8/11/2019 Chap 1 Aurel

1/2

Universidade Federal do Espirito SantoOral CommunicationProfessor Dr. Aurlia Leal Lima LyrioFrancyne Gonalves, Vanessa Gomes Alves de Oliveira

Chapter I Conceptual and historical background - Summary

This chapter discusses the status of speaking in society at different point intime and in linguistic theory and practice in particular. The skill of speakinghas one central difficulty, which is the fact that it overlaps with a number of

other areas and disciplines. The book attempts to conquer a niche forspeaking in its own rights while relating it to three different areas: the globalor discourse level, the structural level and the speech production level.

When teaching speaking, the teacher should be aware that there has to beother aims for the activity. Speaking is not easily separated from otherobjectives, such as the practice of some linguistic knowledge (learning how touse a specific grammar point). A good question to ask is if the teacher isteaching the spoken form of a language or teaching a language throughspeaking. Teaching other skills of language, such as writing or reading, can beeasier than to teach speaking. The skill of speaking is related to the culture,to context, and it depends of what English you are teaching, because itEnglish has its own cultural value.

The objectives in the speaking classroom may change over the years, sincethe language is also changing as well. Every time a new expression, or eventhe usage of a word, may change. When learning a new language, speakersshould be aware of the details that surround the latter, which are much morethan just speaking it. The learner should get a new voice, one that fits to thelanguage being learn.

The spoken form of a language is different from the written form. While inthe written, a word depends on the context its inserted, and it may have onlyone meaning, in the spoken form, besides depending on the context, it also

8/11/2019 Chap 1 Aurel

2/2

depends on the culture and the place its being said. For example, the wordwater is water in any English. It has the same meaning. However, inspeaking, water can change depending on the place it is pronounced. If it isin India, water will be pronounced in a way, and if it is in Australia, it will be

pronounced in another way, maybe completely different from the one inIndia. This is an aspect related to the culture of the place and the Englishspoken in this place. Although written form is different from the spokenform, it depends on the spoken form. One of the reasons for that is thatpeople knew how to speak, but writing came after it. In addition, one of theaims of learning a new language is be able to speak it fluently.

In the 60s, Noam Chomsky, suggests that, since the humans brain is notinfinit e and cant recognize or process all examples of a language, there must

be a more basic language capacity which could generate infinite sentences,but its simple enough to be within finite human abilities. This languagefaculty is referred as competence , the innate language potentials. On theother hand, there is the performance, which is the results of thecompetence.

Many different researches were made concerning the abilities of the brain,and it relation with the language learning. There were different schools ofthought, such as the empiric and the rationalist. For the empiric school, forexample, its fundamental that samples of language and Language itself arelinked. For the rationalist school, its suggested that we look inside the brainso we can investigate the Language.