Asiya Niyazova, 33 - ER
1.Teaching Speaking Skills
Communication involves the use of four language skills:
The sender of the message uses speaking or writing skills to communicate ideas, the receiver uses listening or reading skills to interpret the massage. The skills used by the sender are productive and those used by the receiver are receptive (or interpretive).
The use of each skills demands various components of language substance. Each skill involves the use of specific vehicles.
Learners usually attain a much higher level of proficiency in the receptive skills than in the productive skills. Mastering the language skills, like mastering any kind of skill, requires a considerable amount of practice. Step by step in the teaching-learning development process the learner should become more proficient.
When we say a person knows the language, we first of all mean he understands the language spoken and can speak himself. Language came into life as a means of communication. It exists and is alive only through speech. When we speak about teaching a foreign language, we first of all have in mind teaching it as a means of communication. Speech is a bilateral process. It includes hearing and speaking. Speaking exists in two forms: dialogue and monologue.
Meaning-focused Output: Learning through Speaking and Writing
The meaning-focused output strand involves learning through speaking and writing—using language productively. Typical activities in this strand include talking in conversations, giving a speech or lecture, writing a letter, writing a note to someone, keeping a diary, telling a story, and telling someone how to do something.
The same kinds of conditions apply to meaning-focused output as apply to meaning-focused input:
The learners write and talk about things that are largely familiar to them.
The learners' main goal is to convey their message to someone else.
Only a small proportion of the language they need to use is not familiar to them.
The learners can use communication strategies, dictionaries, or previous input to make up for gaps in their productive knowledge.
There are plenty of opportunities to produce.
Many spoken activities will include a mixture of meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output. One person's output can be another person's input.
Principles for Designing Speaking Techniques
1.Techniques should cover the spectrum of learner needs, from
language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on
interaction, meaning, and fluency1.
When you do a jigsaw group technique, play a game, or discuss solutions to the environmental crisis, make sure that your tasks include techniques designed to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language. At the same time, don't bore your students with lifeless, repetitious drills. The drills must be as meaningful as possible.
2.Techniques should be intrinsically motivating.
Try at all times to appeal to students' ultimate goals and interests, to their need for knowledge, for achieving competence, autonomy, and for "being all that they can be." Even in those techniques help them to see how the activity will benefit them.
Many times students don't know why we ask them to do certain activities. So techniques should encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts.
It is not easy to keep coming up with meaningful interaction. It takes energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction, but with the help of quite a storehouse of teacher resource material now it can be done. Even drills can be structured to provide a sense of authenticity.
4. Provide appropriate feedback and correction.
In most EFL situations, students are totally dependent on the teacher for useful linguistic feedback. It is important that you take advantage of your knowledge of English to inject the kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment.
5. Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening.
Many interactive techniques that involve speaking will also of course include listening. Don't lose out on opportunities to integrate these two skills. As you are perhaps focusing on speaking goals, listening goals may naturally coincide, and the two skills can reinforce each other. Skills in producing language are often initiated through comprehension.
6. Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication.
A good deal of typical classroom interaction is characterized by teacher initiation of language. We ask questions, give directions, provide information, and students have been conditioned only to "speak when spoken to." Part of oral communication competence is the ability to initiate conversations, to nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject. As you design and use speaking techniques, ask yourself if you have allowed students to initiate language.
7. Encourage the development of speaking strategies.
The concept of strategic competence is one that language students must be awared of. They simply have not thought about developing their own personal strategies for accomplishing oral communicative purposes. Your classroom can be one in which students become aware of, and have a chance to practice such strategies as:
asking for clarification (What?)
asking someone to repeat something (Huh? Excuse me?)
using fillers (Uh, I mean, Well) in order to gain time to process
using conversation maintenance cues (Uh huh, Right, Yeah, Okay, Hm)
getting someone's attention (Hey, Say, So)
using paraphrases for structures one can't produce
appealing for assistance from the interlocutor (to get a word or phrase, for example)
using mime and nonverbal expressions to convey the meaning.
Styles of speaking
An important dimension of conversation is using a style of speaking that is
appropriate to the particular circumstances. Different styles of speaking reflect
the roles, age, sex, and status of participants in interactions and also reflect the
expression of politeness. Consider the various ways in which it is possible to ask
someone the time, and the different social meanings that are communicated by
these differences.
Lexical, phonological, and grammatical changes may be involved in producing a
suitable style of speaking, as the following alternatives illustrate:
Have you seen the boss? / Have you seen the manager? (lexical)
Whachadoin? / What are you doing? (phonological)
Seen Joe lately? / Have you seen Joe lately?
