The Language Teacher
July 2003
What Fluency Training Means
Tom Kenny
Nagoya University of Foreign Studies
Fluency training in oral communication means focusing on fluency—i.e., generating output—rather than devoting class time to the explicit teaching of grammar. Why is this necessary? Well, in the ten years that I've been teaching university freshmen in Japan, I have made some important observations. First of all, students came to me with enough grammar structures and vocabulary knowledge to make basic conversations, even if those conversations consisted of very short utterances and turns. Secondly, I found that, although most students weren't turned on by studying English, they at least enjoyed having the chance to talk in English. Most of them didn't get that chance when they were in high school. Finally, when I gave them "conversation time," I noticed that several essential ingredients were missing. For example, students often mixed Japanese reactions and fillers into their English conversations. Conversations often broke down when there were communication problems. Also, learners didn't know how to begin or end conversations, or how to keep them going.
It seemed apparent to me that their willingness to speak and their background—i.e., their linguistic knowledge—would provide me with enough to base their instruction on language chunks. I thought that once I began to teach them selected phrases that would fill in what was missing from their conversations, they would be able to make basic conversations on simple topics, which would improve their confidence and pave the way for them to discuss more complex topics later.
So, I developed a methodology to help my students acquire some language chunks. I presented them in class as conversation strategies, which included not only words and phrases that would facilitate conversation, but behaviors (e.g., shadowing) as well. The students found them easy to learn and use in conversation. And I was as thrilled as the students were to hear how these strategies made a difference in their output. Teachers who taught my students the following year remarked on how fluent they were, and how easy it was to teach them basic discussion skills.
How were these students trained to become so fluent? I explained to my colleagues that "fluency training" was comprised of
- getting learners to acquire language chunks for automatic retrieval to fix communication problems, to provide feedback, and to maintain the conversation
- getting learners to say more, by
- increasing the mean length of their utterances
- taking longer turns
- holding longer discussions
- giving learners a chance to hear and see themselves speaking English, in order to build their confidence and find their mistakes
- providing learners with feedback on their performance.
Let me briefly explain each aspect of this methodology.
1) To acquire language chunks, whether they are reactions ("That's great!"; "You poor thing!"), communication strategies ("What does that mean?"; "What's the word?"), or conversation maintenance phrases ("For example . . ."; "Anyway . . ."), it is useful to provide written examples of the target phrases, as well as brief, scripted dialogs containing the target phrases in the form of listening activities. It is usually not enough simply to present phrases and urge students to use them, so a controlled practice is often necessary. After the controlled practice, students are urged to have brief timed conversations on simple topics to practice the spontaneous use of the phrase. Additional goals of the free practice are to recycle old phrases and to have as many timed conversations with as many partners as class time will allow.
2) Once students have acquired enough basic phrases and can demonstrate that they can keep a conversation going on a simple topic, the next step toward enhanced fluency is getting them to say more than they could before. Up until this point, most learners' conversations generally consist of short utterances in short turns. Their next challenge is to make longer utterances and take longer turns. Acquiring open-ended language phrases (e.g., "I think . . ."; "It sounds like . . ."; "So, you mean . . .") is essential for meeting this challenge. At this stage, students begin talking on topics of greater complexity. Additionally, short conversations give way to longer discussions in which more explanation is necessary and the total amount of talking time increases. I have discovered that showing video or audio examples of other learners successfully using target phrases and behaviors motivates my students. When students see other Japanese taking long turns, they are impressed.
3) I believe that one of the great disadvantages of the traditional oral communication classroom is that learners' oral practice disappears into thin air: The words that they speak are gone as soon as they are spoken, and gone with them is an opportunity to examine their output. For this reason, I have been videotaping learners regularly for the past ten years and asking them to watch their conversations and evaluate themselves. I ask them to look for good things they have said (use of language chunks and behaviors), and I ask them to find mistakes that they've made (grammatical or word choice) and correct them. Certainly, I believe that it is possible for learners to improve their fluency without videotaping themselves, but I feel giving learners a chance to hear and see themselves speaking English is quite useful in building their confidence and in creating their self-image as an English speaker. Also, having videotapes of learners helps us to . . .
4) Provide learners with feedback on their performance. As teachers, we would never ask our students to write essays and then not read them, would we? Well, I think the same thing should go for their oral practice. Examining a videotaped copy of a learner's conversation is a perfect opportunity for us teachers to discover the individual language learner's strengths and weaknesses, and then share our comments with the learner.
To summarize, fluency training depends on giving learners well-chosen phrases and behaviors, providing them with examples (both written and aural) of how they are used, guiding students through the process of using them themselves, and making sure students get plenty of opportunities to use them.
Additionally, I insist that students follow two simple rules from the very start: 1) they must speak only in English, and 2) they must keep talking in English until time is up (timed conversations). This is usually not a problem for most of my learners. As far as topics go, I have found that it's best to start with easy topics and move slowly toward more cognitively demanding ones, topics that might require some preparation.
In my experience, I've found that there are some language chunks that can be acquired with minimum input and examples. Then there are some that require quite a bit of presentation and controlled practice before students internalize them. Regardless, we surely wouldn't want our students entering upper-level discussion classes unable to summarize or clarify a point, or unable to explain in their own words something they've just heard. Acquisition of the lexical chunks that form the backbone of fluency training will ensure that students can perform these essential tasks. Of course, there is more to learning English than practicing select phrases until learners have acquired them. Fluency training is just a part of learners' overall language study. But it is an important part that gives them confidence to learn and experiment more.
Fluency training also means getting students talking and getting them to keep talking in the classroom. One of the comments that I hear over and over again from those teachers who have used Nice Talking with You is how easy it is to focus on conversation strategies as the core fluency-building tools. I also hear how the phrases make a real difference in their students' output. As one teacher put it, "You can hear them using the conversation strategy phrases that they've never used before. By the end of the semester, there's a big difference in their language ability." Another teacher commented, "Students who couldn't keep a conversation going for two minutes at the beginning of the semester can now keep talking for five minutes by the end of the semester. Now I can't stop them." What teacher doesn't want a student to have something to show for all her efforts? Fluency training gets results.
Tom Kenny has an MA in Linguistics, Louisiana State University; he was formerly an assistant professor at Nanzan University. Currently he is associate professor in the Department of British and American Studies at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, where he serves as chief coordinator for the Oral Communication Program and as director of the university's Speaking Lab.
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