ABSTRACT
Among the many abilities and skills that language teachers aim to develop in their students, developing oral fluency is an increasingly important one. Most teachers would agree that one of the most important objectives of classes focusing on speaking skills is to prepare students to use the language outside the classroom in real-life situations, whether it be in everyday conversation or in service encounters, face to face or on the telephone. Nevertheless, while they may feel fairly confident teaching grammar and vocabulary, teachers may not always feel they are well-equipped to teach less clearly defined areas as ‘oral fluency’ or ‘conversational skills’. Indeed, lessons designed to teach such skills often bear very little resemblance to real-life conversations outside the classroom. The following two examples illustrate such a discrepancy. The first is from a naturally occurring conversation between two colleagues greeting each other after the winter break and the second is from an English language lesson in which two students are doing a speaking activity in front of the class.
