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FLUENCY IN ELT Alex Tamulis
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The 5th Skill Fluency and Formulaic Language 1
Alex Tamulis
Alex Tamulis
FLUENCY IN ELT Alex Tamulis
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FLUENCY IN ELT
Contents Preface Defining Fluency Fluency in the ELT Classroom Conversational Grammar The Role of Choice in ELT Encouraging Fluency Conclusion References
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4 6 13 18 24 29 36 37
Alex Tamulis
Preface This article contains the script, or the conference speech of my 45-minute talk that was presented on September 17th, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event (titled ELT Day II) took place at Disal Botafogo and provided a setting for discussing recent developments
in
ELT.
The
presenters
who
participated in order of appearance were: CecĂlia Nobre, Carina Fragozo, Alex Tamulis and Luiz OtĂĄvio Barros. The conference has been a great opportunity for all speakers to bring their topics of interest to the table, and to discuss them collectively in a panel format at the end of the session. Presenters had a fantastic opportunity to meet members of the audience, who were very interested in the topics that were discussed during the event. Ideas were presented in a lively and accessible manner. I would like to thank all participants for their contributions. Many thanks to Macmillan Education
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and Disal Distribuidora, for all their unwavering support and hospitality, which allowed presenters to feel more at home. I believe that conferences are unique in the sense that they bring invaluable
expertise from various
presenters from different backgrounds. They get together to discuss ways to better serve learners and to facilitate knowledge. I hope this article equips you with better solutions for global challenges on fostering an atmosphere that is conducive to fluency and language development. Motivating students and caring about the learning environment is what keeps me going. Devising solutions usually brings challenges to any setting, and that is part of an inclusive environment, which embraces critical thinking and positive dissent.
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Alex Tamulis
1 Defining Fluency What is fluency in the first place? Since the definition of a fluent speaker may rub up against the definition of what a proficient language user really is, I´m going to try to briefly mention these two concepts so we can establish a dichotomy and tackle it accordingly. Fluency is not easy to define. Some scholars define it as an ability to use language accurately, focusing on content rather than form per se (Hartmann, 1976), filling time with talk, without long pauses, using coherence and phrases that are semantically dense (Fillmore, 1979). Creativity (to a certain extent, since a lot of what we say is formulaic in nature) and context-oriented opinions are always important as well. Mind you that I´m more focused on
communicative
fluency,
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on
oral
speech
FLUENCY IN ELT
production, on spoken discourse in general. That´s why we´re going to be covering lots of spoken grammar topics and relevant formulaic language to make communication more effective and more speech-community like. I´ll return to my definition of what a speech-community speaker means at a later time in this lecture. Fillmore cites 4 skills as key to being fluent: speed and continuity, coherence, context-sensitivity and creativity (guided by the “Pragmatic Tetrad of Formulaic Sentences1”). In the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, fluency is defined as features and qualities, being able to sound natural and normal, including native-like use of pausing, rhythm, intonation, stress, rate of speaking, and use of interjections and interruptions. In order to avoid confusion, the Accredited Language Services website defines certain levels of fluency and proficiency. They say that the term
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Alex Tamulis
native speaker is equal to that of “mother tongue,” and it is generally safe to use these two terms interchangeably. If you speak language X since you were born, you are a native speaker of “Xese”. It means that you have used this language throughout your youth and that´s the language you think when you concentrate on doing something and running errands, before going to bed, etc. Upon reaching near-native speaker status, a fluent speaker is very comfortable with producing utterances and understanding everyday language, it just happens to be that “Xese” is not their mother tongue. If you really put your mind to it and want to achieve this goal, albeit a very difficult one, it can potentially be attained through extended study and, usually, with time spent living in full linguistic immersion. Merriam-Webster
defines
8
the
adjective
FLUENCY IN ELT
“fluent” in reference to language as “capable of using a language easily and accurately.” It’s important to note that while a fluent speaker may be nearly perfect, he may require more conscious concentration when speaking and may not have the same spontaneity as a native speaker when it comes to idioms and similar terms and phrases. Turning back to the dictionary, “proficient” is defined as “well advanced in an occupation, art, or branch of knowledge.” In terms of language, the “proficient” label can therefore be seen as referring to a speaker who, while very skilled in the use of a language, uses the language with greater formality and less familiarity than a native or fluent speaker. Some other scholars use other terms to define fluency, but it all ends up being linked to effective
