Teaching and Researching: Speaking

Abstract

Speaking is a dynamic, interpersonal process and one that strongly influences how we are perceived by others in a range of formal and everyday contexts. Despite this, speaking is often researched and taught as if it is simply writing delivered in a different mode. In Teaching and Researching Speaking, Rebecca Hughes suggests that we have less understanding than we might of important meaning-making aspects of speech such as prosody, gaze, affect (how language makes us feel) and the ways speakers collaborate and negotiate with one another in interaction. The book reviews materials and assessment practices in the light of current knowledge about spoken language, and highlights areas for new work and collaboration between researchers and practitioners. In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition, the book looks to the future of the field, considering access to spoken data via the worldwide web and new technologies that allow neurolinguistic insights formerly hidden from view. A new chapter on assessment discusses ‘high stakes’ oral language testing contexts such as immigration. Teaching and Researching Speaking presents summaries and case studies to help the reader understand how to approach researching speaking and encourages practitioners to question the models of speaking that they are using in their classrooms