Background Assignment (LSA2)

Language Skills: Speaking:

Helping lower-level learners with a spoken
transactional event; ordering food in a restaurant

Word count: 2187

Candidate name: Natalia Oblogova
Center name: IH Montanita
Centre number: EC020
Candidate number: 005

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
CONTENT

INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................3

ANALYSIS.....................................................................................................................................3

LEARNER ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS.....................................................................................7

CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................10

BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................10

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
Introduction
Nowadays speaking has a prominent place in language teaching programs
around the world. However, after reading a few books on speaking, I have come to
realize that I underestimate speaking as a skill. In my lessons, I use it mostly to
practice grammar or vocabulary. As a result, my students and myself have a feeling
that however much grammar and vocabulary they know they are not fully prepared
for speaking beyond the classroom. What learners most frequently want is being
able to carry out their most basic transactions. Therefore, I decided to research this
area deeper because, as Arthur Nolasco stated, ‘teachers need to be aware of the
characteristics of native-speaker performance in conversation if they are to teach
effectively. They also need to consider which of the functions of conversation are
most relevant to students.’ (Nolasco, 1987:13)
I have chosen to concentrate on lower-level learners as they are the ones who
most often experience difficulties while speaking. I have narrowed down the topic
of my assignment to transactional events because they comprise the most frequent
encounters among lower-level students.
In my essay, I will analyze one of the most typical transactional events and
identify its main features. I will also discuss the problems leaners of English are
faced with and describe possible solutions.

Analysis
The ability to use English to accomplish different kinds of transactions is an
important communication skill. Transaction is an interaction whose ‘primary
purpose is to convey information and facilitate the exchange of goods and
services’. (b Thornbury, 2005:13) A transaction may consist of a sequence of
different functions. Two different kinds of transactions are often distinguished.
One type refers to transactions that occur in situations where the focus is on giving
and receiving information, and where the participants focus primarily on what is
said or achieved (e.g. asking someone for directions). The second type refers to
transactions that involve obtaining goods or services, such as checking into a hotel
or ordering food in a restaurant. Talk in these situations is often information-
focused, is associated with specific activities and often occurs in specific
situations.
Transactional activities consist of a sequence of individual moves or functions
which, together, constitute a ‘script’. For example, when people order food in a
restaurant, they usually look at the menu, ask any necessary questions and then tell
the waiter what they want. The waiter may ask additional questions and then repeat
their order to check.

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
So, let us have a closer look at one of the commonest transactional talks such as
‘ordering food in a restaurant’ which is presented in one of the textbooks.

(Tilbury A, Clementson Th (2010) English Unlimited B2, Cambridge)

This dialogue has a number of features of spoken language that are not usually
present in written language.
Spontaneity
It is produced online, that is to say in real time and with little or no time for much
forward planning. Each participant has to make strategic and spontaneous
decisions on the basis of the way the discourse unfolds. (a Thornbury, 2005:64-65)
One of the indicators that the talk takes place in real time is the use of pause fillers
to gain thinking time, for instance ‘er’, ‘erm’ and making pauses.

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
Interactivity
It is clearly interactive, the speakers interact by taking turns to speak. An obvious
instance of this interactivity is the asking and answering questions, as in:
- Can we have a bottle of wine?
- Sure.
Coherence
The conversation obviously makes sense. The speakers co-operate to ensure that
what they say is relevant to what has been said before and to the overall purpose of
the talk. A common feature of coherence is topic consistency which is signaled by
a lexical set: soup, pasta, cheese, water etc
Macrostructure
The talk conforms to a fairly predictable script, or organizational sequences, which
extend over several turns. It can be observed in predictable two-way exchanges
such as respond to an offer, i.e. adjacency pairs.
Waiter: - Are you ready to order?
Customer 1 - Yes, I think so.
Three-part exchanges are also characterisctic of transactional events, they are
called IRF (initiate-respond-follow up) exchanges (a Thornbury, 2005:72), as in
this example:
Waiter: - … and how would you like your steak?
Customer 2: - Er, medium, please.
Waiter: - All right.

Openings and closing

Another feature of service encounters is that it has an opening and a closing:
- Hi, …
- Ok, thank you very much.
Politeness
‘Politeness comprises linguistic and non-linguistic behavior through which people
indicate that they take others’ feelings of how they should be treated into account.’
(Oxford Research Encyclopedia). In this encounter, the customers need to be polite
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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
in order to achieve their purpose, that is to receive a good service. They use a
politeness marker ‘please’ throughout the conversation as well as modal verbs for
polite requests and offers:
- Could I have …?
- Can I get you something to drink?
- Can we have…?
Register
The speaker’s choice of register depends on the tenor, ‘that is the relationship
between speakers, including such factors as relative status and familarity’. (b
Thornbury, 2005:19) In this context, the customers and the waiter are not familiar
with each other, so they need to obey the conventions of a formal speech.
Grammar
The demands of producing speech in real-time with minimal planning
opportunities places considerable constraints on the kinds of complexity speakers
can achieve. (b Thornbury, 2005:20) In this dialogue, speakers use such features of
spoken grammar as performance effects. They include hesitations (erm) and
incomplete utterances (Could I have the cheese salad to start …).
In order to facilitate production when time is short speakers use ellipsis. This
consists of the omission of parts of a sentence (Bygate, 1987:16):
- Sparkling or still?
- …and then the steak?
Vocabulary
One of the prominent features of speech is the use of deictic language, that is
words and expressions that point to the place, time, and participants in the
immediate or a more distant context. One of the examples is the use of a pronoun
‘that’ in ‘…so I’ll have that…’
Another common component of conversation is the use of prefabricated chunks or
sentence frames – such as ‘I’ll have …’ , ‘Could I have …’, ‘ Would you like …?’
Phonology
• • • •
Can we have a bottle of water?
/ә/ /ә/ /ә/ /ә/
• • • • •
Could I have the cheese salad to start … and then the steak?
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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
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/ә/ /ә/ /ә/ /ә/
• • • • •
Ok, so I’ll have that … and the pasta, please.
/ә/

• •
Medium, please.

• • • • • •
Yes, I think so. What’s the soup of the day?
/ә/ /әv/ /ә/

Learner Issues and Solutions

1. Lack of production strategies

Lower-level learners’ knowledge of English is not as extensive or as established as
their knowledge of L1. As a result, the process of arranging grammar or retrieving
a word is not yet automatic. And, as it has been mentioned before, under the
pressure of real-time interaction, learners find it hard to find necessary words when
they are speaking.
Solution
We need to develop learners’ production strategies to buy more time and teach
them to use:
 pause fillers (uh, um or erm, you know, like, well, you see, what do you call
it)
 vagueness expressions (sort of, I mean).
This will make students more confident speakers as the use of such ‘tricks’ creates
an illusion of fluency. They will not worry in case they have forgotten a word or
can’t immediately formulate their ideas.
Teaching implication
 A teacher might ask their native speaker friend to help them prepare this
activity and record a dialogue. You can role-play such a transactional event
as going to a hardware shop and buying a thing whose name they don’t

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
 know. When describing what a person needs, they are very likely to use a
number of hesitation devices.
 Create a transcript of your friend’s answers including all the pause fillers
(ums, ohs, and well you know). Then remove all of them to create a ‘fill in
the blank’ exercise for your students.
 Play the recording in class and see if your students can hear all the hesitation
devises your friend used while answering the questions.
 Then ask students to speculate why the speaker used them, how necessary
they think they are.
 Drill the expressions.
 Ask students to role-play a similar situation where they have to buy things
they do not know an English word for. Encourage them to use the pause
fillers and vagueness expressions.