and
timely
communication,
oral
proficiency, automatic procedural skill, knowing how to do something, and so on and so forth. Fluency, in my opinion, is of paramount importance, more so 9
Alex Tamulis
than accuracy. Fluent language doesn´t necessarily have to be accurate: accurate language, especially written grammar sentence production (in speaking contexts, let´s say) doesn´t mean that one is fluent in a language. Hence, accuracy is ancillary to fluency. It can be seen as an important accessory to it. Fluent language can be accurate language, as Brumfit (1984) puts it. In my opinion, that shows that the latter is a subset that intersects with the former at certain times. Fluency is related to how retrieval of data is done in the brain. If a string is retrieved whole from memory, they are usually produced with faster speed and
more
confidence
than
completely
fresh
sentences. It is real-time communication, filled with timely pauses, hesitations and false starts, but we usually know when to use certain strings that are not interrupted by unfilled pauses, such as “I knew you
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FLUENCY IN ELT
were going to say that!” We do a lot of “clause chaining” when we talk, we usually focus on coordinate clauses and very rarely rely on subordinate ones to get our points across. There are some avenues that we can take in order to help our students become fluent; delving into the components of effective communication and understanding how fluency impacts it can help the process tremendously. If we want our students to stand a chance at improving their fluency status, we have to go out of our way in terms of accuracy, and shed light on communicative language tools that they must be able to use, and strategies they must use to compensate for the fact that, in most cases, they’re not sages of the language, they are users of it.
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Alex Tamulis
You can be creative provided you follow certain pragmatic rules determined by the speechcommunity you’re living in. You can use institutionalized sentences, branch sentences, exotic sentences or anomalous ones. Therefore, you can have 4 types of sentences to choose from and your creativity will depend on what type of sentence you’re willing to use and it will fall under the umbrella of one of those 4 categories described above. Plese check out my article “The Bards of Language: Reflections on Formulaic Sequences” to find out more about it. 1
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2 Fluency in the ELT Classroom In ELT classrooms, students are taught reading, writing, listening and speaking, but these 4 skills are not enough, nor are they broadly defined. Effective language users, whether NESTs
or
NNESTs, have a much wider range of tools available: pronunciation, conversational grammar, and lexis (broadly defined). Yet we cannot forget aspects of communication that are not spoken words (paralinguistic features), the interpretation of body motion communication (kinesic language features), and the illocutionary force of an utterance (the intention of the speaker in producing that utterance. Pragmatics is directly related to the particular contexts and social situations in which the language is being used. It encompasses the ever so feeble intersection
between
real
world
knowledge
(especially of speech-community conventions) and
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Alex Tamulis
the language being used in a specific context. Thus, the effective interlocutor communication in that context would be an important aspect of pragmatics, including issues like face-threatening acts, politeness and cognitive empathy. Let's have a look at pronunciation. We usually focus on phonemes and leave prosodic features and reduced forms aside, to the detriment of real
spoken
English.
Experts
label
these
suprasegmental features of English as stress, intonation, and properties of syllables and larger units of speech. Prosody is crucial for both interlocutor identity and for a true sense of community and commonality to be reached amongst users, whilst not leaving out the own ‘self’ image of the speaker. Let’s consider the fact that an utterance like "Hey, you look great today!" can be said in many ways: you can sound as if you were bored, or convey
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FLUENCY IN ELT
the same message ironically, sarcastically, sexily and probably in many other ways, depending on how these prosodic features come into play at the time of the utterance. Another hotly debated topic that I wanted to shed light on is ellipsis and connected speech: elision, liaison, and so on and so forth. There are so many subcategories that orbit these aspects that it would take us forever to cover them all and I only have 45 minutes today, but we could talk about linking,
assimilation,
weak
forms,
metathesis,
epenthesis and many others. I really don’t agree with people who say that slurred speech and the use of contractions and reduced forms show signs of careless or lazy English. There is ample evidence that reduced forms are used in all kinds of
“world
Englishes�, from Obama speeches to Snoop Dog rap lyrics.
