'Small Talk': Developing Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity in Speaking by James Hunter

Small Talk, which is a student-center, student-initial communicative methodology, is used as as a way to increase students’ fluency, accuracy and complexity in speaking the language they are learning. In the "small talk" session, students have chances to utilize their communicative ability in conversation without intervention by the teacher and then receive feedback. Also, students in each small talk group would have chance to re-examine their errors after they received the feedback on the worksheet. Each student could take turns as a discussion leader to come up with a topic which they are interested. As a result , students in a small group gained more opportunities to negotiate their meaning and ideas. The result, undoubtedly, could facilitate their  fluency. However, based on the worksheets about metalinguistic feedback they could, students would eliminate some hinders while communicating, which could facilitate speaking accuracy.  

For me, I much appreciate the study could emphasize the speaking fluency, accuracy and complexity at the same methodology. Actually, I don't view fluency and accuracy as a dichotomy. As an English teacher, I always believe we could pay attention to students' fluency without scarifying the accuracy part. Therefore, I especially appreciate the grouping rationale they study reveals. As an English teacher, I am always worried about giving too much time for "improvise" in small talk would mitigate my teaching authenticity and lead to linguistic anarchy.  However, Taiwan is an EFL context for learning English. We need to provide students more chances to negotiate their utterances in English. Based on the importance of context at both the linguistic and sociolinguistic level, the small group methodology would lower learners' learning anxiety and motivate their speaking desire to express in English  since they are in a learner-center group . Also, they would receive some feedback if the mistakes they made are global and hinder their communication. I could anticipate "Small Talk" activity is beneficial for students’ speaking practice, both in fluency and accuracy.

However, since how much explicit instruction the students receive depends on the feedback on the worksheet, the study also reveals a drawback of the small talk group. The extent to which how much CF provided based on the quantity of students interaction. Basically, those who speak more tend to make more mistakes,and then, those who speak less miss the opportunities to get some meaningful feedback.  However, it doesn't mean the low quality of their talk for those who speak more. In my opinion, I should cultivate students a concept " errors and mistakes are parts of our learning process, and the mistakes are the learners' attempt to mean that pave their way for learning". As an English teacher, I am the only one resource for students to give them opportunities to interact and involve in an English speaking context. It takes teachers' wisdom to balance students small talk time and teachers' explicit instruction to provide mitigated feedback about their speaking.