Teaching Speaking Why is speaking often regarded as the most important of the four language skills? Perhaps because, as Penny Ur (1996) says, people who know a language are referred to as speakers of that language, as if speaking included all other kinds of knowing; and many if not most foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak. What is the main objective of teaching speaking? The single most important reason for teaching speaking is to develop oral fluency, that is, the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably accurately and without undue hesitation. Donn Byrne (1976) argues that to meet this objective learners will have to be brought from the stage where they merely imitate a model or respond to cues to the point where they can use the language to express their own ideas and feelings (processes that must to a large extent be in simultaneous operation). For oral fluency to be attained, learners will need two complementary levels of training. New! Learning to Communicate offers an introduction to these two levels: practice in the manipulation of the fixed elements of English (or accuracy-based elements like pronunciation) and practice in the expression of personal meaning (or fluency). Why do learners need oral fluency in English? Learners of English will want to use speech principally for two reasons: 1. To give and receive information, that is, for transactional or message-oriented purposes 2. To maintain good social relationships, that is, for interactional purposes focused on sharing personal experiences and opinions. What are the principles of teaching speaking? 1. Take account of the student as a person • be sensitive, sympathetic and encouraging • select material that is motivating and within their ability 2. Reduce anxiety by moving from easy to less easy • help students take short turns • provide a familiar, private environment • use information-gap activities • try the activity yourself first! 3. Maintain a careful balance between accuracy and fluency • provide practice in pronunciation, words stress, sentence stress, intonation and pause • provide opportunities for fluent use of speech 4. Provide a good model for students to imitate • learn to speak English acceptably yourself! • repeatedly use target speech patterns • consciously teach correct pronunciation, etc 5. Provide appropriate stimuli for eliciting speech • picture, stories, songs, conversations, etc • books, radio, TV cinema, audio and video cassettes, etc 6. Vary classroom interaction modes • individual to whole class • pair work • group work 7. Give clear instructions • speak loudly, slowly and clearly • demonstrate the proposed task 8. Monitor student activity continuously • encourage those who find the activity difficult • note down common and recurring errors • praise students who perform well or try hard 9. Prepare well for class • make a checklist of things to obtain • make a checklist of things to do 10. Handle errors sensitively and effectively • ignore performance errors • ignore errors that are repeated • correct errors in language areas that you recently taught • correct errors that might shock listeners (e.g. childrens) • correct errors in structures that need to be used frequently by the student (e.g. *‘What means this?’ instead of ‘What does this mean?’) • correct errors through modeling (S: *M’s mother was died. T: M’s mother was dead.) • correct errors through flooding to ‘wash them out’! • correct errors through explanation 11. Remember correction depends on (a) the phase of the lesson (Is it the accuracy phase?) (b) the self-confidence of the student (‘Whoever wants to speak well must first murder the language’—Jesperson 1904) The speaking tasks in New! Learning to Communicate are based on this checklist of subskills: • Articulating the sounds of English in words and connected speech with a fair degree of accuracy • Articulating basic stress patterns within common words fairly accurately • Manipulating variation in stress in connected speech to produce intended meaning, with a fair degree of success • Producing basic intonation patterns in connected speech to produce intended meaning, with a fair degree of success • Using basic courtesy formulas, conventional greetings and formulaic expressions [See Learn to speak in Unit 1 (p 24) and Unit 6 (p 73)] • Conveying simple message in person or by telephone • Framing simple questions so as to elicit the desired response, and provide appropriate responses to simple questions [See Learn to speak in Unit 1 question 2 (p 24)] • Presenting information in sequence in simple narratives and descriptions, using a few discourse markers and cohesive devices • Participating in simple discussions on familiar topics • Expressing ideas, opinions and feelings in simple English • Reading aloud familiar textual material with reasonable fluency and accuracy • Reciting rhymes and simple poems (and singing popular songs) with reasonable fluency and accuracy [See Learn to listen in Units 8 & 9] Copyright: Oxford University Press India. All Rights Reserved
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 11:18:59 +0000