2. Inability to cope with the unpredicted

I have heard many students complaining that what they are doing in class has very
little to do with what happens in real life. In class, we ‘rehearse’ or role-play
situations which follow a fairly predictable sequence. However, in real life, the
main problem is that a conversation may run in an unpredictable way. Students are
not prepared to deal with unexpected situations, thus feel stressed and are unable to
continue the conversation.
Solution
Every time a teacher has to teach a lesson where students are involved in a certain
transactional event, they might challenge students to come up with unexpected
situations that could take place and elicit ways how they would deal with them.
Teaching implication
I suggest following the procedure below:
 After a lead-in, give out menus to students, ask them to listen to a dialogue
where people are ordering food in a restaurant and tick the dishes they have
ordered.
 Then hand out a gapped transcript and get students to complete the gaps.
 Elicit the phrases you want to practise, clarify meaning, drill, analyze the
form and draw the students’ attention to the pronunciation and intonation of
these phrases.
 Have students work in pairs and role-play the dialogue using prompts.
 Explain to your students that sometimes in real life people might be faced
with unpredictable situations, and that it does not always go in the same
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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
 way. Elicit from the students what can go wrong in this situation (e.g. they
ordered different food or the food was cold etc)
 Ask the students to choose two situations and role-play them in pairs. The
teacher helps with any emerging language.
 At the feedback stage, ask the learners if they coped with the situations
successfully, praise for any good language or ideas they used, do the
necessary error-correction and teach any phrases they could have used.

3. Politeness and register

As we have discussed earlier, politeness is one the most common features of
transactional talks. However, different languages and cultures have different
levels of politeness. For example, for Russian, Polish or Czech people, it is very
common to use imperative forms and just adding ‘please’ for requests (e.g.
Open the window, please or give me the salt). Also, they do not often use
sentence frames for polite language (e.g. Would you mind if …?). Normally,
they would say: “Where’s the book store?”, “How much is this?”, “I want to
check in”, “No” (instead of “I’m afraid can’t”). Thus, when they transfer their
reguests from their L1 to English, they can come across as being rude and
abrupt and may eventually fail to achieve their aim when communicating in
formal social events.
Solution
We need to raise students’ awareness of polite requests and expressions as well
as explain the difference between formal and informal registers.
Teaching implications
 Show students two pictures: one of a family get-together and another one
showing an important or famous person having lunch in a restaurant. Invite
students to imagine how they would ask people in the photos if they want
something to drink. In each of these situations, would you ask the same or
different question? Why? How are the situations different? What effect it
might have if you are more or less formal in each of the situations?
 Brainstorm more situations when they might use more formal or polite
language. Some ideas can include at a job interview, in a restaurant,
speaking with the principal, or a police officer.
 Distribute cards with polite expressions to students and ask them to classify
them into 3 groups: asking for something politely (e.g. Would you? Could
you? Could you please? Do you think you could?), asking for permission
(May I? Could I? Would you mind if? Do you think I could? Would you?

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
restaurant.
 Could you? Is it OK if? Would you mind if?) and offering help (May I?
Could I? Can I? Would you like?).
 Then, have pairs of students choose one of the situations that you
brainstormed earlier, and create a dialogue or role-play using the polite
language.

Conclusion
Being able to successfully perform in transactional events is an indispensable skill
for learners of English because they often find themselves involved in service
encounters around the world. However, because of their low level, lack of
knowledge, production strategies or unreadiness for real-life conversations, they
might fail to receive the services they have intended.
I have gained an invaluable insight into the sub-skills necessary for learners to
develop their speaking skills while doing research for this assignment. I now
intend to integrate many more activities into my teaching practice to raise students’
awareness of certain features of spoken discourse (i.e. transactional conversations)
which will help them become better speakers of English.

Bibliography
Oxford Research Encyclopedia (23.09.2018)
http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199384655-e-218

Brown, G and Yule G, (1983). Teaching the Spoken language. Cambridge

University Press
Bygate, M (1987). Speaking. Oxford
Nolasco, R and Arthur, L (1987). Conversation. Oxford University Press
a Thornbury, S (2005). Beyond the Sentence. Macmillan
b Thornbury, S (2005). How to Teach Speaking. Longman
Tilbury A, Clementson Th (2010). English Unlimited B2. Cambridge

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Natalia Oblogova, Helping lower-level learners with a spoken transactional event; ordering food in a
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