Chapter 15 Teaching Oral Communicat

Chapter 15 Teaching Oral Communication Skills From a communicative, pragmatic view of the language classroom, lis- tening and speaking skills are closely intertwined. More often than not, ESL curricula that treat oral communication skills will simply be labeled as "Listening/Speaking"courses. The interaction between these two modes of performance applies especially strongly to the most popular discourse catego- ry in the profession: conversation.and, in the classroom, even relatively uni- directional types of spoken language input (speeches, lectures, etc.,) are often followed or preceded by various forms of oral production on the part of stu- dents. Some of the components of teaching spoken language were covered in the previous chapter as we looked closely at teaching listening comprehen- sion: types of spoken language, idiosyncrasies of spoken language that make listening difficult, and listening microskills that are a factor of the oral code. This chapter will build on those considerations as we investigate the teaching of oral communication skills,253