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Teaching speaking to B1 learners Prepared by the student of 2009 group Komilova Hulkaroy
Teaching speaking Issues for discussion: 1.Characteristics of spoken language 2. Principles for designing speaking activities 3.Using group works and other common types of speaking activities
WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE? Speaking is a skill, just like swimming,driving a car, or playing ping-pong. Too often, in the traditional classroom, the learning of English has been relegated to linguistic knowledge only, e.g. knowledge of vocabulary and grammar rules, with little or no attention paid to practice language skills.
How can we tell the difference between knowledge and skill? According to Bygate (1987:4) one “fundamental difference is that both can be understood and memorised, but only skill can be imitated and practised”.
Characteristics of spoken language Spontaneity-In most situations, people do not plan ahead of time what they are going to say. The fact that speech is spontaneous means that it is full of false starts, repetitions, incomplete sentences, and short phrases. Should we expect the students to produce complete sentences in language classroom?
Characteristics of spoken language Time-constraint-The students must be able to produce unplanned conversations in real-time; otherwise people will not have the patience to listen to them.
DESIGNING SPEAKING TASKS One important consideration: The proficiency level of the students (challenging but not too difficult.) If the task is too easy or too difficult, the students may be demotivated.
Common characteristics in successful speaking tasks Our Solution Maximum foreign talk Even participation High motivation Right language level WORK HARD
Try to avoid students’ talking in MAXIMUM FOREIGN TALK the mother tongue, and avoid too much Teacher Talk.
Try to avoid outstanding students dominating discussions. Try to EVEN guarantee equal PARTICIPATION opportunities for students of different levels.
Interesting topic, and a clear objective. Make sure HIGH MOTIVATION that the task is in line with the students’ ability
The task must be designed so that the students can complete the task successfully with the RIGHT LANGUAGE LEVEL language that they have. Otherwise, the task will become frustrating and the students are likely to give up or revert to the native language.
As compared with activities for the whole MORE class, group work enables students to talk a lot because it increases the time for each OPPORTUNITIES student to practice speaking in one lesson.
Group work helps students avoid losing MORE their face in front of a whole class, and thus MOTIVATION it makes students courageous to speak.
Speaking in a small group is more natural MORE than speaking in a large group, because AUTHENTICITY the latter is usually more formal and requires preparation.
SUGGESTED TYPES OF SPEAKING ACTIVITIES 1.Information-gap activities 2.Dialogues and role-plays 3.Activities using pictures 4.Problem-solving activities 5.Other speaking activities
CONCLUSION The most important aspect of preparing students to speak in real life is to give them as many opportunities as possible to practise producing unplanned,spontaneous and meaningful speech under time pressure.
