I've been thinking a lot about one of the sessions that I attended at the TESL Ontario conference a few weeks ago. It was a session about authentic speech by Marijke Wertheim, a TESOL instructor at the University of Toronto. Since many of our subscribers were unable to attend the conference, I thought I'd summarize what I learned and hopefully inspire you to catch this speaker next time she's presenting at a conference near you. Here are three of the main points Marijke made in her session about authentic speech:

1. Encourage ELLs to take ownership of the language

Marijke spoke a lot about getting students to feel like English is theirs to learn and play with rather than feeling like they are borrowers of the language from native speakers and teachers. She suggested that students explore which English voices they like and what they like about them so that they can find a realistic model to study and replicate. In Marijke's opinion, finding a model whose native language is the same as their own, but who speaks English fluently, would be ideal.

2. Reconsider what fluency really is

Marijke spent a lot of time helping us rethink the definition of fluency. While most English learners insist that they want to become fluent in English, they don't realize what this really means. Teachers can take some of the blame for this, since many of us have unrealistic expectations of our students when it comes to speaking. As Marijke pointed out, if a student has perfect grammar, but there is no flow to the conversation, this is not fluency. A speaker will sound more fluent if there is flow and meaning even with some inaccuracy in the language. Marijke suggested that as teachers we often use "an ineffective yardstick" to judge our learners' speaking abilities. We want them to use the grammar we've taught them in a perfect way (as we'd like it presented in written English), even though native speakers don't talk this way. As she pointed out, we don't go around correcting native speakers for accuracy, so we shouldn't spend so much time pointing out the imperfect English of our students. Rather than focusing on structural errors, we should be emphasizing the importance of "chunks of meaning" as well as "turn-taking" and flow.

3. Spend time looking at the messiness of spoken language

As Marijke demonstrated with several real-life scripts, spoken English is messy. We pause and hesitate, we use fillers (uh, um, well, yeah, hmm), and we make up lots of words (kinda, sorta, geesh) or even choose the wrong ones. Without this messiness, we wouldn't sound like ourselves. In fact, we'd all sound like speech-to-text robots, wouldn't we? This brings us back to point #1; it's time to start encouraging students to make this language their own.

Summary & Tips

• Tell your students to eavesdrop on real conversations and get them to report back what they hear.
• Spend time reading and practicing scripts with real language (with all of its messiness).
• Challenge learners to turn spoken scripts into written work and written pieces into authentic scripts. Review the differences.
• Analyze the length of natural pauses and the speed of real conversations (when they speed up, you speed up).
• Teach them vague language (sort of, kinda, greenish).
• Study collocations and practice using them.
• When teaching manners and etiquette, also talk about the importance of tone. ("How you order a coffee reflects who you are.")
• Practice small talk scripts.
• Encourage students to find a model English speaker that they can study.

While most of the attendees at this session were teachers, there were plenty of takeaways for materials writers too. After all, if the scripts we write don't sound authentic, what is the point of using them as exemplars? In a recent Super Simple Questions lesson, one of the original dialogues included the expression "too bad" (i.e., too bad for you / take it or leave it). This was a low-level lesson, and we ended up softening the language to make it sound a bit less rude. Did we do a disservice to learners by adjusting the script? Finding new ways to bring authentic speech (small talk, fillers, sarcasm, teasing, etc.) into our materials is something we'll be exploring in 2017 thanks to this thought-provoking session.

Thank you, Marijke!