Teaching Speaking

HEMÉRIO
Speaking seems intuitively the most important skill among the four language skills. The
rationale for this is that many language learners, if not most, are primarily interested in
learning to speak and that is why people who know a certain language are referred to as
speakers of that language.

Before going straight to how to teach speaking, it is important to bear in mind the
functions of speaking, that is, the many ways we use speaking.

1. Interactional function: focuses on the communication between two or more

speakers.
2. Transactional functional: focuses on the massage instead of the speaker.
3. Performance function: focuses on the speakers’ ability to use appropriate
discourse to present information.

Examples of speaking activities

There are several activities to foster speaking in the classroom. Some of them are the
followings:

1. Information gap: in this activity two speakers have different parts of information
making up a whole. Because they have different information, there is a “gap”
between them.
For example:
STUDENT A STUDENT B
Dolphins can live up to………. Years Dolphins can live up to 50 years
(How many years…?)
Some Dolphins can swim at 20 miles Some dolphins can swim at…….per
per hour. hour. (How fast…?)

2. Role-play: Student simulate a real life encounter (such as business meeting,

shopping, interview) as if they were doing so in the real world. For simulations to
work the students must, according to Karen Jones, have the following
characteristics:
a. Reality function: the students must not think of themselves as students, but
as real participants in the situation.
b. Simulated environment: the teacher says that the classroom is a supermarket,
for example.
c. Structure: students must see how the activity is constructed and be given the
necessary information to carry out the tasks in the simulated environment
effectively.
3. Discussion: One of the reason that discussions fails is that students are reluctant
to give an opinion to the whole class, particularly if they cannot think of anything
to say. One good way to overcome this is through the “buzz groups” which means
 that students are given opportunity for quick discussions in small groups, before
any of them is asked to speak in public. Buzz groups can be used for a whole range
of discussions. For example, we might want students to predict the content of a
reading text, we may want them to talk about their reactions after they have read
it etc. One good way of encouraging discussions is to provide activities which
forces students to reach a decision or consensus. Often as a result of choosing
specific alternatives.
4. Prepared talks: a popular kind of activity where students make presentations on
a topic of their own choice; because they are prepared they are more written like.
However, if possible, students should speak from notes rather than from a script.

Besides these activities there are many more that we can implement to foster
speaking in the classroom. It is a matter of the teacher being creative.

ANGELINA

CHARACTERICTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL SPEAKING ACTIVITY

1. Learners talk a lot: as much as possible of the period of time allotted to the
activity is in fact occupied be learner talk. This may seem obvious, but often
most time is taken up with teacher or pauses.
2. Participation is even: which means that the discussions are not dominated by
a minority of talkative participants, all get a chance to speak.
3. Motivation is high: Learners are eager to speak: because they are interested
in the topic or have something new to say about it.
4. Language is often an acceptable level: learners express themselves in
utterances that are relevant, that is, easily comprehensible to each other.

PROBLEMS WITH SPEAKING ACTIVITIES AND WHAT

TEACHERS CAN DO TO OVERCOME THEM.
1. Inhibition: unlike reading, listening and writing, speaking requires a real-
time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to
say things in a foreign language in the classroom: worried about making
mistakes, fearful of criticism or simply shy of the attention that their
speech attracts.
2. Nothing to say: Even if they are not inhibited you can often hear learners
complain that they cannot think of anything to say: they have no motive
to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be
speaking.
3. Low or uneven participation: some learners dominate the interaction,
while others speak very little or not at all.
4. Mother-tongue use: the tendency to use the mother tongue to express
certain ideas because it is easier, because it seems unnatural to speak to
one another in a foreign language.
 WHAT TEACHERS CAN DO
1. Use group work: this increase the sheer amount of the learner talk
going in a limited period of time and also lowers the learner’s
inhibitions to speak in front of the full class.
2. Base the activity on ease language: the language needed for the
discussions should be easily recalled and produced by participants, so
that they can speak fluently and with the minimum of hesitations. It is
a good idea to teach a review essential vocabulary before the activity
starts.
3. Make a careful choice of the topic and task to stimulate interest:
on the whole, the clearer the purpose of the discussion the more
motivated learners will be.
4. Give some instructions or training in discussions skills: If the task
is based on group discussions then include instructions about
participation when introducing it. For example, tell learners that
everyone in the group must contribute to the discussions, point a
chairman in the group to regulate participation.
5. Keep students speaking the target language: You might appoint one
of the group as monitor, whose job is to remind participant to use the
target language, and perhaps report later to the teacher how well the
group manage to keep to it.

HEMÉRIO
ACCURACY AND FLUENCY IN TEACHING SPEAKING
Accuracy refers to the different aspects of English that a student produces
correctly. E.g: pronunciation, grammar, word choice, formality etc.
To improve accuracy teachers can do the following:

Ask students to repeat what he or she said to see if they can notice an
error
Repeat the students’ discourse but with the correction
Ask other student to correct the error.
Suggest that the sentence contains an error
Indicate the error
Point to where the language needs to be improved

Fluency refers to the speakers’ ability to produce language naturally

(without many interruption) so that their massages is understood.
Fluency focuses on meaning.
 To improve fluency teachers can do the following:

Ask students to engage in discussions over a period of time.

Have students respond to questions in a quick time frame

Both fluency and accuracy are important to teach. Whenever we are

setting a speaking activity we have to decide whether it is fluency-
based or accuracy-based, and then align our goals with suitable
activities so as to produce desired outcomes.

ANGELINA

ERROR CORRECTION IN SPEAKING

Error correction is part of the teaching and learning process. It is important,
however, that teachers make good decisions about what, when and how to correct errors
to be able to best assist their learners in acquiring a speaking skills (Loewen, 2007).

Some error correction techniques:

Use body language (cross your hands to illustrate wrong word order etc)
Use facial expression (raise your eyebrow, tilt your head etc)

Repeat what they are saying wrong to give students an opportunity to correct their
mistakes.
Say it the right way to give students an opportunity to correct themselves
Point at a correct language. Have grammar rules, vocabulary or structure written
on the board and point out them in case students is making a mistake.

HOW TO CORRECT ERRORS AFTER YOUR STUDENTS ARE

DONE SPEAKING?
1. Collect errors for later, write them down. You can use them in
the same class and engage students in correcting errors.
2. Give and use grammar rules to point to errors .This works well
when students know the rules and can identify it.
3. Ask to try it again: Often students will do better on a second try,
after they had a chance to think about their errors.
4. Record student’s presentations and speeches and ask them to
identify and correct their own mistake.