Three-way Understanding of Oral Performance

Oral performance or speech is a very important aspect of language. Though very importance, we know very little of the processes of speech production. For he purposes of language teaching and assessment, we need to develop a better understanding of how speech production happens and what processes/aspects influence it. 

How do we understand oral performance? Speech is an act that make use of multiple abilities and instruments. To understand it cognitively, scholars like Crookes (1992) and Skehan (1992, 1996) have used three aspects of speech production. They are: Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency. 

Complexity and accuracy are concerned with 'form' or 'structure' of language in separate ways in terms of their emphasis, while accuracy is more concerned with the meaning of language produced. We shall look at each of these aspects in some detail.

Complexity

Complexity of oral language is about how the content of speech is organised. While speaking, complex language requires attentional resources to focus on elaborate language use. Here, elaborate language means, language with more complex structures, variety of linguistic patterns, longer and complex sentence structures, etc. It involves willingness of the language users to take risks and use available language structures about which they are not sure. Only when new language, structures and patterns are attempted in this manner does interlanguage development happens. Thus complex language use is directly related to interlanguage development.

Accuracy

Accuracy of oral language is about how the language produced is free from error. The language users will use various strategies to produce error-free language. One of the strategies is to use simple structures and patterns about which they are sure. 

Trade-Off Effect

This way, accuracy stands at odds with complexity. When contextual stress is on accuracy, complexity of language would be less and vice versa. For example, in an oral test of language, the test-takers would prefer producing more accurate language than a variety of structures and patterns and make mistakes. Therefore, they would limit themselves to known language and produce more accurate, but less complex language. Or in other situations where more complex language is expected, they would attempt more complex structures and produce a variety of patterns and structures, but end up with a lot of errors in language. This is known as trade-off effect. 

Fluency

Fluency reflects primacy of meaning. It is understood as the capacity of a language user to cope with the pressures of real-time or online communication. During communication, the stress will be on optimal language production using available attention resources. Therefore, language users may prioritise lexicalized or memory-based language use, and avoid the online construction of rule-based language which needs a lot more cognitive resources. Memory-based language use makes use of available chunks of language which are readily accessible from memory while rule-based language use requires online computation to compose utterances, and requires much more attentional resources. Therefore, language users who focus on fluency may use idiom-based language for smooth communication. Fluency shows how effective the cognitive planning process is and how the propositions made are actualised in communication. 

References

Crookes, G. (1989). Planning and interlanguage variation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11, 367-383.

Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1996). The influence of planning and task type on second language performance. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 299-323. 

Skehan, P. (1992). Strategies in second language acquisition. (Working Papers in English Language Teaching No.1). London: Thames Valley University.

Skehan, P. (1996). A framework for the implementation of task-based instruction. Applied Linguistics, 17, 38-62.