by Marcin Jaroszek
A colleague recently asked me to describe the differences between the levels in the CEFR. I told him that at A1/A2, a student might say, “Do you want a coffee?” When they get to B1/B2, they learn, “Would you like a coffee?”
“And what about when the student becomes more proficient?” my colleague asked.
“Then they’ll look at you, raise their hand as if holding a cup, and say, ‘Coffee?’”
This, of course, is an exaggeration, but for students aiming to achieve real sophistication in their English, who want to be as natural as possible, sometimes less really is more. In this article, I’ll give some examples of how students might achieve such natural sophistication in both speaking and writing.
Turn-Taking
Many of my students are very natural speakers. They have worked hard to develop a natural fluency that they should be proud of. But sometimes this fluency deserts them when they take part in multiple-speaker conversations, and I think they struggle because they haven’t learnt enough about turn-taking.
The concept of turn-taking is often synonymous with taking the floor, though Edelsky (1981: 405) delineates a subtle distinction between the two. While taking a turn refers to a single interactional act, taking the floor implies a broader engagement, an “acknowledged what’s-going-on within a psychological time/space.” This distinction underscores the complexity and the layered nature of conversational dynamics. For example, in a panel discussion, taking a turn might involve a panelist giving a brief answer to a question, while taking the floor could mean delivering an extended commentary or explanation, thus becoming the focal point for an extended period.
I feel that this second kind of turn-taking comes quite naturally to a lot of my students, but they’re not always so good at offering short, impactful turns, or knowing when one would be appropriately placed in discourse.
My suggested solution to this is two-fold. First, find panel discussion videos on YouTube - morning chat shows on the television would be a good source for this, as the format is right and the interactions are natural, not scripted. My students have a tendency to watch a lot of Netflix, but watching scripted TV shows means they’re not learning the subtle cues that help with turn-taking.
Watch short segments with your students, concentrating on how turns are signalled. You can build a typography of turns - those that follow interruptions, those that offer clarification of a point, those that help another speaker to develop their idea further. Observe not just the language the speakers use in their turn, but what the speakers say before and after the body of their turn.
Then, recreate the context of the recording, and have your students role play the panel. For the teacher, the hard work will come in the preparatory phase - you need to make sure that your students have something to talk about in their panel, but also that there will be opportunities to practice the different kinds of turn-taking that have been explored.
Back-Channel Communication
Another highly culture-dependent means of achieving a sophisticated naturalness in speaking is back-channel communication. This is all the ‘ah-hah’ and ‘umm’ sounds that we hear from our speaking partner when we’re talking.
Back-channel responses have two distinctive characteristics: (1) they do not interrupt the primary channel of communication, and (2) they are not intended to seize control of the discourse from the primary speaker (Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki & Tao 1996). Their primary functions are to act as ‘continuers’ and ‘assessments’ (Goodwin 1986), supporting the speaker’s ongoing turn and ensuring the smooth continuation of the interaction (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 154). Despite their seemingly minimal content contribution, back-channel responses are integral to maintaining the rhythm and flow of discourse.
They also vary from culture to culture. Another colleague of mine recalls meeting some Nigerians at an international football match. He’d been to Abuja and Calabar and naturally got talking to his new friends, but was put off initially at the wall of silence that greeted his speech. But this was not about rudeness - rather, the expectations of back-channel communication are different between my friend’s British English and their Nigerian English. It can take some getting used to. So too is this kind of communication different for my Polish students, who sometimes sit in complete silence, waiting until their partner shuts up so that they can take over.
The effect is not altogether pleasant.
Again, part of the solution lies in data gathering, and for this I recommend videos that include real-life interviews and conversations, which are available in abundance online. An unscripted podcast would work well here. But if you want to vary your approach, go in with a prediction exercise - ask your students to guess when they will hear back-channel communication, and what it will sound like; then play the recording, and see if they guessed correctly.
Then do as before - role play away, and provide feedback to your students on the quality and naturalness of their back-channel communication.
Conjunctions
We all know Hamlet, and how something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Well, I think something is rotten in the way that many students are taught to write, and the bad smell is coming from the way they are taught to use conjunctions.
Somewhere in their education, many students have learnt to rely on conjunctions like ‘Firstly’, ‘Therefore’, ‘As a consequence’, and probably my least favourite of all, ‘Moreover’.
There’s nothing wrong with any of these conjunctions - on their own. It’s when too many of them appear in the same text, or even in the same paragraph, that they begin to overload the reader, and you begin to suspect there could be a better way for our students to glue their thoughts together.
The worst thing of all is when a student transfers this bad habit from their written work into their spoken - not only do they sound slightly pompous when they do, it also gets paradoxically harder (for me, anyway) to follow what they’re trying to say.
For our solution to this problem, we need look no further than the pages of this very journal. I haven’t been published by the IH Journal before, but here I am, in Issue 54, and that means there are other articles in the same issues, and fifty-three other issues, for students and teachers to look through. I’m sure everything has been edited - and that means that the editor, if not the original writer, will have been careful to keep their conjunctions under control.
So, either alone or in the company of your students, look at one of the articles here. See how it is put together. Count how many ‘obvious’ conjunctions there are - like those listed a few paragraphs ago. Then compare that number with the last piece of extended writing submitted by one of the students in the class. Are there more explicit conjunctions in the student’s work? It’s highly likely.
Look, then, at how other writers glue their texts together. They use fewer explicit conjunctions, and employ a far wider range of other devices instead. First among these would, I imagine, be the logical flow of ideas. When one idea leads neatly into the next, and a well-structured paragraph will be composed of sentences that do just this, there is far less need for explicit conjunctions. This is like the Japanese art of woodworking, where tables and chairs can be put together without a single nail. The pieces lock well enough together without them.
Working towards written pieces that get the right balance between explicit conjunctions and more natural ways of gluing the sentences together takes time - but it requires noticing the problem first. This is where comparing the students’ work with edited pieces found in the wild can be so valuable.
Conclusion
Many of the students I teach reach a high B2, C1, or perhaps low C2 level without too much conscious effort. Well, perhaps that is doing them a disservice - but many seem to arrive at that level without really having broken a sweat. But once there, it often feels like a ceiling has been struck, and further progress is practically impossible.
That’s because the student hasn’t thought long enough about what real sophistication is. As I’ve described in this article, to be sophisticated, to be as natural as possible, sometimes less really is more. The judicious choice, the careful management of features of speech, the varied ways in which sentences - and ideas - are joined: all of that leads to sophistication.
And best of all, when you start, and when you learn the techniques by which to accomplish such renewed progress, the going is surprisingly easy. Notice the language used by others, both in what they say and the details around what they say, and the potential for development is almost endless.
References
Clancy, P. M., Thompson, S. A., Suzuki, R., & Tao, H. Y. 1996. “The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin”. Journal of Pragmatics, 26. 355-387.
Edelsky, C. 1981. “Who’s got the floor?”. Language in Society 10/3: 383-421
Goodwin, C. 1986. “Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers and assessments”. Human Studies, 9: 205-217
Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.
Author Biography
Marcin Jaroszek holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics, awarded in 2009 for his dissertation on the development of discourse competence in teaching English as a foreign language to advanced learners. His most recent book is True Colors of Authentic Communication - from theory to practice. Outside of teaching, Marcin is heavily involved in music and culture, and is the co-founder of The Jane Stirling Project: Chopin’s Scotland, an interdisciplinary initiative honoring Jane Stirling's role in preserving Chopin’s legacy through concerts, study trips, and cultural events in Poland and Scotland.