Please cite as: Krajka, J. (2006). Developing speaking skills in a Web-based environment.

The Teacher 7(41) 2006, 8-16.

DEVELOPING SPEAKING SKILLS IN A WEB-BASED ENVIRONME NT

Dr Jarosław Krajka

Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin

Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej, Warszawa

jarek.krajka@wp.pl

Introduction

Teaching productive skills, such as speaking and writing, in a Web-based environment, is

inevitably an element of every single Web-based lesson constructed according to the

philosophy described in the previous contributions to the Technology Tips column. The

development of learners’ oral proficiency can be made the main focus of the lesson, so that

the while-Web stage is used either for a synchronous discussion within the class or with a

partner class (Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion), or the receptive while-Web stage

can be focused on some of the characteristics of speech events (such as making interviews,

participating in debates or giving presentations) so that students can replicate these in the

post-Web stage. Alternatively, the development of speaking is present in Web-based lessons

with a reading, listening or writing focus, usually in the post-Web stage, during which

speaking tasks usually involve information sharing or information processing. All of these

models will be elaborated upon in the present paper, together with Web-based lesson plans

demonstrating their implementation in classroom practice.

1. Web-based communicative teaching and Project-oriented CALL (PrOCALL)

Within Web-based communicative teaching, as defined by Chapelle (1997), the primary goal

of CALL activity is to put language learners in the environment which is to facilitate

communicative situations where they are encouraged to engage in linguistic interactions of as

authentic a nature as possible. In attempting to achieve this goal, language teachers have

increasingly turned to developing collaborative tasks and projects. As Jeon-Ellis et al. (2005)

define it, Project-oriented CALL (PrOCALL) is “a holistic learning approach aimed at

employing modern technology to trigger students’ ability to act with words and create social

realities in and out of the classroom, and thus to facilitate learning”. What is to be stressed in

this definition is the issue of the social reality that is to be created, thus, adhering to the

principles of the Communicative Approach where language interaction is to take place within

the context of a particular setting and clearly defined participants.

When characterising Web-based project learning, Debski (2000) gives the following

indicators for a successful PrOCALL classroom:

1) Web-based projects created by students in the target language are central in the classroom.

2) Students select projects that are personally meaningful and motivating.

3) In order to accomplish class objectives, students collaborate in the classroom and outside the classroom

using computer-mediated communication.

4) The target language is used pervasively as a vehicle for negotiation of tasks and collaboration.

5) The teaching of form is not scheduled but is driven by student needs, with direct reference to learning

tasks.

6) Students share the responsibility for the learning outcomes with their teacher.

It is interesting to note how many of the essential factors provided by Debski are prerequisites

for an autonomous classroom. Learner autonomy is essential in an Internet-based classroom,

where the learner is frequently in charge of the choice of materials, evaluation of their own

progress and selection of learning strategies (see Krajka & Grudzińska, 2002, for a practical

discussion of the implementation of learner autonomy in the Internet-based setting).

PrOCALL as a framework has been under consideration of various studies, with the

research focus being frequently the quality of language interaction, in other words, how the

conditions for the development of speaking skills are created by the implementation of CMC

tools. As found by Mueller-Hartmann (2000), project-oriented learning, as outlined above,

allowed learners to develop and express their views, making meaningful communication

possible. Similarly, Ewing (2000) notes that in PrOCALL classrooms students had more

control over the linguistic means they used to express themselves, thus, greater awareness of

the choice of language structures appropriately to the setting and participants was headed for,

which is one of the components of sociolinguistic competence. Finally, Gu (2002) reported

that PrOCALL classes in an EFL tertiary setting in China have triggered authentic interaction

with a range of audiences, increasing the levels of input and output of students, at the same

time having a significant effect on motivation, engagement, and willingness to learn

collaboratively.

2. Web-based communicative tasks

Proper consideration of Web-based language materials and tasks that are to promote

communication and development of speaking skills of learners needs to be executed within

some well-established frameworks of description. When defining communication-oriented

teaching materials, Ellis (1982: 75) distinguishes the following conditions as prerequisites for

making language materials successful stimuli for language acquisition:

1. The success of the enterprise generated by the materials must be demonstrated by the outcome and not

by the process of the activity.

