12 3 Responsive
Short replies are the example of speaking performance which does not extend into dialogues, for example standard greetings,
simple requests and comments etc. 4 Transactional
The transactional language is an extended form of responsive language. The purpose of transactional is to convey or to exchange
specific information. A conversation is an example of transactional. 5 Interpersonal
The interpersonal dialogue tends to maintain social relationships better than exchange information. Some elements may
involve in a dialogue such as a casual register, colloquial language, emotionally charged language, slang, ellipsis, sarcasm etc.
6 Extensive The extensive oral production can be in the form of reports,
summaries, and speeches. It can be planned or impromptu.
c. Micro- and Macro- skills of speaking
Brown 2004: 142 distinguishes between micro-skills and macro-skills of speaking. The micro-skills refer to producing the smaller chunks of
language such as phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, and phrasal units. The macro-skills imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements:
fluency, discourse, function, style, cohesion, nonverbal communication,
13 and strategic options. Brown 2004: 142-143 continues to explain micro-
and macro-skills of oral production as quoted below. 1 Microskills
a Produce differences among English phonemes and allophonic variants.
b Produce chunks of language of different lengths. c Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed
positions, rhythmic structure, and intonation contours. d Produce reduced forms of words and phrases.
e Use an adequate number of lexical units words to accomplish pragmatic purposes.
f Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery. g Monitor one’s own oral production and use various strategic
devices− pauses, fillers, self- corrections, backtracking− to enhance the clarity of the message.
h Use grammatical word classes nouns, verbs etc., system e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization, word order, patterns, rules, and
elliptical forms. i Produce speech in natural constituents: in appropriate phrases,
pause groups breathe groups, and sentence constituents. j Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
k Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
14 2 Macroskills
a Appropriately accomplish communicative functions according to situations, participants, and goals.
b Use appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies, pragmatic conventions, conversation rules, floor-keeping and
floor-yielding, interrupting, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-face conversations.
c Convey links and connections between events and communicate such relations as focal and peripheral ideas, events and feelings,
new and given information, generalization, and exemplification. d Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other
nonverbal cues along with verbal language. e Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as
emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and
accurately assessing how well your interlocutor in understanding you.
d. The Difficulties in Speaking
Speaking is difficult to many people. According to Brown 2001: 270- 271, the eight following characteristic of spoken language include:
1 Clustering. Fluent speech is phrasal not word by word. Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically through
clustering.
