Chaining in speech

In my last post about writing, I talked about using the chained method of writing to help improve coherence and cohesion. I believe this method can also be used effectively in speaking tasks for tests such as TOEFL.

The speaking questions in TOEFL are rated on delivery, language use, and topic development. But what does topic development mean, exactly? According to the developers of the test, for the independent tasks (Tasks 1 and 2), topic development means your response is “sustained … well developed and coherent” with clear “relationships between ideas … (or clear progression of ideas).” This is essentially the same goal as the independent writing task.

Remember that chaining means that you begin with an initial topic in your subject and an idea about it in your predicate. Then the idea in the predicate becomes the subject of your next sentence and another new idea is presented in the predicate. And even though spoken English is very different from written English … much less formal, full of discourse markers, and not always strictly grammatical … you can still incorporate the principle of chaining.

So how can you actually use this method when you answer a prompt on TOEFL? Let’s take a typical Task 1 question, which is the most open-ended of the six.

What is an activity that you have never done but would be interested in doing in the future? Explain why you would like to do it. Use specific details in your response.

Here’s how you could chain your response:

Well, an activity I’ve never done but I’d be interested in doing would be sky-diving. I think sky-diving would be really good for me because I’m really afraid of heights. Actually, I’ve been afraid of heights since I was little, but it’s gotten worse and worse as I’ve gotten older. And I feel like that keeps me from enjoying things that my friends do, like mountain climbing or going up tall buildings. I can’t do the things they like to do. So maybe if I went sky-diving … well, it would be really hard for me … I know I’d be scared. But if I could do that, if I could overcome my fear, then I wouldn’t be afraid of anything else. I think that would totally help me face my fears. And then I could do all the things my friends do.

Notice that although I haven’t followed the chained method absolutely, I’m following the same pattern. The last idea that I mention in one sentence becomes the first idea of the subsequent sentence. There’s a coherent and logical progression in my ideas.

Now let’s look at a typical Task 2, which asks you to present and support your opinion about a topic. Many test-takers think that you need two reasons to support your ideas, but that’s a total myth. You need to give a well-developed, coherent, sustained response, and one reason, well-explained, is quite sufficient in a 45-second response. Let’s look at this question:

Your university is considering requiring students to take a class in financial management or in health and nutrition. Which course do you think is more important for students and why?

So here’s how you might answer with a chained response:

If my university was going to offer one of these courses, I think I’d choose a class in health and nutrition as more important for students. This is because when students go to university, they’re usually moving away from home for the first time. At home, their parents usually buy and cook the food and so they eat healthy meals. But at college, students tend to eat less healthy foods. They might eat junk food or go to fast food restaurants. Often, when they eat this way, they end up gaining weight. So a class in health and nutrition might help students avoid this weight gain. And they’d learn to eat healthier food. And I think that would help them for their whole lifetime, because when they leave college, they’ll probably be living on their own and they’ll still need to be making choices about what they eat.

Again, I’ve tried to present my ideas with chaining, moving from one idea to the next in a natural progression. A response like this is much more likely to gain a top score in topic development compared to a “two-reason” response with vague and undeveloped support.