2. The focus of the enterprise must be on the message throughout, rather than on the channel, i.e. the

speakers must be concerned with what they have to say rather than how they are going to say it.

3. There must be an ‘information-gap’, i.e. one speaker must not know what the other speaker is going to

say, although at times he may be able to guess it.

4. The communication which the enterprise entails must be negotiated rather than predetermined. This

will require the speakers to make adaptations both to what is said and to how it is said in the light of the

feedback they receive.

5. The speakers involved should be allowed to use whatever resources - verbal and non-verbal - they

possess, irrespective of whether these resources conform to normal native speaker behaviour or not.

Nation (1989) provides a similarly exhaustive list of indispensable components for

communication-oriented speaking activities:

• roles: specification, selection and adoption of roles;

• outcome: a clearly observable outcome aiming at increasing interest in the activity by

giving learners a purpose;

• procedure: a speaking activity divided into steps, changing the mode of work (e.g., the

shift from individual to pair to group to whole class activity) and increasing the

amount of speaking involved in the activity;

• split information (also known as information gap): using information that the receiver

does not have, with the information needed to reach an outcome split (evenly or

unevenly) between participants;

• challenge: added to teaching activities, carefully thought out to be achievable,

although often requiring special effort (e.g., competition, limitation of time or

quantity, memory, a hidden solution).

When discussing the issue of communicative activities, Harmer (2001) draws a

‘communicative continuum’, claiming that the tasks of a more communicative nature will be

characterised by such aspects as the communicative purpose, the desire to communicate,

focus on content rather than form, student choice from a variety of language items,

diminished teacher intervention and materials control. Similarly, the design of speaking tasks

in the online environment needs to address these issues, making sure that learner choice as for

materials and language is well prepared by proper language scaffolding activities.

Information gap is a necessary feature of communicative activities, according to the

proponents of the Communicative Approach (Larsen-Freeman, 1986), alongside choice and

feedback. The use of various types of information-gap activities (open, opinion and reasoning

gap tasks – see Prabhu, 1987) can provide students of all levels with the opportunity and

motivation to talk in the classroom (Doughty & Pica, 1986).

An interesting implementation of information gap activity in a CALL environment is

provided by Dudley (1998). At each computer students are placed individually, in pairs, or in

small groups depending on the number of computers available and the difficulty level of the

task. Basically, the computer monitors are separated so that only the student or students on

computer A see monitor A, while the student or students on computer B only see monitor B.

As Dudley (1998) describes it, in the task proper students are asked to draw the same pictures

simultaneously on both monitors without looking at their partner’s monitor. Students are

instructed to be in constant communication with their partners, choosing where to draw the

house, its size, and also the colours to be used.

The activity proposed by Dudley (1998) exploits the connectivity provided by the

Internet or the Local Area Network (LAN), however, did not use any particular material

easily available online. Due to great diversity of materials on the Web, as well as their

heterogeneous types, the same task can be based on a plethora of materials. The construction

of a Web-based information gap can be done according to some of the following methods:

• one website with a number of webpages, all parallel (e.g., various people’s

biographies at Biography.com, http://www.biography.com);

• one thematic portal giving access to various websites of one particular type (e.g., the

index to online newspaper sites, Onlinenewspapers.com,

http://www.onlinenewspapers.com);

• sites with information on the same topic but of different type (e.g., an official

government site, a commercial site, a private site, all about the British Royal Family);

• sites with different types of information on the same topic (e.g., textual input, visual

input, multimedia input);

• sites on the same topic but addressing varied audiences (e.g., authentic sites,

ESL/EFL sites, specialist sites).

The design of information gap activities, focusing mainly on information collection in the

while-Web stage and information sharing in the post-Web stage, can be based on one of many

different types of materials:

• pictures (The Louvre, http://www.louvre.fr, Web Museum,

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm);

• news headlines (Online Newspapers, http://www.onlinenewspapers.com,

Newseum.com, http://www.newseum.com);

• statistics (Statistics.com, http://www.statistics.com, National Statistics Online,

http://www.statistics.gov.uk);

• maps (ViaMichelin, http://www.viamichelin.com; Google Earth,

http://earth.google.com)

• sounds (Sounds of the World’s Animals,

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals, Wild Sanctuary Sound Safaris,

http://www.wildsanctuary.com/safari.html).

