Teaching Strategies: Speaking

Introduction
Speaking is the one of the important parts in
English skills that should be mastered by students
besides reading, writing and listening. The function of
speaking skill are to express an idea, someone feeling,
thought, and it express spontaneously by orally.
Speaking is one of the language art of talk as
communication interaction with someone, and it is
very difficult to master it.
English has its own sound system, different from that of
Tagalog or any other Philippine dialect. These phonetic
differences usually cause difficulty to the Filipino learner.
For example, the absence of /ae/ in Filipino makes it
difficult especially for older students to pronounce the
sound in mat, cat, sat, bag, ham, clap, mass, fast, etc.
hence, the teaching of the vowels /I/ as in sit, /e/ as in ate,
/E/ as in bet, /o/ as in roll, /u/ as in full, should be
emphasized by using contrast drills. These difficult vowel
sounds should be give attention and constantly reviewed
in pronunciation lessons.
• The consonants /p/,/t/,/k/, while present in the
Filipino sounds system, are produced differently in
English. In the latter, they are produces with a puff of
breath or aspiration when found at the beginning of
words and in the middle syllables of words that begin
with an unaccented syllable. Thus, in the following
words, /p/,/t/, and /k/ have to be aspirated: pale,
pole, pick, tail, toe, table, cat, call, cool, key, kind,
appoint, appeal, attire, attune, atone, attain, acclaim,
accord, account, akin, concur.
• Other consonant sounds that pose problems for
Filipino students are /f/, which should be
contrasted with /p/; /v/ to be contrasted with
/b/; /z/ to be contrasted with /s/. The following
consonant sounds are also difficult for our
students to pronounce as they are not found in
the Filipino sound system: /t / as in church;
check; /d / as in judge, gem, age.
•In language teaching the teacher should
serve as a model to the students. You
should, therefore, be able to produce the
vowels and the consonant sounds correctly
for the students to imitate. You can also use
taped exercises which can be bought from
schools of speech communication.
•The following phonic
generalizations might help in
teaching the pronunciation of
common English words:
• The vowel is short when it is found in the middle of a one
syllable word.
Example: mat, cab, bed, but, top.
• If the only vowel is at the end of a word or syllable, the
vowel will usually have a long sound.
Example: time, take, hate, tape.
• When a word ends in y, it has the vowel sound of short i or
long e.
Example: happy, copy, sleepy.
• The consonants j, g, and c have the sound of j and s
when followed by e, I and y, and the sound of ga and
ka when followed by a, o and u.
Example: gem, ceiling, jealous, jibe, gym, but, gun,
color, and game, jam gold.
• When a word begins with kn or pn, the k and p are
silent.
Example: kneel, knock, pneumonia.
• When a word begins with wr, the w is silent.
Example: wrong write, wring.
• When a word contains ght, the gh is silent.
Example: caught, bought, sought.
• When ph come together, they have the sound of f.
Example: phone, phonics, philosophy.
• When a vowel appears in an unaccented syllable, the
sound is most often the sound of shwa.
Example: alone, money.
• When a word ends with the silent final e, the first
vowel in the word is long and the e is silent.
Example: game, mate, kite, hike, mole, hole.
•PRONUNCIATION DRILLS
Each pronunciation lesson should
develop in the students the ability to hear
sounds accurately and to produce these
sounds correctly and automatically. This
means that the students should produce the
sound and sound sequences without
conscious effort.
CONTRAST DRILLS
This type of drill consists of a minimal pair of
words, singly, or in a phrase, or in a sentence. The
exercise presents two columns of words, each
pair of which is identical except for one sound.
Examples: bid-bed, big-beg, pig-peg,
pin-pen, tin-ten, lift-left, etc.
PITCH, STRESS, AD JUNCTURE
•The rise and fall of a voice is called pitch.
•Stress is the strength of voice placed on a
particular syllable in a word, or on a
particular word or words in a sentence.
• Intonation is the movement of the voice,
between high and low pitch.
To class of beginners, stress and intonation should
be introduced by pure imitation. Greetings like
Hello! Good morning!, Good afternoon! should be
modeled by the teacher, repeated in chorus and
individually by the pupils until they are able to say
them with the correct stress on Lo, MORN, and Af.
Another way of introducing stress is
by letting the class pronounce, in
chorus or individually, their names.
Thus, RoBERto, EdMUNdo, CARmen,
MarCELo, etc.
Intonation and stress can be taught
simultaneously, since intonation depends on stress,
and changes in the stress pattern at once affect the
intonation pattern. The pupils should be able to
imitate a falling intonation (the last tone glides
down) as well as a rising intonation (the last tone
glides up) and distinguish between a high pitch and
a low pitch.
Exercises which need pupils’ responses may be
used for this purpose.
Teacher:
Are you Clara? Pupil: No, I’m not.
Are you Efren? Pupil: Yes, I am.
Are you Edwin? Pupil: No, I’m not.
Different levels of pitch can also be illustrated by
getting different pupil reactions to a situation.
The teacher gives twenty-five centavos to one
pupil, who says Thank you from a medium pitch.
Then he gives fifty centavos to another, who says
thank you from a slightly higher pitch. He gives on
peso to another, who says very much delighted
and says Thank you in a high pitch. The class now
says Thank you in three different pitches
RHYMES, SONGS, DIALOGUES AND GAMES
To make correct habits of sound
production and structure automatic for the
students, exercises like appropriate rhymes,
songs, dialogues, and games should be
introduced
Rhymes and Songs
One, two, three, four, five
I caught a fish alive.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten
I let it go again.
Why did you let it go?
Because it bit my finger so.
Which finger did it bite?
The little finger on the right.
GAMES
Games are activities that can provide
intensive language practice because they remove
the tension and inhibition that students usually
have formed in language lessons.
DIALOGUES
Dialogues are effective devices in learning a
language because they furnish students a social
context in which to practice the language. Sentences
come to life in the context of the dialogue because it
represents real communication of ideas from one
person to another. In addition, words are accompanied
by facial expressions, gestures, and other body
motions.
SAMPLE DIALOGUE
Grade one
Rudy: Hello, how are you?
Eddy: Fine, thank you. How are you?
Rudy: Fine, thanks, Oh, excuse me –
Here’s my mother.
Eddy: Goodbye.
Rudy: Goodbye.
TESTING: SPEAKING SKILL
The following are suggested
activities to test the students’
proficiency in speaking: