 Teaching Speaking in a Second or Foreign Language 79
7 Teaching Interactive Speaking and Listening 95
8 Tasks and Projects in Teaching Listening and Speaking 111
9 Speaking and Listening Fluency 125
10 Teaching Pronunciation in a Second or Foreign Language 139
11 Pragmatics, Speech Events, and Speech Acts 153
12 Assessing L2 Listening 165
13 Assessing L2 Speaking 181
14 Assessing Interactive Speaking and Listening 193
References 205
Index 214
Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Andy Curtis, for encouraging me to develop a proposal
for this book. He also gave me helpful feedback on the first version of the proposal.
Next, I am very grateful for the enthusiasm and support of Maria Giovanna Brauzzi at Bloomsbury.
She has been very patient and helpful throughout the entire process.
Here at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), this project was supported
by a Wyckoff grant, which paid for the work of both Katherine Benton and Matthew McElfresh. Katherine
served as the first editorial assistant and project manager. When she graduated, Matthew took over.
Both of them kept me focused and did a great deal of word processing as well as both internal and library
research. Kalina Swanson and Quiamony Gaskins also helped a great deal with the word processing.
As we were nearing completion of the draft, Matthew was my editor: He checked citations, encouraged
paraphrases, recommended changes, and rigorously trimmed my overblown prose. Kalina helped a
great deal with the final manuscript preparation.
I also want to thank the students in my seminar on the teaching of speaking and listening in L2
contexts, particularly those in the spring semester of 2019. They read each chapter in draft form and
commented on both the contents and the prose. Lilli Barrilleaux, Bret Flowers, Quiamony Gaskins,
Jonathan Maynard, Jiayao Shen, Xiaying Zhuang, and Matthew McElfresh all gave me helpful feedback.
Finally, the volume benefited from both the critiques and encouragement of three anonymous
reviewers. I am grateful to them for their helpful ideas.
Chapter 1
Teaching Speaking and Listening: An
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
It is likely that people have been speaking and listening to one another since that mysterious era when
human beings became human. Members of all known civilizations communicate using their productive
and receptive skills. (In the Deaf community, those skills operate through signed languages, but I
don’t have the expertise to discuss that important topic.) This book has been written for language
teachers—particularly those who are embarking on their careers. I hope the volume also will be helpful
to experienced language teachers, including those who are undergoing shifts in assignments or even
major career changes. I also hope that teacher educators will find it useful. In this volume, I want to
share some selected research findings and relevant theory in a way that teachers of any language will
find both informative and interesting.
My own experience has been teaching English, so most of my examples will be in English.
Nevertheless, I will try to discuss teaching techniques and research concepts that you can use, no
matter what language you teach (or plan to teach). At the beginning of each chapter, I will contextualize
the key issues with a brief introduction, and some “Guiding Questions.” These are academically
oriented questions intended to raise key issues we will address in the next section: “What We Know.” In
that part of each chapter, I will review some of the literature that I find to be the most compelling about
the topic. Some of those resources will be from recent publications, while others will be from older work
that has influenced our field in important ways. In some instances, I will summarize and paraphrase
the literature, and, in other cases, I will share quotes from the original authors, particularly in defining
key terms. In every chapter I will also share “Reflections”—retrospections about language learning and
teaching situations I have observed or experienced personally that exemplify the issues addressed in
the chapter.
In the “Practical Activities” sections, I will share teaching ideas based on what we do know. These
ideas also include activities that have worked well for me as a teacher and a language learner. I
share them not as “best practices” but rather as good practices that may be relevant to you and your
learners in your own (future) contexts. It is only fair that I also acknowledge some of the challenges
you face, or will face, as a language teacher. For this reason, every chapter will have a section called
“Challenges.”
Each chapter will conclude with end-of-chapter activities. First there will be several “Discussion
Questions.” Unlike the “Guiding Questions” that begin the chapters, these end-of-chapter questions
2 Teaching Listening and Speaking
are intended to stimulate thought and discussion by helping you to connect your personal experiences
and professional goals to the issues covered in the chapter.
The next section of end-of-chapter materials consists of “Follow-up Tasks.” These are brief tasks
or larger-scale projects that will help you to put into practice the ideas covered in the chapter. If you
are currently teaching or in a teacher training program, I encourage you to work on these tasks with
colleagues or classmates.