Figure 1. Wild Sanctuary Sound Safaris (http://www.wildsanctuary.com/safari.html).

Thanks to the implementation of various types of authentic materials as enumerated

above, Web-based teaching will make students exposed to real language use in the target

language community, ‘appropriate’ and ‘quality’ in terms of goals, objectives, learner needs

and interest and ‘natural’ in terms of real life and meaningful communication (Richards,

2001); designed for native speakers and not written for language teaching purposes (Jordan,

1997). The significance of Web-based authentic materials lies in increasing students’

motivation, exposing them to more natural language use, providing cultural information,

relating more closely to learners’ needs and supporting a more creative approach to teaching

(after Kilickaya, 2004). On the other hand, as Richards (2001) has it, the problems of using

such authentic input is often too difficult language, unnecessary lexical and structural

complexity, causing a burden for the teacher in lower-level classes, or, as Martinez (2002)

claims, cultural bias and mix of too many structures leading to decoding problems.

It is to be noted that the teacher can expose students to original input as it is on the

Web, but, alternatively, can use various techniques of manipulating text and image in order to

adapt the materials to create the gap element. Thus, the same information can be provided to

different students but only selected parts of it (e.g., different parts of the same picture are

covered or cropped or the text is gapped in order to differentiate the input provided); the

material can be purposefully distorted for one of the students to create a well-known “spot the

differences” task or picture-based material with speech bubbles added can stimulate learners

to interview each other, obtain and share information, create dialogues or utterances. These

can be possible only adhering to copyright restrictions, thus, when creating ‘modified input’

information gap activities, teachers are advised to use free-domain visual resources available

at some of the following sites: http://www.zettweb.com/grab-a-picture/;

http://www.pdimages.com/; http://pics.tech4learning.com/;

http://www.peacegallery.wyenet.co.uk/; http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/JapanProj/FLClipart/;

http://www.gograph.com; http://www.pics4learning.com/; http://web.uvic.ca/hcmc/clipart/.

In general, the communicative activities adapted to or created especially for the

computer-mediated learning environment can be evaluated using the framework of CMC

activity assessment presented by Galloway and O’Brien (1998). With the prospect of

developing communicative abilities, it is especially the factors of communicative, task-

oriented nature as well as the specification of results that can be easily monitored that gain

greater prominence:

1. How much technical support and information is needed?

2. How reliable is the network?

3. How much computer experience do the students need?

4. Is the activity communicative?

5. Is the activity task-oriented?

6. Is the activity integrated into the curriculum?

7. Is the activity appropriate for the students?

8. Can the results of the activity be easily monitored?

3. Approaches to Internet-assisted speaking instruction

Teaching speaking in the Web environment can be of multifold nature, with the development

of communicative abilities addressed in different phases of the lesson. It is also to be noted

that this particular learning environment can be flexibly used to address various competences

that make up the speaking skill, both in the area of language production and oral interaction

(after the division introduced by the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages, 2001). Below three models of the development of speaking skills in the Web-

based environment will be described in more detail.

3.1. The Web as a source of input for speaking activities

The most usual format of Web-based speaking instruction is the use of the Web as a stimulus

and source of information, to be collected and manipulated with in the post-Web stage. Thus,

this particular format of a speaking lesson is usually structured along the following scheme:

Speaking →Reading/Listening →Speaking →Listening →Vocabulary/Grammar → Writing off-line online off-line off-line online off-line

whole-class individual pair/group whole-class whole-class individual

Figure 2. The format of a Web-based integrated skills lesson with a speaking focus.

It is to be noted that in the lesson template shown in Figure 2 above the integration of skills is

achieved together with shifts in the mode of work, from a pre-Web whole-class speaking

work on topic activation or brainstorming, through individual work on the Web, pair or group

sharing of the acquired information, whole-class presentation of the speaking task, whole-

class grammar or vocabulary practice to an individual writing task. The characteristic feature

of an integrated lesson plan of this type is frequent change of the learning environment, off-

line and online, Internet-based and coursebook-based, in order to maximise the learning

experience and provide necessary integration with the curriculum.

