Conversation Strategies and Communicative Competence

Christian Jones
Candlin & Mynard (2021)

Christian Jones’ latest book, (2021) is published by and is part of the Positive Pedagogical Praxis series, the aim of which is to help create more profound learning. Jones’ book does indeed give the reader a more profound insight into conversation strategies as he follows the novel approach of examining the same subject from various different angles: each of the five chapters tackles the subject of conversation strategies from a different perspective.

In the first chapter, ‘what are conversation strategies and why teach them’ Jones situates the teaching of conversation strategies firmly in the communicative teaching context. Conversation strategies are defined and this provides a crucial foundation for remaining chapters. He also gives a brief history of the term ‘communicative competence’ which was first coined by Dell Hymes in 1972. The subsequent four chapters are all self-contained research studies and Jones examines conversation strategies from a corpus perspective (chapter 2), a materials perspective (chapter 3), a mixed methods perspective (chapter 4) and finally, an action research perspective (chapter 5).

Chapter 2 examines the phrases, ‘stuff’, ‘yeah’, ‘what do you think’ and ‘and also’ in two different corpora, one focused on English language learners and another created using ELF conversations. Jones then analyses how these phrases are used by the different groups of speakers. Although focusing on only four words/phrases may seem like a rather narrow focus, by limiting the scope, he is able to drill down and give detailed information about how each of the terms are used. For example, he notes that whereas ‘yeah’ is mainly used to show agreement at lower levels, among higher level speakers it is also used to show good listenership. For B1 learners a ‘yeah’ may simply be used to ‘buy time’ (p. 45). By showing us the procedure he uses to examine these terms, Jones hopes that teachers can better account for how proficient learners and ELF speakers actually use the language and incorporate contextualised examples into lesson materials.

In chapter three Jones reports on a study in which he asked teachers to evaluate the usefulness and feasibility of materials relating to conversation strategies. This chapter includes samples materials for teaching these strategies. The fourth chapter looks at mixed method study in an EFL context. In practical terms, this meant a more traditional A/B test with one group of students being exposed to explicit instruction and another (control) group not. The participants were then tested at the end of the intervention to see how much a difference the explicit instruction in conversation strategies made. Results of the pre-test were compared with results of the post-test showing the group taught explicitly about conversation strategies performed significantly better than those who were not. An interesting artefact of when the research was carried out was that the normal delayed post-test was not possible due to Covid-19.

The final chapter reports on a piece of action research undertaken in an EFL context. Jones attempts to discover what common conversation topics are among students and how useful they find the conversation strategies. The book closes with implications for research (p.165) and for teaching (p. 163). Here Jones suggests that teachers should focus on how conversations really happen rather than how they are often presented in materials, noting that spoken and written language differ and that these differences should be respected.

What this all amounts to is a detailed and thorough treatment of conversation strategies including corpus data, teacher views of materials, students’ views of the strategies and research into the effectiveness of teaching the strategies.

A question with books of this type is whether or not they are intended for teachers or for researchers. The positive pedagogical praxis series is designed to be written in a teacher-friendly way and that is certainly the case with this book. It is a slim work and is written in a very accessible style. Where statistics are necessarily included, they are generally passed over as briefly as possible and are not necessary to understanding the chapter. There are numerous extracts from diaries and feedback showing the opinions of teachers and students.

The book is largely accessible to teachers and jargon-free though it was not entirely clear how the phrase ‘….and that kind of stuff’ belonged to the category ‘taking account of others’. Another teacher also seemed to struggle with the terminology noting (p. 73) that they were not sure how using ‘well’ and ‘in fact’ ‘connects to the idea of managing your turn in conversation’. However, these are, no doubt, established terms rather than the author’s creation and they do not detract from the overall enjoyment of the book.

Jones has been a classroom teacher and his concerns regarding teaching speaking to Japanese students helped inform this book. For instance, he writes about his frustration at the results of his speaking classes, noting that ‘conversations stubbornly refused to develop much beyond question-and-answer sequences’ (p. 9). There are also some examples of practical lesson ideas (pp.27, 86-87, 110). However, these lesson plans are not really intended as teaching aids but rather instruments for conducting research and this is perhaps illustrative of the work as a whole. Although it is accessible to teachers, at heart it is a work of research. For instance, all of the main body chapters are written in the IMRaD style (introduction, methods, results and discussion) common to many research papers. This is not to say that there is nothing that teachers can gain from this work but that it clearly falls within the genre of ‘research’, albeit, ‘research lite’ rather than practical teaching advice.

Aside from those with a specific interest in conversation strategies, this book would best suit Masters level researchers who are interested in seeing how a problem can be tackled from various different perspectives. Alternatively, it would be invaluable to teachers who are preparing to carry out small scale research projects for themselves. Jones clearly and methodically illustrates how to conduct different types of research projects.

One principle (p. 164) I found particularly interesting was Jones’ suggestion that ‘simple, everyday topics’ should be used when practising conversational strategies. This is because students can focus on the strategies rather than focusing on the language. This idea aligns well with the concept of reducing cognitive load on learners when teaching (Lethaby et al 2021). Similarly, the third study demonstrated that explicit instruction of conversation strategies could be effective. All too often when teaching we may have the feeling that what we are doing is not helping, or alternatively we may accept the view that students just need exposure and they will ‘pick it up’ at some unspecified point. Jones shows here that teachers can be effective at imparting what can seem like ephemeral skills.

As Jones notes, speaking is a, if not the, key skill in learning another language. One phrase that left an impression with me came at the end of the book when the author notes that the joy of speaking is that you get a chance to express yourself, connect with other people and ‘for a few minutes, you stop feeling like an infant in an adult’s body’ (p. 168). I share his hope that teaching conversation strategies is one way of moving students closer to that goal.

References

Hymes DH (1972) ‘On Communicative Competence’ In: JB Pride and J Holmes (Eds) Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings (pp 269–293). Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Lethaby C, Mayne R & Harries P (2021) An introduction to evidence-based teaching in the English language Classroom. Shoreham-by-Sea: Pavilion Publishing

Russ Mayne is an assistant Professor at international University of Japan. He is interested in evidence-based teaching, research and meta-research.