Why is
conversational
it
that we do not
grammar,
then?
Instead,
teach many
teachers seem to prefer to cover coursebook written 15
Alex Tamulis
language and assume that students will automatically be able to understand and produce the spoken language that’s appropriate for the context. But spoken English is a beast in its own right! Students have a hard time separating sounds, puffs and hisses into words because they haven’t been exposed to situations that are conducive to that sort of learning. Utterances like whatduyawannado? (What do you want to do?) are tricky for non-native students during a binge-watching session on Netflix because they’re heard as one big pack of sounds and not as isolated, neatly uttered words like the ones you hear on a Class Audio CD. Teachers are usually eager to teach minimal pairs and phonemes in general. However, important generalizations about real spoken English are forgotten in the midst of such an approach to teaching. A very important feature that cannot be stressed enough (no pun intended!) is the fact that unstressed vowels in English become the famous 16
FLUENCY IN ELT
“schwa” (ə) in many environments, which makes it the most common vowel in American English. There are so many other important features that could be potentially featured in this session, but if we somehow start promoting this type of awareness it will already be a huge leap for learners. Brazilian students can also benefit a great deal, since they often have trouble speaking English because it is largely a stress-timed language, as opposed to Portuguese, which is syllable-timed.
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Alex Tamulis
3 Conversational Grammar The relationship between grammar and ELT teachers goes back a long way – and I’m afraid to say that this potentially prescriptive perspective may limit our students' options. I’m not saying that rules are not important! I’m highlighting the fact that, again, accuracy becomes the main actor of the play, leaving other important stuff out of the limelight. Let us consider the situation where students have to use complete sentences when they speak, which happens often in coursebook speaking activities. Requiring such sentences may be useful in teaching formal writing, albeit not appropriate for teaching speaking, due to many reasons that were already described above. That’s why I’ve mentioned the “clause-chaining” process earlier, since they
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FLUENCY IN ELT
contribute heaps to spoken discourse. The truth is that spoken discourse does not require complete sentences, as it can be seen in most real-world dialogues and social encounters. We do know that the persistent use of complete sentences will sound robotic and artificial. Let me give you a more concrete example of that: Teacher: Howzit goin? Student: I am fine, thank you. T: Your mom and dad? S: They are doing very well, too, thank you. T: Whereya going? S: I am walking to the pub. Would you like to come with me? The “S� part of the dialogue would be much more natural if the rules of conversational grammar and pronunciation were applied, as follows:
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Alex Tamulis
Teacher: Howzit goin'? S: I’m good, thanks. T: Your mom’n’dad? S: They're good, too. T: Whereya goin? S: The pub. U wanna tag along? It’s pretty clear that conversation #2 uses the grammar of spoken colloquial English, which does not impose the use of complete sentences, but rather uses clauses, noun phrases and the like. On top of that, several of those utterances appear to be chunks, or formulaic strings of language (such as "Howzit goin'?" and "I’m good, thanks."), which would probably be better taught as sequences rather than as sentences assembled on the basis of grammar rules. There’s a plethora of prosodic features and sound changes that could also be highlighted and practiced here: haplology (the loss of a syllable in the middle
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FLUENCY IN ELT
of a word), lenition (weakening of sounds) and loss of final segments, to name a few. What about register and style? Let’s look at these 2 topics first. Register is all about differences in language choices based on social
and
professional
occupations,
varied
upbringings or interest areas, etc. Being part of a specific clique or niche involves the use of specialized lexis, and may even include changes in word combination and pronunciation. This is linked to the idea of “shared knowledge/shared identity”, and becomes an important remark in social encounters. Style is related to level of formality, contrasts that range from very casual to very formal. Differences
in
style
are
interesting
for
sociolinguistics, as differences in geographical, social, sexual, and psychological roles will indeed affect differences in register. Yet, style can vary
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Alex Tamulis
within any of these categories, since degrees of personal relationship and other factors can also come into play. A politician might be very formal during a UN conference speech and suddenly change to a more colloquial discourse upon greeting his staff after a well-received speech. Thus, we can have various styles within a politician’s register, or any other occupation, for that matter. Many students think that learning a word is a univocal process, when we know for a fact that words have many meanings. Teachers and students alike are all terrified of lumbering the realm of idioms, while that should and could be a blissful promenade, provided you have the right opportunity and some strategically laid out planning. Hence, C2 speakers must be truly at ease and master idioms of their L2 language. Teaching cursing and swearing in general is usually a big no-no for ELT teachers. But they’re