The aim of Web-based activities can vary as well, ranging from information collection

and sharing (treasure hunts, virtual telefieldtrips) to information collection, analysis and

negotiation (online-research modules, WebQuests, ask-an-expert activities). In Internet

treasure hunts, as Brown (1999) puts it, students work cooperatively in groups of two or three

and use a computer connected to the WWW to search for answers to questions posed. The

post-Web sharing stage, by using cooperative learning and having two or three students

working together on one computer to complete it, adds the communicative benefit when

students need not only scan through the material but they must communicate their ideas and

thoughts together.

Due to their more elaborate nature, WebQuests (see The WebQuest Portal,

http://webquest.org, for examples and additional resources) are more conducive to the

development of communicative abilities. Thanks to role distribution and clear challenge in the

form of a problem to be solved (which are some of the guidelines for communicative

activities according to Nation, 1989, as presented above), the activity engages students in

deeper processing, much more than in simple information relaying present in treasure hunts.

This is ensured by the fact that the information collected online is necessary for the building

up of students’ competence in their particular roles, and each student’s contribution is

necessary for the successful accomplishment of the task and the creation of a visible task

closure. As the nature of the activity is more complicated, demanding much greater

knowledge of students as far as computer literacy (searching the Web, evaluating the results

in the search hitlist, finding and retrieving specific information), linguistic competence

(understanding subject matter content, using specialist vocabulary) and sociolinguistic

competence (using expressions appropriate to the topic, setting and participant of the

exchange) are concerned, it is advisable to make it a long-term activity spanning a series of

lessons.

Egbert (2001) shows how multimodal interaction is ensured in a sample WebQuest

task in which political experts were arranged for communication with the students, in fact

combining the genre of WebQuest with the ask-an-expert type. As Luzon Marco (2002)

defines it, “ask an expert” services make interesting openings for the ESP classroom, as

learners could formulate problems they would like to solve, ask an expert of their choice, and

report the answer to the class. When asking such questions as ‘How does X work?’, ‘What

causes X?’, ‘Which are the potential uses of X?’ or ‘How can X be done?’, according to

Luzon Marco (2002), they can learn how to describe a process, how to express causes,

hypotheses or predictions, or how to write instructions.

The characteristic feature of “ask an expert” services is the combination of in-class

communication (speaking tasks executed in the whole-class and pair work mode) and out-of-

class communication (usually email-based correspondence of students with selected experts),

which should provide interesting openings for in-class speaking instruction. This is evident in

the lesson framework described by Egbert (2001), where in-class interaction involves students

communicating with their teammates to compile information and propose a solution, as well

as out-of-class interaction of students with experts to answer questions and respond to

feedback which makes the classroom experience more authentic and motivating due to the

change in audience from teacher to expert.

3.2. Online materials as models for the development of speaking skills

The alternative approach to teaching speaking in the Web-based environment will exploit

certain types of materials freely available online as models of conversational exchanges.

Within this particular approach, the exposure of students to the following kinds of input will

enable the practice of receptive skills of reading and listening, grammar and vocabulary

practice, all leading to learners acquiring the awareness of a particular oral genre:

• audio or video news bulletins: ITN (http://www.itn.co.uk), ITV (http://www.itv.com),

CentralTV (http://www.centraltv.co.uk), Channel 4 (http://www.channel4.co.uk).

• video business news: CNN video clips (http://www.cnn.com/video_vault/), Voice of

America (http://www.voanews.com/english/portal.cfm), PBS’s Video Search

(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/index.html);

• audio or video debates: Debate Audio Archive

(http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/campaign2002/debateaudioarchive.

shtml);

• audio sermons: Sermon Audio (http://www.sermonaudio.com), Higherpraise.com

(http://www.higherpraise.com/InspirationalBible.htm), Oneplace.com

(http://www.oneplace.com);

• audio speeches: American Rhetoric (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/), Library of

Congress American Memory Project

(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?format=Sound+Recording);

• personal life accounts: BBC’s Video Nation (http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/);

• commercials: Funny Commercials (http://funnycommercials.nl), YouTube

(http://www.youtube.com), Clio Awards (http://www.clioawards.com), Pepsi World

(http://www.pepsi.com/tvads).

Figure 3. A list of commercials at http://funnycommercials.nl.