Every chapter includes suggestions for “Technological Tools” that should be useful. I am not
suggesting products you can buy. Instead, these digital tools include websites that offer free materials
and resources teachers and learners can use to promote target language development.
Finally, the “Suggested Readings” section is intended to help you pursue areas of interest to you.
It is not possible to cover everything language teachers need to know about teaching speaking and
listening in one book. For this reason, I hope to guide you to additional resources for your continued
professional development.
It is important to add one more point here: I try to write as I teach. That is, whether my students are
language learners, pre-service teachers, or in-service teachers, I want to present ideas and structure
activities in ways that make sense to them. As an author, this stance means I write in the first person
instead of using a more academic style. I also try to anticipate—and sometimes overtly raise—questions
I think readers would like to ask and challenges they might face in understanding and applying the
concepts presented here. I will also recycle material from time to time, in order to make connections
across chapters.
Guiding Questions
1 What are foreign language and second language contexts for teaching and learning?
2 What are multilingualism and plurilingualism? How do they relate to language learning and teaching?
3 What are the components of spoken language?
4 What are declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge? How do they differ?
5 What are transactional language and interactional language? What is the ludic function of language?
6 What are the differences between written language and speech?
1.2 What We Know
In each “What We Know” section, I will address the “Guiding Questions” and provide information that
contextualizes the rest of the chapter. In this chapter, we will review some key vocabulary related to the
teaching of speaking and listening, so that you can delve into the rest of the book with confidence and
ease. In addition, this chapter will illustrate the topics and structure of the subsequent chapters and the
types of resources the book will provide. It is my fervent hope that in finishing this chapter you will feel
empowered and excited about reading more.
Introduction 3
1.2.1 Second and Foreign Language Teaching Contexts
This book focuses on the teaching of speaking and listening to people who are learning a new language
or are improving their abilities in one that is not their native language. The language people aspire to
learn is often called the target language (TL). The context might be one of learning the TL where it is
widely spoken. That situation is typically referred to as a second language (SL) context (e.g., people
learning English in Australia, or learning Spanish in Argentina). In contrast, studying a language in a
context where it is not widely used is called foreign language (FL) learning (e.g., learning Japanese in
Guatemala, or Mandarin in Canada).
Both FL and SL contexts are referred to with the abbreviation L2; however, the SL-FL contrast is not
as clear-cut as it may seem. For example, Hong Kong is widely perceived as a bilingual speech context,
where Cantonese and English have been used side by side for many years. But parts of Hong Kong are
largely monolingual, both in terms of speech and written texts. In different neighborhoods, for instance,
you can see road signs and advertisements that are written entirely in Chinese, partly in English, or
largely in English. This example is related to multilingual contexts and plurilingual speakers.
1.2.2 Multilingualism and Plurilingualism
Multilingualism is defined as “the presence in a geographical area, large or small, of more than one
‘variety of language,’ i.e., the mode of speaking of a social group whether it is formally recognised as
a language or not” (King, 2017, p. 6). We should also note that “in such an area, individuals may be
monolingual, speaking only their own variety” (p. 6). Thus, the Hong Kong situation described above
can be characterized as a multilingual context. Both Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken, as are
British, Australian, Indian, and North American varieties of English, among others.
In contrast, plurilingualism is “the repertoire of varieties of language which many individuals use,
and is therefore the opposite of monolingualism; it includes the language variety referred to as
‘mother tongue’ or ‘first language’ and any number of other languages or varieties” (p. 6). But we
should acknowledge that “in some multilingual areas, some individuals are monolingual and some are
plurilingual” (p. 6).
The language learners you teach will bring many linguistic resources to your classroom. Some of
those learners will be monolingual and some will be plurilingual. It is important to recognize that the
language abilities our students have are assets to build upon, not problems to overcome. We turn now
to the various components of spoken language, which learners must be able to interpret while listening
and produce while speaking.
1.2.3 Components of Spoken Language
Language teachers often talk about teaching lessons on one or more of the four skills. Speaking and
writing are called the productive skills, because the students are producing language. Listening and
reading are called the receptive skills, because the students are receiving the language when they listen
and read. Some courses focus on one or two of these skills, while others take an integrated approach,
in which all four skills are taught and practiced.
