Productive activities
Productive activities for language use involve essentially the same top down and bottom-up processes as those for reception. Production (like comprehension) of written or spoken language requires prior knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, phonology, syntax, and discourse structure to access words and combine them into phrases, clauses, and longer units of text. The relatively limited linguistic knowledge of L2 learners at early language learning levels can cause problems in production (as well as interpretation) of meaning, although productive and receptive abilities are in some ways independent of one another. In top-down processing, prior knowledge of content is the substance of information that a writer or speaker wishes to communicate; knowledge of context accounts for writers’ and speakers’ ability to select from potential linguistic options those which are appropriate to a specific communicative situation, including what should (or should not) be written or said next; prior knowledge of culture includes cultural conventions for language use.
Writing ordinarily presumes ability to read (even if only to interpret or review what one has produced), and speaking usually occurs in contexts which also involve listening and in which appropriateness of what is said requires understanding of what others have said and prediction of how they will respond. The knowledge of language that can be accessed for production is only a subset of what may be used for interpretation of language that is used by others; i.e. receptive competence always exceeds productive competence.
Writing and speaking differ from reading and listening in referring primarily to constructing one’s own linguistic forms rather than interpreting what others write or say. Key differences between the two productive activities are that (1) writing is typically addressed to readers and speaking to listeners (though written text may be read aloud, and spoken text may be transcribed and read later), (2) writing usually allows time for planning and editing of production while speaking is often unplanned and requires “online” or “real-time” processing, and (3) writing is more likely than is speaking to be disassociated from the immediate time and place of production and from a specific audience. Some L2 learners consider writing to be the easier of these two skills to acquire because it allows them time to consciously access and edit language elements at different levels, but many learners find speaking easier at least in part because it allows them to seek clarification and other types of interactional support from cooperative partners in communication.
Writing
Writing is the most important productive activity for L2 learners to develop if they will use the language for academic purposes, or in certain types of service functions (e.g. providing reports to supervisors or clients). Writing is a common medium for testing knowledge in much of the world – including knowledge of the L2 itself, even within instructional programs that emphasize oral production. L2 speakers who pursue degrees in L2-medium universities typically must display a high level of writing proficiency through standardized entrance examinations and writing samples that are evaluated by admissions committees. Once enrolled in programs, such students must complete papers and other written assignments for many of their classes, and essay examinations are commonly used to judge student progress. Graduate degrees usually require writing extended texts (theses or dissertations), and many disciplines expect advanced students and graduates to publish their work in L2-medium journals and books.
Many professions and occupations also require a high level of L2 proficiency in writing for purposes of formal correspondence or for preparing applications and reports, whether the written texts address L1-speaking individuals and institutions or target speakers of different native languages in multilingual settings. Advanced L2 ability is also required for journalistic and creative purposes when writers wish to reach a wider audience.
Functions of L2 writing may include composing informal letters and e-mail if learners want or need to communicate with speakers of the language outside of an immediate interactional context, and daily life in some highly literate societies may necessitate at least limited L2 writing ability. However, L2 writing tasks outside of academic and professional situations typically do not have the same demanding standards for accuracy in production as do the more formal contexts of academic writing.
In addition to fulfilling academic and interpersonal functions, the process of writing itself is potentially important because of how it may con tribute to successful L2 learning. We saw in an earlier discussion of Information Processing (Chapter 4) that meaningful language output facilitates SLA in several ways (e.g. Swain and Lapkin 1995). These notably include the following:
• Generating input
• Enhancing fluency by furthering development of automaticity through practice
• Helping learners notice gaps in their own knowledge as they are forced to visibly encode concepts in L2 forms, which may lead them to give more attention to relevant information
• Allowing learners to test hypotheses they have formulated as part of their developing linguistic systems, with opportunity for monitoring and revision
• Providing opportunities for others to comment on problems and give corrective feedback
Because writers must express ideas without recourse to objects and events in their own immediate physical environment or that of their reader(s), or to gestures and other nonverbal means of communication, and without reliance on immediate feedback or hearer cooperation to fill in gaps, writing can potentially push learners closer to the limits of their current level of linguistic knowledge than can speech. We have already seen from a functional approach to SLA (Chapter 3) that increased reliance on language structure over situational context to express meaning characterizes progressive change in learners’ interlanguage systems. It seems likely that pushing the limits of linguistic knowledge in written production contributes to SLA by stimulating syntactic development.
The need for interaction of other domains of communicative competence with language knowledge is evident when we consider some of the steps that are involved in proficient writing:
• Formulating mental concepts that are to be expressed centrally requires content knowledge
• Recognizing what content will be relevant for intended readers, and what will be shared versus new information, requires context knowledge
• Constructing text within socially defined conventions of expression (including selecting linguistic forms and organization patterns that are appropriate for the topic, purpose, and audience) also requires other aspects of culture knowledge
As in the receptive activities of reading and listening, knowledge of con tent, context, and culture can partially compensate for limited knowledge of L2 language elements in writing. However, writing is probably the most dependent of the four language activities on linguistic knowledge.