Drawing an analogy to writing, this particular approach can be termed as ‘speaking as a

product’, similarly to a well-established ‘writing as a product’ framework, as the main focus

of receptive activities is to build the students’ awareness of the characteristics of a particular

genre (here, oral ones). This seems to be especially useful with the prospect of having

students later recreate similar genres on their own, e.g., during internationally recognized

language examinations. Thus, the model of skills practice in this particular lesson can be

represented as follows:

Speaking →Reading/Listening →Speaking →Listening →Vocabulary/Grammar → Speaking off-line online off-line off-line online off-line

whole-class individual whole-class individual individual pair/group

Figure 4. The format of a Web-based ‘speaking as a product’ focus.

When looking at the lesson framework above, one can see the speaking lead-in, followed by

receptive focus based on texts/recordings being at the same time models of conversational

exchanges. The receptive task (listening/reading for gist/details) is checked in the whole-class

mode in the second speaking activity, and consecutive listening/reading stages are clearly

focused on isolating the features of grammar and vocabulary characteristic for a particular

genre. In the third speaking task, pairs or groups recreate the particular types of

conversational exchange using the model worked on in the receptive stages.

This particular approach to Web-assisted speaking instruction is exemplified by

Clifton (2005) in the use of authentic business transcripts to model oral exchanges. Once

found on the Web, transcripts of real business meetings and presentations are used in

consciousness-raising activities, in which students are asked to examine an extract of

(authentic) talk, and inductively try to discover certain linguistic patterns apparent in the text.

Clifton (2005) stresses the usefulness of this particular approach for teaching such features as

politeness strategies, criticizing, ways of modifying utterances, creating rapport with the

audience, making conclusions or making one’s speech more powerful.

It is also Windeatt et al. (2000) who draw attention to the importance of acquiring

proper speaking strategies and genres within this ‘speaking as a product’ approach. The

authors present a classroom activity whose purpose is for students to read messages from

discussion lists to acquire the rules of netiquette. Before learners are encouraged to interact

with list members from all over the world, they are to practise message production, together

with certain typical conversational formulas, layout, and the like.

Finally, Barrett and Sharma (2003), in their host of classroom speaking activities, do

demonstrate the focus on technical aspects of oral interaction, proposing a speaking lesson in

which students brainstorm ideas for succeeding at interviews and then explore relevant sites in

order to compare their ideas. Once the awareness of the genre of job interview is built,

students can safely roleplay such a speech event in pairs.

3.3. Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion

The great development of communication tools, together with increased availability of

processing power and bandwidth, has made synchronous voice communication fairly widely

available, also for educational settings. There has been observed a major shift from text-based

conferencing, delivered in the text-mode only (MOOs, early IRC chats), through Instant

Messaging Systems featuring text and voice capabilities, to contemporary audio and video

conferencing tools (Apple iChat AV, http://www.apple.com/ichat/; ICQ, http://www.icq.com;

iVisit, http://www.ivisit.com/; Microsoft NetMeeting,

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/; MSN Messenger,

http://messenger.msn.com/; Pal Talk, http://www.paltalk.com/).

Thanks to the provision of conferencing tools, widespread interest in keypal projects

and Tandem Language Learning (Donaldson & Kötter, 1999; Patterson & Trabaldo, 2006)

and increased awareness of online collaborative opportunities, the implementation of real-

time conferencing sessions in speaking-oriented lessons facilitates increasing the authenticity

of instruction by exposing students to real input negotiated during the interaction. As

Patterson and Trabaldo (2006) pinpoint, in TLL tasks learners assume the responsibility for

improving their own language skills, facilitating clear communication with native speakers of

their target language by asking questions, negotiating for meaning and helping their tandem

partners to understand their native language. Negotiation of meaning, defined by Pica (1994:

494) as “the modification and restructuring of interaction that occurs when learners and their

interlocutors anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility” is

enabled in TLL tasks, as students negotiate for meaning modifying their speech linguistically

to produce the language that is comprehensible for the interlocutor, usually a non-native

speaker of the target language as well. Specifically, this can be achieved by repeating

messages, paraphrasing it, adjusting its syntax, changing the vocabulary, or modifying its

form and meaning. In computer conferencing environments, the presence or absence of these

meaning negotiation strategies can be made especially vivid when the chat logs (text or audio)

are subjected to later analysis.

