Teaching Students to Speak English with Focus: A Crucial Role in Oral Communication

This paper first addresses the significance of teaching Chinese students the use of focus in English oral communication and discusses the reasons why many Chinese students fail to show focus in their English speech. Then a two-stage procedure, based on the communicative approach, which involves students in recognizing and practicing the use of focus in oral communication is presented. This procedure starts from exploring the forms and meanings of focus in English, moving to communicative functions. More specifically, in the first stage, the salient physical features of focus and then the relationship between focus and meaning in communication are examined; in the second stage, a number of activities related to communicative functions are provided for students to use focus in contexts, so that students get a chance to apply what they have learned from the first stage. It is hoped that familiarizing students with focus will, therefore, not only offer them the necessary basis, but also enhance their sensitivity to the use of focus in oral communication.