What are conversational skills? conversation elt speaking

By Dr Jeremy Koay

A limited view

Conversations are generally thought of as casual informal chats which are primarily used to build rapport. However, conversations can take place in a more formal context and can have a variety of purposes, including persuading, demonstrating expertise or...

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What is fluency? elt fluency fluent reading reading fluency speaking speaking fluency

By Dr Jeremy Koay

A limited view

Fluency is often associated with the ability to perform a task quickly, smoothly and effortlessly, as Jiang (2016) summarises. However, this aspect of language should not be considered in isolation from other aspects, such as topic familiarity, vocabulary and the...

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What is politeness? culture elt politeness speaking

By Dr Jeremy Koay

A limited view

Viewing politeness as a universally accepted norm is an incomplete or even misleading understanding of the concept. In fact, research in the early development of politeness theory, such as that of Brown and Levinson (1987), has been criticised for its lack of...

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What is a speech act? clt communication elt speaking speech act speech function

By Dr Jeremy Koay

A limited view

The central tenet of speech act theory is the idea that humans use language to perform a communicative action, such as to greet or invite someone, or to offer something (Searle, 1969).  However, traditional approaches to language teaching tend to focus on...

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What Chinese students teach us chinese students elt speaking student attitudes

By James Jenkin

As I mentioned in my previous post, there’s little evidence for the widespread view that Chinese students don’t like speaking in class. In fact, a number of large-scale studies (e.g., Littlewood, 2001, 2010; Kim, 2006) show students from the PRC question...

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What is speaking? elt speaking

by Dr Jeremy Koay

A LIMITED VIEW

Let’s start by observing the following scenario. A student asks her teacher to repeat his instructions. The student said: Excuse me, Mr Li. Can you repeat again? The teacher responded: You shouldn’t use again after repeat. Not...

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