Beginning L2 writing as is the case for developing reading ability, learners whose L1 is represented in a different orthographic system from the L2 need to learn symbols for encoding the target language as an early step in acquisition. Adding ability to use a new alphabetic system (as when an English L1 speaker is learning to write Thai or Arabic), a new syllabic system (e.g. Japanese), or a new logographic system (e.g. Chinese) requires extensive practice to develop automaticity. Some learners begin with the low-level task of copying (even tracing over) words and phrases that they recognize by sight, or recording graphically something that they hear spoken. Knowledge of what symbols should be used to represent specific words is part of vocabulary knowledge, along with the meaning, pronunciation, and grammatical features of words.
Transfer of effective language- specific writing processes that have been acquired in L1 to L2 is not possible until a threshold level of L2 structural knowledge has been reached. However, the content knowledge for formulating concepts to be expressed and the context knowledge for deciding relevance and appropriateness are not language-specific and thus may be accessed even when knowledge of L2 linguistic elements is very limited. More complex thinking can be involved in composition if these domains are initially associated with L1 linguistic structure and then encoded (insofar as possible) into L2. This allows attention to be focused on content and context (since L1 linguistic forms can be accessed automatically), and then shifted consciously to L2 forms of expression.
Many L2 learners feel more secure if they are given a model to follow in early stages of writing, so that they only need to make minimal linguistic changes and substitutions in what someone else has produced to construct their “own” text. At a very early level, for instance, they might be asked to revise the account of an event to include multiple participants rather than a single participant, or to change the time frame from present to past. This type of tightly controlled writing exercise was popular when behaviorism was the dominant theory of SLA and “free” writing was thought to present occasions for production errors and thus “bad” habit formation. Controlled writing exercise has some value in developing automaticity in accessing and producing mechanical elements, but it does not push learners to the limits of their current level of linguistic knowledge in a way that is likely to benefit interlanguage development, and it may create an overreliance on following models which inhibits individual expression at later stages of development. A few students remain so dependent on following models in L2 writing that they approach or cross the border of “plagiarism” when they are in settings where more independence and originality are mandated.
Academic writing
Effective academic writing requires considerable knowledge of linguistic elements at levels of vocabulary, morphology and syntax, mechanics of orthographic representation and punctuation, and conventions related to style and organization of presentation that are appropriate for the target genre. Command of a relatively formal register is needed, and accuracy in production is usually very important. The activity has received a great deal of attention in recent years from perspectives of Contrastive Rhetoric (mentioned above in the section on Discourse), needs assessment (e.g. Leki and Carson 1997), and the relationship between L2 academic writing research and pedagogy (e.g. Swales and Feak 1994). Courses exclusively devoted to academic L2 writing are now commonly offered in universities and language institutes, and many teacher training programs schedule a methods course which focuses on this activity. Assessment of writing is also now included in standardized tests of language proficiency, including the TOEFL Test of Written English and the British Council’s IELTS writing sub-test, as well as in general tests such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
The relatively formal register needed for most academic writing may conflict with the relatively informal register that is often emphasized in “communicative” language teaching. This underlines the need for teachers and students to consider why an additional language is needed before deter mining priorities for what must be learned. It is probably in the best interest of most English L2 learners of the world to aim for a formal register before an informal one (neither is inherently more difficult). It is perfectly possible (as the experience of generations of language learners around the world has shown) to become proficient in writing a language well with little experience in either hearing it or speaking it. (For a comprehensive review of research on L2 writing, see Leki, Silva, and Cumming 2008.)
Speaking
Speaking (in conjunction with listening) is a very important area of activity for L2 learners if they will be using the language for interpersonal purposes, whether these are primarily social or instrumental. There is need for speaking in virtually all situations where L2 learners participate in the L2 speech community: tourists generally need to ask directions and seek information about hotels and entertainment; immigrants need to shop for goods, seek services, and describe symptoms in case of health problems; foreign students and other temporary residents need to negotiate transactions for housing, utilities, and currency exchange, as well as to express themselves in an academic or professional speech genre.
The language knowledge involved in bottom-up processes for speech production includes appropriate vocabulary, features of pronunciation, grammatical patterns that will convey intended meaning, realization of how nonverbal elements are likely to be interpreted, and understanding of discourse structures that will provide cohesion and coherence within a conversation or other spoken communicative event. The top-down processes simultaneously involved in speech production require content knowledge about a topic, cultural knowledge that informs determination of proprieties and provides macrosocial context for expression, and knowledge of microsocial context such as the significance of the immediate communicative activity, speaker role and relationship to addressees, and appropriateness conditions (e.g. what must be said, what may be said, and what should be left unsaid).