Different speech styles reflect perceptions of the social roles of the participants
in a speech event. If the speaker and hearer are judged to be of more or less
equal status, a casual speech style that stresses affiliation and solidarity is appropriate.
If the participants are perceived as being of uneven power or status, a
more formal speech style is appropriate, one that marks the dominance of one
speaker over the other. Successful management of speech styles creates the
sense of politeness that is essential for harmonious social relations (Brown and
Levinson, 1978).
Writing skills
Beginning students can benefit from learning and practising one skill at a time.
Writing is the final product of several separate acts that are hugely challenging to learn simultaneously. Among these separable acts are note-taking, identifying a central idea, outlining, drafting and editing. Both young and old people can encounter the discouraging ‘writer’s block’ if they engage in more than one or two of these activities at once. It is difficult to start writing a report, for example, without a central idea and notes to support it. Often, the more detailed an outline, the easier is the writing. People frequently find that they can finish faster by writing a first
draft quickly and then editing and revising this draft. Students may have different levels of computer skills that may affect their writing. Some, for example, may be fast at keyboarding, while others may not know where to place their fingers. As in the other acts of writing, it may be worthwhile learning and practising keyboarding in isolation before using it to carry out the principal writing tasks. Although research is not definitive, it appears that computers can be both harmful and helpful in writing and learning to write.
Some experience suggests that the neat appearance of words on the computer screen may suggest to students that all is well, even in the presence of logical, grammatical and stylistic errors. On the other hand, computers can make the rearrangement of words, sentences and paragraphs and other revisions far easier. Similarly, some more recent programmes can spot spelling and grammatical
mistakes and suggest corrections.
2. Teaching writing
Reasons for teaching writing
There are many reasons for getting students to write, both in and outside class. Firstly, writing gives them more 'thinking time' than they get when they attempt spontaneous conversation. This allows them more opportunity for language processing - that is thinking about the language - whether they are involved in study or activation.
When thinking about writing, it is helpful to make a distinction between writing-for-learning and writing-for-writing. In the case of the former, writing is used as an aide-memoire or practice tool to help students practise and work with language they have been studying. We might, for example, ask a class to write five sentences using a given structure, or using five of the new words or phrases they have been learning. Writing activities like this are designed to give reinforcement to students. This is particularly useful for those who need a mix of visual and kinaesthetic activity. Another kind of writing-for-learning occurs when we have students write sentences in preparation for some other activity. Here, writing is an enabling activity.
Writing-for-writing, on the other hand, is directed at developing the students' skills as writers. In other words, the main purpose for activities of this type is that students should become better at writing, whatever kind of writing that might be. There are good 'real-life' reasons for getting students to write such things as emails, letters and reports. And whereas in writing-for-learning activities it is usually the language itself that is the main focus of attention, in writing-for-writing we look at the whole text. This will include not just appropriate language use, but also text construction, layout, style and effectiveness.
It is clear that the way we organise our students' writing - and the way we offer advice and correction - will be different, depending on what kind of writing they are involved in.
More writing suggestions
Instant writing: one way of building the writing habit (see above) is to use instant writing activities as often as possible with both children/teenagers and adults who are reluctant writers. Instant writing activities are those where students are asked to write immediately in response to a teacher request. We can, for example, dictate half sentences for students to complete (e.g. 'My favourite relative is ...' or 'I will never forget the time I ...'). We can ask students to write two sentences about a topic 'right now'. We can give them three words and tell them to put them into a sentence as quickly as possible.
Instant writing is designed both to make students comfortable when writing, and also to give them thinking time before they say the sentences they have written aloud.
Using music and pictures: music and pictures are excellent stimuli for both writing and speaking. For example, we can play a piece of music and the students have to imagine and then write out the film scene they think it could accompany (this can be done after they have looked at a film script model). We can dictate the first sentence of a story and then have the students complete the story, based on the music we play them. We can then dictate the first sentence again and have them write a different story (because the music they hear is very different). They can then read out one of their stories and the class has to guess which music excerpt inspired it.
Pictures offer a wealth of possibilities. We can ask students to write descriptions of one of a group of pictures; their classmates then have to guess which one it is. They can write postcards based on pictures we give them. We can get them to look at portraits and write the inner thoughts of the characters or their diaries, or an article about them.
All of these activities are designed to get students writing freely, in an engaging way.