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FLUENCY IN ELT
part of everyday language (Claire, 1990), and for students to properly be able to use timely pauses and hesitations while filling gaps, or showing people that they’re happy or frustrated at things, they must master that type of vocabulary as well. If mastering is not in the plans, at least receptively understanding their use in various contexts would already be a huge step for them. From now on, teaching grammar should include teaching conversational grammar, as has been pointed out by Thornbury on his blog (Topic 48, “F is for Fluency”). The rules of utterances in spoken discourse are crucial for smooth communication to take place within any speech community. Adding spoken features to speaking situations in ELT will make classes more interesting and useful for students.
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Alex Tamulis
4 The Role of Choice in ELT Widdowson (1978) cites reference rules as the ones that make up the student’s knowledge of the language (the “sage” aspect): grammar, vocab, pronunciation, etc. He also mentions expression rules, which are the rules that determine what the student in fact does with the language. This is somewhat parallel to Chomsky’s competence and performance, in a way. These expression rules wander the realm of pragmatic encounters, since students have to be aware of settings and social situations to make their choices wisely. So, instead of asking if something is indeed right or wrong, one should focus on what is more or less adequate for that specific situation. Embracing diversity is about looking for particularities instead of trying to make it become a generalization, and while doing so, treating it as just another iteration of the communicative
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FLUENCY IN ELT
process of societies in general. Register and Style The ability to switch registers and styles is what is known as communicative competence. This is akin to responding appropriately to contextual pressures within the speech community you’re immersed in. This should be one of the most important things for students to master as they reach more advanced levels, and have more freedom to communicate, since their mental lexicon has improved substantially since they first got in touch with the language. Thus, instead of giving them one usually appropriate language option for every context, give them several options for several contexts so they can begin to make their own language choices. Spoken language is not black and white; it’s actually those shades of grey in between the main palettes that are going to be more important for students to focus on, as they get more proficient,
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Alex Tamulis
broadly speaking. Speed Fluency is not about speed; it is ok to speak slowly, as long as the situation allows you to do so, as long as you’re timing your pauses accordingly. Many speech community speakers speak rather slowly in order to have time to gather their thoughts and reason about what they want to say. Hence, the appropriate speed is the one at which speakers can think clearly and still succeed in getting their message across. Intelligibility comes first, followed by fluency, and then followed by accuracy. This is controversial, but it prioritizes communication over language expertise. Asking students to record themselves and listen to the recording as a podcast later is a great asset for them to notice when they’re pausing and hesitating. Asking students to listen to other people’s podcasts and asking them to keep a notebook for new
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FLUENCY IN ELT
lexical items and for observations of prosodic features and pauses is also beneficial. They’ll notice that most people hesitate and pause, and they do so quite frequently; this adds to the “naturalness” of common speech. But when is it done? How is it done? The only way to start noticing these things is to be aware that you have to look for them in the first place and then organize your actions to highlight them and study them accordingly. Most people do not tolerate long silences. The aid of fillers such as you know, ok, erm and others gives people time to think and leaves silence out of the equation. These fillers are always formulaic strings, so they can be easily memorized and retrieved whole from memory, as prefabricated chunks of language. Communication is a two-way street and cooperation between interlocutors is mandatory. This includes “competent repairing”, which means students have to be able to self-correct, or understand “other-repair”, which means the other 27
Alex Tamulis
interlocutor jumps in and corrects them; this game is played according to pragmatic rules, without hurting one’s feelings, without threatening anyone’s face (I mean, if successfully done). This shows that culture oozes through language; it percolates it, adding one more layer to our already convoluted linguistic map.