As with listening, speaking tasks can be classified on a continuum from reciprocal to non-reciprocal communication. Participation in face-to-face interpersonal interaction is at the reciprocal end of this continuum, and delivering lectures or conference presentations is close to the non-reciprocal end. Reciprocal communication requires learners to listen as well as to speak, and to collaborate in the negotiation of meaning. Unlike listening, non-reciprocal spoken communication places lighter requirements on the speaker for processing “online” or in real time than reciprocal, since there is usually time for preplanning. Indeed, the L2 learner may even read aloud a paper which has been written beforehand.
A linguistic approach to SLA that is commonly used to account for speaking phenomena is Functionalism (Chapter 3), which considers the development of learner language to be motivated and furthered by inter active language use. Psychological approaches (Chapter 4) explain L2 speaking proficiency largely as degree of automaticity in processing. A major social approach relates to L2 variation (Chapter 5), which explores how contextual dimensions influence quality of learner language production. From this social perspective, fluency and accuracy in speech activities may be attributed to how much attention the speaker is paying to linguistic form, intellectual demands of a task, level of formality, setting of interaction (e.g. public or private), and relationship of speaker and addressee, as well as to linguistic contexts.
Speech acts
An important concept for SLA which was originated in the field of philosophy (Searle 1969) is that language use accomplishes speaker goals by means of utterances which request something, apologize, promise, deny, express emotion, compliment, complain, and so forth. Utterances which fulfill such functions are called speech acts, and they constitute most of what is said by people in the course of interpersonal communication. The same acts can be accomplished in the use of any language with others who understand that language, but the actual forms and conventions that can be used are of course language-specific. Learning how to perform these acts in the L2 is central to language learning, and knowing when to deploy them is basic to what we have called pragmatic competence.
A variety of linguistic forms may be selected to accomplish any one speaker goal, with appropriate choice for a particular situation requiring cultural and contextual knowledge. For example, a student who wishes to borrow another student’s notes to study for a test might say (in English):
Appropriate selection from among these and other possibilities depends on the relative social status of the speaker and addressee, the closeness or distance of their relationship, and the degree of imposition the request involves. Conditions do not receive the same weight in different cultures and do not receive the same interpretation, so the appropriate L2 selection of linguistic form is not a simple translation from what would be appropriate in L1. Acquisition of this aspect of L2 communicative competence requires adding new knowledge of culture and context. (Research methods, findings, and implications of Speech Acts for the study of SLA are surveyed in Cohen 1996.)
Other aspects of speaking competence
Other aspects of communicative competence which need to be acquired especially for successful participation in conversational speech activities include the following:
Knowledge of conversational structure. Possible differences in rules for turn taking were discussed above in the section on Discourse: some languages consider interruptions, overlaps, and simultaneous speaking to be appropriate; some consider a period of silence between speakers to be a necessary condition for “polite” interaction. There are also linguistic and cultural differences in the sequence in which turns of talk are expected to occur (e.g. according to age or social status), and in production of back-channel signals (e.g. verbal or nonverbal indications by a listener of com prehension or lack of it). Conversational structure also involves rules for topic maintenance and shift, and for which utterances should be tied as adjacency pairs (e.g. whether a question should be immediately followed by a response, or a compliment by an acknowledgment, and especially what response or acknowledgment is appropriate or inappropriate).
Knowledge of contextualization cues. Contextualization cues (Gumperz 1977) are elements of communication that allow people to express and interpret meaning beyond the referential meaning that the surface structure of messages provides. Cues may involve any of the linguistic knowledge we have considered, including speaker selection of vocabulary and pronunciation, prosody (intonation and stress), and rhythmic patterns (pauses and stops). Beyond this level, they involve sociocultural knowledge that matches linguistic forms to culture-specific expectations and allows appropriate interpretation of meaning within the contexts of use. People rely on such cues to make inferences about what is not explicitly said, and to identify speakers’ expressive overtones. Because knowledge of contextualization cues depends on cultural and communicative experience, this is a potential minefield of significant misunderstanding for L2 learners and others they are interacting with. Successful acquisition is most likely to be realized in situations where learners have opportunity for feedback from culturally sensitive native speakers, since the cues cannot be described abstractly and are elusive targets for formal instruction.
Knowledge of communication strategies. A final aspect of communicative competence we will consider here is learner knowledge of how to compensate for limitations in their L2 linguistic resources, or communication strategies. This includes knowledge of how to assess and repair misunderstanding, how to make use of interlocutor collaboration, and how to sustain interpersonal interaction. The basic problem that the strategies address may be formulated for early stages of SLA as: “how do you manage to communicate when you have limited command of a language?” (Bialystok 1990: vi). Use of the term “strategies” implies that means of remediation for the problem may be conscious and intentional, although they need not be.
The types of strategies that were suggested by Elaine Tarone (1977), along with a brief description of each, is given in Table 6.8. Knowledge of communication strategies is particularly important for early L2 learners who want and need to participate in speaking activities because they allow talk to continue in a situation when it might otherwise cease. Continuation of talk, in turn, provides learners with more input, more practice, and more opportunity for collaborative construction of meaning.
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