Speak so Others Can Understand - Reflections on How Adults Use This EFF Skill

"The philosopher H.P. Grice has pointed to four simple rules that govern any rational communication of information. While we do much more with language than convey information, Grice's rules are a good starting point for a discussion of how people shape language to affect and influence other people:

1. Say as much as necessary and no more.
2. Tell the truth.
3. Be relevant.
4. Be clear.
   

Any attempt to exchange information in conversation with others would quickly cease to have a point if these rules were not obeyed, in the vast majority of occasions, by the vast majority of people. At the very least, you must (for the most part) pretend that you are obeying these rules, if you are to be accepted as a conversational partner." ³
-James Gee

Insights From Field Research:
Using the Standard to Guide Teaching and Learning

Maggie Moreno
Harris County Department of Education, Adult Education Division, Houston, TX
ESOL Level 1; Series of lessons, project, group activity.
Teacher data from the second round of field review, conducted 1998 - 1999.
(Adapted from Equipped for the Future Content Standards, p. 28.)

Describe what you know about the level of performance of your students.

• Purpose: Most students can identify the purpose for speaking to an audience, but are able to communicate with limitations.
• Strategies: Impromptu answers are not clear. They need help organizing thoughts and clarifying main ideas. They need to write their ideas first before speaking in front of a class or group.
• Barriers: They have problems with grammar, sentence structure and word order.
• Monitors Reactions: They can speak and deliver the message to a group after practicing a lot first in their class and then to other classes.
• Adjusts: Even after presenting the project to the first class, the students wanted to practice again in our classroom and make corrections to the original presentation.

Carla McTigue
Arlington Employment and Education Program (REEP), Arlington, VA
ESOL Level 250; In-class activity, series of lessons, group activity.

What are the steps you will look for in order to know if your students are making progress toward meeting the Standard?

• Purpose: I will look for evidence that students ask and respond to questions from other group members using learned phrases and some new phrases and that they participate in conversations piecing together the information they obtained aurally. I will look for attempts at spontaneous conversation, particularly with respect to the problem-solving portion of the activity.
• Strategies: I will look for students trying to clarify general meaning by rewording and rephrasing. In some cases, less use of bilingual dictionaries and teacher assistance will represent progress in building oral fluency. I will look for less switching to the primary language.
• Barriers: I will look for progress in students' vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and overall oral fluency.
• Monitors Reactions: I will look for evidence, through body language, speakers' next utterances and overall flow of conversations, that speakers are receiving listeners' reactions.
• Adjusts: I will look for instances of students' rephrasing or rewording their questions when explicitly or implicitly called upon to do so by their listeners.

How was learner performance different or similar to what you anticipated in planning for the activity?
Learner performance was somewhat more advanced than I anticipated. They spoke carefully, articulately, with much original, spontaneous language, and with much checking and rewording to aid others in their group's comprehension. They listened actively to the reading of the stories, taking detailed, copious notes, and also to each other, posing many questions to each other and listening carefully to the answers.

I also was surprised by the strong performance of other EFF Standards that my students demonstrated. They worked very well together under significant time pressure. They showed definite opinions and advocated for them. They resolved conflict and negotiated to the extent their language abilities allowed them. Occasionally, they were unable to explain their ideas adequately to convince others. In these cases, they switched to their primary languages, which I expected.

I did not expect that students would rely so much on their comparatively strong reading and writing skills to aid their ability to speak and listen effectively. Almost all took copious, fairly accurate notes while listening to the stories. At this level, students draw on all of their language skills to optimize communication.