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5 Encouraging Fluency We can foster fluency in the classroom setting. We’re facilitators of learning, we provide opportunities for people who are motivated to engage in
those
opportunities
and
grow
personally,
professionally and academically. However, we must admit that facilitating fluency is different from teaching other aspects of language. We must be willing to let go of some of the control in our classrooms; we then let the students have some of the control and let them do some of the work, decreasing our teacher-talking time. Thus, our main role is to set up situations in which fluency can develop, and then encourage students to actually communicate. The thread of language is woven by fluency and
automaticity.
There
is
some
degree
of
memorization involved in the process. One cannot
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Alex Tamulis
say that retrieving patches of language is not related to memory, and is only linked to grammar-generated rules. We can come up with many examples of situations where we’re not focusing on grammatical aspects yet we’re using language fluently, such as when uttering nursery rhymes, proverbs, maxims, songs, etc. As Schmidt (1992) puts it, "Fluent speech is automatic, not requiring much attention, and is characterized by the fact that the psycholinguistic processes of speech planning and speech production are functioning easily and efficiently." The truth of the matter is that defining what easily and efficiently means seems to be the million-dollar issue here. Making general claims won’t help us pen decidable proofs here; that’s why contextual information is so important to the matter. This is the reason why pragmatics and sociolinguistics should be given more importance in overall linguistic research in applied linguistics, in my honest opinion. This woven fabric can only occur if students 30
FLUENCY IN ELT
are articulating phonemes and if their brains understand the phonological rules of English. I usually tell my students that it is ok to mix L1 and L2 phonology since the bilingual brain stores languages in a very “maze-like” way, blurring their boundaries and not bringing them up linearly. We all have our “old” memories, the ones that are carved in out brains and therefore need to be replaced by a “new” one; such view is akin to phonological awareness, since new rules have to be digested in order for new sounds and articulations to be fully understood by that person. The mere production of a vowel won’t make the brain aware of how that vowel is placed in the chain of sounds that are available to the system, that is, how that vowel interacts with other vowels in order for meanings to be established and contrasted within that language. “I need to speak English, therefore I need to use accurate grammar”
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Alex Tamulis
Producing
accurate
grammar
won’t
necessarily take you too far on the road to fluent spoken discourse. In doing so, you could even hinder your chance of becoming fluent. Don’t fall into the trap of memorizing tables of rules just because you have to know them by heart; this is not conducive to a real world atmosphere of learning. Students are afraid of making mistakes because they do not want to have their “face” threatened, that means, they don’t want to feel embarrassed in front of the classroom. The thing is, everyone is prone to “mistakes”, but what are them anyway? I don’t want to sound skeptical, but like I’ve said before, mistakes should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Brown (1996) mentions that one key to encouraging students to make constructive errors is to explain native speaker error patterns, which involves a few steps. First, he tells students that
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FLUENCY IN ELT
native
speakers
of
English
make
errors
in
pronunciation, word choice, grammar, even logic. Second, since learners may not be attentive observers to recognize that native speakers do make errors, he illustrates that fact by pointing out errors in his own speech or in podcasts of other native speakers. Error correction If students
remain unwilling to make
mistakes, they will probably never be able to become fluent; sometimes they need to focus on accuracy, but other times they have to relax and practice the automaticity that is necessary for fluency to take place.
