Pedagogical implications

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
First, learners may have more difficult time in producing complex speech forms such a speech acts than teachers are aware. The end product the learner’s utterance mayhave been the result of extensive mental gymnastics involving thought processes in two or more language and repeated internal debate as to which lexical word or phrase to choose. To merely asses theproduct may be doing the learners a disservice. Teachers may wish to devise a means for finding out more about the processes involving in producing the resulting utterance. Just as teachers ask learnersabout the strategies they used to arrive at answers to a close test, they may wish to ask them how they produced utterance in a speaking exercise, by viewing a videotape after the task is completed, asin the current study.
Second, some learners may not be adequately aware of what is involved in complex speech behavior. These learners may benefit from a discussion of what compensatory strategiesthat they use of such strategies for example, there are students who are stopped in their production of utterance each time they cannot come up whit the word or phrases they want. Such student mayturn dictionary, with sometimes dubious results. Lexical avoidance, simplification, or approximation strategies do not necessarily come naturally to such learners, and some formal discussion could bebeneficial.
Finally, teachers need to be aware that not all speaking tasks are created equal that there are tasks which make far greater demands on learners than do others. In this study, theseemingly simple task of requesting a lift home from the teacher was the task which called for the most mental logistic in terms of thought patterns, monitoring for grammar, and pronunciation, and so forth.Teachers may wish to consider the language processing demand, which are likely to be made by a given classroom exercise or test task because the level of demand may help to explain the learner’s...