The main research interest in Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion (CACD) has

been to what extent the written competence acquired in text-based conferencing is transferred

to students’ oral competence. Thus, Chun (1996) established that during the synchronous,

electronic debate students displayed the ability to express a greater range of language

functions in different contexts than in the face-to-face discussion. When comparing the

development of oral proficiency of students who participated in traditional oral discussions

with the teacher and the classes that had synchronous electronic discussions there, Jagiełowicz

(2002) found that the students from the experimental groups displayed the oral ability to use a

greater variety of different linguistic functions after the three-month long computer program

was completed. Finally, Compton (2002) claims that chatting helped the students of lower

level oral proficiency to feel more prepared to speak up in class. As displayed in journal

entries analysed by Compton, chatting aided the development and organisation of ideas and

sentence constructions as well as allowed students to become familiar with the required

vocabulary, thereby increasing their perception of the speaking competence and boosting

confidence.

Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion, no longer executed in a text-based chatting,

simulating the oral interaction but still heavily dependent on typing skills, but mediated by

online voice and video conferencing tools such as Skype (http://www.skype.com), ICQ

(http://www.icq.com) or MSN Messenger (http://messenger.msn.com/), opens up new

possibilities for classroom instruction. As Godwin-Jones (2005) puts it, using Skype as a

channel of communication, together with recording the language output with audio recorders

like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net), allows the teacher not only to hold real-time

class discussions or partner class collaborative sessions, but also to use the recordings for

evaluation, error feedback or speaking strategies analysis. Taking into account the popularity

of .mp3 file players among students, it is becoming increasingly possible to select parts of the

recordings and make them available for student download. Obviously, this ‘Skypecasting’

(the blend of ‘Skype’ and ‘podcasting’) opportunity would have to be restricted to the

particular class, e.g., using the control measures of Content Management Systems like

Moodle.

Figure 5. Recording a Skype session with Audacity (‘Skypecasting’).

When organising Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion sessions, Compton (2002)

advises to carefully consider the following factors:

• ensuring successful application by keeping all participants on task through receiving

adequately constructive input;

• providing an authentic need to communicate, for instance, by using jigsaw activities or

information gap tasks in which each learner is given only partial information;

• pairing learners carefully, reflecting especially on whether to pair a low-ability learner

with a high-ability learner or whether to pair the same-ability students;

• designing the lesson plan in such a way that learners are given the opportunity to

speak in class, for them to transfer the CACD experience (e.g., acquired during a text-

based conferencing session) to real oral communication.

4. Internet-based speaking lesson plans

The final section of the present paper contains a summary of the actual Web-based lesson

plans aiming at developing speaking skills. It is interesting to note that all the three main areas

of the use of the Web in the speaking instruction have ample coverage here: information

collection and sharing, information collection and processing and Computer-Assisted

Classroom Discussion. Obviously, each of the lessons is based on a particular topic, some

being based in a general English context while others geared specifically for English for

Specific Purposes, yet it needs to be stressed here that any particular lesson structure can be

easily adapted to a different topic, language proficiency level and age, provided that some

time is devoted to finding and evaluating pedagogically appropriate materials on the Internet.

1. Information collection and sharing:

• students use websites about superstitions to find detailed information and have a

discussion about the topic (Windeatt et al., 2000);

• students read online jokes and tell them to the whole class (Windeatt et al., 2000);

• students practise the language of speculation and prediction by using fortune-telling

websites to make notes about the predictions made, comparing the predictions with

what they want or hope, then making a whole class discussion (Windeatt et al., 2000);

• students use Internet websites as a source of materials to stimulate conversation about

their musical preferences (Windeatt et al., 2000);

• students retell the cartoon stories or news stories to bigger groups or the whole class

(Dudeney, 2000);

• students compare and talk about the newspapers designed by themselves with

Crayon.net (http://www.crayon.net) newspaper service (Dudeney, 2000);

• students describe pictures found and looked at in the while-Web stage (Dudeney,

2000);

• students make a brief introduction to the art exhibition, talking about a selected

painting and giving background information on the artist (Dudeney, 2000).