Another key to encouraging students to
make constructive errors is to minimize error correction in students’ oral production, and Luiz Otåvio Barros 2 has great insights on how teachers should tackle it in the classroom. Teachers have to be aware of length turns, since students shouldn’t be interrupted in the middle of their train of thought,
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Alex Tamulis
especially if it’s a long one. Teachers have to keep their eyes peeled for errors that have a higher chance of “resurfacing”, and Barros coins the term “resurfaceability”, which basically means that the more likely a structure is to resurface in students’ oral production, the higher the chance a teacher will worry about it and treat it accordingly (that is, using the right strategy to correct it). For teachers to seriously foster fluency, they absolutely must limit error correction to those errors that hinder communication, but that has to be done via certain steps and strategies that have to be part of the whole teaching process. In a sense, the student's responsibility in fluency development is to bring the level of their spoken English production up to the level of their knowledge of lexicogrammar (a mixture of words and rules, such as storage in the mental lexicon and rules to generate new utterances, as Pinker puts it). Brumfit (1984, p. 57) states that "Fluency, then, can be seen as the maximally 34
FLUENCY IN ELT
effective operation of the language system so far acquired by the student". During periods of student talk, teachers should avoid to harken back to the good ole focus on accuracy (which is what happens if they do on-the-spot correction) because that might add
an
unnecessary
predicament
to
fluency
development. As Brown (1996) beautifully puts it: "A student who is afraid to make errors won't make errors, and a student who won't make errors won't become fluent. For many students, this may mean learning to take chances in ways that they have never done before."
Check out www.luizotaviobarros.com for more info on his lecture on oral correction 2
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Alex Tamulis
Conclusion Treating fluency as a 5th skill (on top of reading, writing, listening and speaking) will help students understand that it is indeed a matter of degrees. You climb a flight of stairs; you get to the first floor first, then to the second floor, and so on and so forth. You use finite means (your feet) to climb an infinite amount of stairs. Students can use finite means (units of language, either phonemes or morphemes) to create infinite sentences in a language. That has to be done via a strategic approach, though. Providing students
with
the
appropriate
tools,
devising
activities that promote memorization of word groups and fostering an atmosphere that is conducive to learning goes a long way in the development of fluent speech production.
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REFERENCES Austin, J.L. (1976). Performative Utterances. Oxford University Press. Barros, L.O. (2016). The Only Academic Phrasebook You’ll Ever Need: 600 Examples of Academic Language (Kindle Edition). Available on amazon.com. Brown, J. D., & Hilferty, A. G. (1989, January). Teaching reduced forms. Modern English Teaching, 26-28. Brown, J. D., & Hilferty, A. G. (1995). Understanding reduced forms. In D. Nunan (Ed.) New Ways in Teaching Listening (pp. 124-127). Washington, DC: TESOL. Brumfit, C. (1984). Communicative methodology in language teaching: The roles of fluency and accuracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Claire, E. (1990). An indispensable guide to dangerous English for language learners and others (2nd ed.). Dundee, IL: Delta Systems. Faerch, C. & Kasper, G. (1984). Pragmatic knowledge: Rules and procedures. Applied Linguistics, 15, 214-225. Fillmore, C. J. (1979). On fluency. In C. J. Fillmore, D. Kempler, & W. S. Y. Wang
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(Eds.), Individual differences in language ability and language behavior (pp. 85-102). New York: Academic Press. Gatbonton, E., & Segalowitz, N. (1988). Creative automatization: Principles for promoting fluency within a communicative framework. TESOL Quarterly, 22, 473-492. Hartmann, R. R. K., & Stork, F. C. (1976). Dictionary of language and linguistics. New York: Wiley Lewis, M. (1997). Pedagogical Implications of the Lexical Approach. In J. Coady & T Huckin (eds.) Second language vocabulary acquisition. Cambridge: CUP. Nattinger, J.R., and DeCarrico, J. S. (1992). Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP. Pawley, A. and Snyder, F.H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Language and Communication, J. C Richards and R. W. Schmidt (eds). London: Longman. Pinker, S. (1999). Word and Rules. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Schmidt, R. (1992). Psychological mechanisms underlying language fluency. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14, 357-385. Weinstein, N. (2001). Whaddaya say? Guided practice in relaxed speech (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman.
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Widdowson, H. G. (1978). The significance of simplification. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1, 11-20. Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. Cambridge: CUP. Book cover designed by me – Image taken from www.freeimages.com, free of copyright
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