TEACHING OCCUPATIONAL SPEAKING SKILLS TO WORKERS OF A HERITAGE MUSEUM

Abstract

This paper describes a study program of teaching the English language for a specific purpose, to workers employed in a Heritage Museum in South India. The need for the program arose from the requests of the management as the workers were involved in showcasing the museum, its activities and artifacts, largely using the English language to visitors and tourists from varied language-speaking states within India and abroad. This paper examines the effectiveness of ‘show and tell’ and related activities at facilitating a group of skilled artisans and workers’ production of English sentence structures. Seven learners employed in the heritage museum carried out monologue and dialogue activities designed to enhance speaking skills, particularly related to their profession. Pre- and post-intervention test activities were recorded and analyzed to examine if ‘show and tell’ and related activities facilitated the learners' speaking skills. Activities were video-recorded and transcribed to determine the fluency of the learners. Fluency was interpreted in terms of the number of pauses, false starts, repetitions that occurred within the speech. The results showed that the learners produced more fluent sentences on the post-intervention activity. Implications of the use of monologue and dialogue activities using the situated learning approach on fluency are discussed.