• students read assigned stories (American “tall tales”), find specific information, then,

in groups, each group member takes a part of the story to retell, practising verbal

exaggeration (Hughes, 2001);

• students create a profile of an explorer, then go to selected explorer biographies on the

Web to compare their ideas with reality, finally, retell the life stories of selected

explorers to the whole class (Krajka, 2002);

• students explore selected websites to complete detailed information, then share

information and put it down by representatives of groups, which is culminated by a

whole-class debate comparing the systems of education in Poland, the United

Kingdom and the USA (Czarniakowska-Filipek, 2003).

2. Information collection and processing:

• students make trivia quizzes for their peers following the models viewed on the Web

(Dudeney, 2000);

• students research information on famous people and try to convince other students

about their nominees (Dudeney, 2000);

• students negotiate which particular seating of celebrities should be done during a

‘celebrity dinner party’ (Dudeney, 2000);

• students negotiate upon a television viewing schedule (Dudeney, 2000);

• students act out the roleplay of a travel agent and a customer to inquire about dream

holidays (Dudeney, 2000);

• having examined typical mystery stories online (setting the scene, introducing the

characters, dropping in clues, giving the solution), students use pictures assigned to

create group mystery stories (Dudeney, 2000);

• students play a guessing game based on what they read about in the sites about

particular occupations (Dudeney, 2000);

• students collect information on the British Royal Family, followed by a post-Web

project work, in which groups need to use the target language to accomplish the

project outcome (Czarniakowska-Filipek, 2001);

• having selected the topic, students are directed to specially designed sites that provide

lists of ready-made links to arguments for and against, then they are encouraged to add

their own arguments and use them all in a debate (Nakanishi, 2003)

• learners plan a trip by using travel information websites (Barrett, Sharma, 2003);

• learners use the Coca Cola site to explore an interactive manufacturing process, in

order to prepare a similar factory tour based on their own product (Barrett, Sharma,

2003);

• pairs of students go to specific websites and plan the schedule of their trip to London,

which is later to be compared, negotiated and evaluated (Kunstler, 2004);

• students use an online trader site to select articles of clothing and convince each other

of why to buy these specific gear in a group problem-solving task (Krajka, 2006);

• students use the online trader site to get information for a roleplay with the children

convincing parents to give them the money for the mountaineering gear (Krajka,

2006).

3. Conferencing tools (Computer-Assisted Classroom Discussion):

• a communicative information gap task, with separate role information for each learner,

in which learners discuss arguments for and against opposing issues and try to

negotiate to convince the partner to one’s point of view. The procedure, after having

been rehearsed in chatting, is to be replicated in oral interaction (Compton, 2002);

• audio conferencing is used for the invited guest speaker to tell a story, with students

listening and asking questions, so that later they practise telling their own stories in the

post-chat stage (Yeh, 2003);

• the medium of a chatroom is used to stimulate language production and develop

negotiation skills in an information gap roleplay, well-contextualised in a specific

scenario (Kung, 2004);

• audio conferencing aims at encouraging spontaneous and natural interaction between

students and the invited guest speaker, where students listen and ask questions. The

teacher records the whole session (with Alado’s built-in recording function or some

external audio recorder like Audacity) to use it for assessment purposes and peer

feedback (Yeh, 2005);

• in a three-lesson activity aiming at developing oral fluency of students in voice chat

learners are paired with other ESL students (keypals) and an online guest (Jones,

2006).

Conclusion

The Web-based classroom environment, with WWW as reservoir of materials to be flexibly

used by the language teacher when constructing activities, lessons and courses, can have a

significant effect on the development of students’ communicative abilities. With the

implementation of some of the approaches to teaching speaking as described above, it seems

probable that learners will become equipped with a range of skills and competences necessary

for independent linguistic functioning in the future. On the one hand, the exploitation of

online materials as a stimulus to speak, be it textual, audio or pictorial, makes the speaking

task more meaningful by contextualising it. On the other hand, the Web as a channel of

communication in text-, voice- or video-conferencing creates favourable conditions for the

practice of oral skills in authentic exchanges with invited guests, subject matter experts or a

partner classroom. Obviously, such real-time exchanges need to be properly prepared by

‘speaking as a product’ tasks, whose aim will be to build the awareness of characteristic

features of certain types of speech events. Thus, it seems that the reconciliation of all of the

approaches outlined in the present paper might enable learners to acquire various aspects of

communicative competence.

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