Special Feature

What's Small about Small Talk?

Stewart Jones, Ritsumeikan University
April 2004

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Current EFL textbooks include a variety of interactive speaking activities including problem solving tasks, discussions on different topics, surveys, debates and so on. Different as these activities may be, they have something fundamental in common: their main function is almost invariably 'transactional' (i.e. concerned with the exchange of information). Typically, learners are provided with a 'communicative purpose', which requires them to focus on the message of the interaction in order to extract certain details.

“Japanese learners often find situations where they can talk about almost anything, perhaps for no other purpose than getting to know someone, quite daunting.”

There is more to conversation than exchanging information, though. In fact, it is estimated that 80% of all conversation is 'interactional' talk, or small talk, the primary function of which is to establish and maintain social relationships. This is quite a different type of talk. Rather than being message oriented, it is listener oriented, which is to say that what the speaker says is motivated by empathy with the listener rather a need to convey information. It is typically dynamic, more spontaneous and unpredictable (often including frequent topic shifts), and, on the surface at least, less orderly than other types of talk, and therefore calls for quite different skills to those learners are accustomed to employing in their speaking tasks.

As important and prevalent as it is, why is it that textbooks fail to provide speaking activities that would help learners develop the skills necessary to engage in small talk? It seems to me that our failure to teach these skills is likely to compromise the development of learners' overall conversational competence. Certainly Japanese learners, who are used to having tangible goals and clear agendas for their speaking tasks, often find situations where they can talk about almost anything, perhaps for no other purpose than getting to know someone, quite daunting.

To be fair, textbooks do frequently encourage casual conversation between learners in discussion activities. But I think the answer to the question lies in a preoccupation with providing learners with stimulating subject matter for these activities, and the tendency to supply them with a communicative purpose that invariably involves them in extracting information from their conversations. As soon as the focus is placed on the message in this way, the main function of the exchanges become transactional. Learners, quite naturally, become more concerned with exchanging information than with interacting with each other socially, and so their conversations (however productive in terms of sharing opinions, experiences etc.) need not, and so do not, develop in a 'listener oriented' fashion, with the trademark characteristics of small talk.

Of course, we focus learners on the content of their interactions in an attempt to arouse their interest and motivate them to speak. But we need to realize that in doing so, we may also be robbing them of the opportunity to engage in conversation as a 'social event' and the chance to acquire conversational skills that are likely to be necessary for their future success in English speaking environments.

We also need to bear in mind that it is social obligation or a natural desire to socialize that most often motivate us to engage in conversation, not the desire to acquire new information. If we can somehow create these conditions in the classroom, then we can perhaps leave conversations to develop freely, purely as a function of social interaction.

Unable to rely on textbooks, teachers are left to their own devises to create ways of their own to allow learners some regular practice with small talk – ways that do not focus on the exchange of information. Below is one procedure that can be used to give students a feel for small talk. It is based on a simple feature (or rule) of small talk that requires the recipient of a question to answer the question, add some information and ask a question back. Applying the rule helps learners keep a conversation going almost indefinitely without them requiring a topic to discuss or any obvious purpose to their interaction.

(There are a few versions of this conversational rule, but I use this particular model, borrowed from Tomalin & Stempleski (1993), because the three A's are easy for students to recall as they get used to applying the rule).

The AAA model of small talk
(one person asks a) Question – (the other person) Answers, Adds and Asks

Situation: Two strangers left to talk to one another in a café after a mutual friend of theirs had to leave.

A: Do you live near here? (Question)
B: Yes, I do (Answer) ... in an apartment on 11th street (Add). Do you live nearby too (Ask)? A: No (Answer) ... I'm just visiting the city (Add). Uh... have you lived here long? (Ask) B: Not so long (Answer). I moved here from Chicago three years ago (Add). What's the purpose of your visit? (Ask) A: Oh, I ...

(Once a conversation is in full flow, the AAA rule may impose unnatural restrictions on speakers, so rather than introduce the rule as a prescriptive one, I explain it as one that conversationalists generally orientate to, to keep a conversation going).

The conversation continues with the participants always feeling an obligation to reciprocate in this manner. They may struggle at first to find something appropriate to say as they add information and return questions, but they soon begin to realize that what they actually say is often far less important than saying something to maintain the 'AAA' rule and avoid the conversation breaking down. As a consequence, their contributions become more spontaneous and contain frequent topic shifts, which reflects the unpredictability so characteristic of small talk.

The model enables learners to develop lengthy, natural sounding, social exchanges. These then provide the perfect platform on which they can further acquaint themselves with the rules of conversational etiquette they will need to maintain social exchanges. They need to become familiar with, for example, appropriate ways to open and close a conversation, to signal they have finished their turn, to interrupt a speaker, to change the topic, to return to a topic, to encourage a speaker or signal they would like to speak. These skills are essential for learners, if they are to develop full conversational competence.

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