Newspapers and magazines: the different kinds of text found in newspapers and magazines offer a range of possibilities for genre analysis (see page 113), followed by writing within that genre. For example, we can get students to look at a range of different articles and ask them to analyse how headlines are constructed, and how articles are normally arranged (e.g. the first paragraph often - but not always - offers a summary of the whole article). They then write an article about a real or imaginary news story that interests them. At advanced levels, we can get students to look at the same story dealt with by different kinds of publication and ask them to write specifically for one or the other.
We can do the same kind of genre analysis in newspaper and magazine advertisements. 'Lonely hearts' entries, for example, always conform to a genre frame. Our students can learn a lot from analysing the genre and being able to imitate it. In the same vein, agony column letters (where people write in to ask for help with a problem) offer engaging writing practice.
Finally, we can show students a story and have them respond to it in a variety of different genres, and for different audiences (e.g. the report of a long traffic delay can prompt letters to the newspaper, emails, text messages, letters of apology, etc).
Brochures and guides: we can get students to look at a variety of brochures (e.g. for a town, entertainment venue, health club or leisure complex) to analyse how they are put together. They can then write their own brochure or town guide, using this analysis to help them.
Younger learners may enjoy writing brochures and guides for their areas which give completely wrong information (e.g. 'Sending postcards home: Look for the bins marked "Rubbish" or "Litter" and your postcards will be delivered next day; Travelling by bus: The buses in London are similar to taxis. Tell the drivers where you want to go and they'll drive you home!'). This is potentially just as engaging for children and teenagers as writing serious pieces of work.
Poetry: many teachers like getting students to write poems because it allows them to express themselves in a way that other genres, perhaps, do not. But we will have to give students models to help them write (to start with, anyway), since many of them will be unused to this kind of writing.
We can ask them to write acrostic poems (where the letters which start each line, when read downwards, form a word which is the topic of the poem). They can write a poetry alphabet (a line for each letter), or we can give them sentence frames to write with 'I like ... because ...' x 3, and then 'But I hate ...'). We can get them to write lines about someone they like with instructions such as 'Write about this person as if they were a kind of weather'. We can give them models of real poems which they have to imitate.
Poetry writing is especially appropriate for younger learners who are usually not afraid to have a go in the ways suggested above; but it is appropriate for older learners, too, since it allows them to be more creative than is permitted in some other activities.
Collaborative writing: students gain a lot from constructing texts together. For example, we can have them build up a letter on the board, where each line is written by a different student (with help from the class, the group and/or the teacher). We can tell a story which students then have to try to reproduce in groups (a version of this activity goes by the name dictogloss, where, when students have tried to recreate what they have heard, they compare their versions with the original as a way of increasing their language awareness).
We can set up a story circle in which each student in the group has a piece of paper on which they write the first line of a story (which we dictate to them). They then have to write the next sentence. After that, they pass their papers to the person next to them, and they write the next sentence of the story they now have in front of them. They then pass the paper to the next student and again write the next sentence of the (new) story they have. Finally, when the papers get back to their original owners, those students write the conclusion.
Students can also engage in collaborative writing around a computer screen.
Writing to each other: the email interview (see above) is an example of getting students to write to each other. They can also write emails, or any other kind of message (the teacher can act as a postal worker) which has to be answered. They can be involved, under our supervision, in live chat sessions on the Internet, or we can organise pen pal exchanges with students in other countries (often called mousepals or keypals when done via the Internet).
Writing in other genres: there are countless different genres that students can write in apart from those mentioned so far. We can have students write personal narratives and other stories. We can prepare them for this by looking at the way other writers do it. We can analyse first lines of novels and then have students write their own attention-grabbing lines. We can get students to complete stories that are only half told. For many of these activities, getting the students to think together before they attempt the task - brainstorming ideas - will be a major factor in their success.
Students can write discursive essays in which they assemble arguments both for and against a proposition, work out a coherent order for their arguments, study various models for such an essay and then write their own. The procedures we follow may be similar to the spoken discussion ideas outlined on page 128.
All these ideas depend for their success on students having a chance to share ideas, look at examples of the genre, plan their writing and then draft and edit it.
Recourse:
I.S. P. Nation Jonathan Newton Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. Routledge, 2009
Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant - The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology
Trudy Wallace, Winifred E. Stariha and Herbert J. Walberg – Teaching speaking, listening and writing
Jeremy Harmer – How to teach English
Jack C. Richards - Teaching Listening and Speaking
1 H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, San Francisco State University, 1994, p. 268.
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