Teaching Speaking

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How do you teach Speaking to your students?

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What’s the most difficult part of it?
A summary of tips for teaching the
Speaking skill
1- “If the students can’t say it right, they prefer to
keep silent”

It is ok to make mistakes, we need a balance

between accuracy and fluency in our speaking
activities.
How do you attain this balance?
A summary of tips for teaching the
Speaking skill

2- The importance of rapport;

Eye contact, smile, be genuine and respectful.
Allow students to express themselves.

Empathy: imagine others’ thoughts.

Authenticity: real relationship with students
Respect: allow students to express themselves.
 A summary of tips for teaching the
Speaking skill
3- Contractions, Schwa, weak and strong sounds,
phonemic chart.

The importance of teaching individual sounds.

Drilling
Pronunciation games
Let students listen first and then reinforce with the written form.
Repeat after the teacher.
Use the audios.
Know your students’ weak points.
Practise the vowels and consonants and then put them in words
and sentences.
Introduce the students to a visual representation of the mouth:
show the position of the tongue.
Mime sounds (/I/ and /i"/).
Put two sounds together (schwa and u).
Use fingers to show the contraction (‘he’ and ‘is’).
 A summary of tips for teaching the
Speaking skill
4- Stress and intonation

Stress; which sounds do we emphasise in words and sentences

Rhythm: how we combine stressed and unstressed words in sentences
Intonation: the way the pitch of a speaker goes up and down as they speak
Pitch movement; the way the quality of the voice changes as a speaker communicates. (it communicates attitude).

Intonation
A Visually mark patterns by raising eyebrows when it goes up,
or asking them to raise their heads.
B Click your fingers to emphasise a stress beat.
C Use arrows over the words on the board to mark rises and falls.
Rhythm
A Ask students to repeat only the words which are stressed.
B Use arrows over the words on the board to mark rises and falls.
C Say numbers in a rhythm, then introduce words between them
without changing the rhythm.
Stress
A Use songs to help them develop intonation patterns.
B Backchain a pattern of numbers, stressing one of the
numbers more.
C Mark stress clearly on the board to give them a visual
record to keep
A summary of tips for teaching the
Speaking skill

5- Activities
Information gap and personalisation

An information gap is where one person knows something or has some

information that the other person doesn’t – there is a gap between what they
know. Real communication often contains an information gap – people ask
questions to find out what they want to know.

Personalisation happens when activities allow students to use language to

express their own ideas, feelings, preferences and opinions. Personalisation is
an important part of the communicative approach, since it involves true
communication, as learners communicate real information about themselves.