Speaking Skill

Speaking Skill

Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts." It is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules in each communicative circumstance. In order to teach second language learners how to speak in the best way possible, some strategies and some speaking activities are provided below, that can be applied to ESL and EFL classroom settings, together with suggestions for teachers who teach oral language.

Strategies for Developing Speaking Skills

Before you decide to do activities intended to help students to develop the ability to speak in English, you have to be aware that students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning. We know that speaking is a crucial part of the language learning process. So it is very important to teach students some important speaking strategies that they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in using it. You as a teacher help students to learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn.

1. Using minimal responses
It is a good strategy that really works when we have learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges.
Minimal responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying, without having to simultaneously plan a response.

2. Recognizing scripts
Some communication situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken exchanges -- a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or scripts. So do the transactional exchanges involved in activities such as obtaining information and making a purchase. In these scripts, the relationship between a speaker's turn and the one that follows it can often be anticipated.
You can help students develop the speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response.
3. Using language to talk about language

Language learners are often too embarrassed or shy to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. in this cases, you can help students overcome this reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any type of interaction, whatever the participants' language skill levels. You can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check.

Before we develop some activities with your students, you have to make emphasis on your students that the aim of the activity is not just to speak the more but to speak as much as it is possible and have a good pronunciation of the words. So this video will be really meaningful to help them to speak like a native speaker.


Activities:
  1. What a life
It is an activity that is developed in groups. First, you have to ask your students to write in some small cards some events or things that have happened to them in the past. Then each of them is going to have a turn to pick up a card and read it out to the rest of the group. After this, they have to make a different question to the reader of the card.

  1. Taboo
It is a speaking game where students have to provide some words besides the ones that you have provided them in some slices of paper. What you have to do is to give students some words written in a sheet of paper. Then, you have to explain them that they have to write some others related with the ones that you have given them. The point is that per each word they have to write a certain numbers of words or adjectives that have relation with the provided.

  1. Consequence role play
Here students have to take the role of another person

Procedure
Give each student a piece of paper. On this they must first write:
  1. The first name of their favorite movie star - male or female but of the opposite gender to themselves
  2. Student's favorite fruit.
  3. A number between 1 - 9
  4. The names of vegetables - the same number of vegetables as the number given above
  5. A job they don't like
  6. Their favorite job they would like to do
  7. A description of their dream house; e.g. by the sea, in the mountains - using adjectives to describe this place
  8. Finally, they describe what country they would really like to live in.
  • Now they are required to change character to the person they have described on the piece of paper. Here are what the points above mean:
  • This is their husband's or wife's first name
  • This is their family name.
  • This indicates the number of children they have
  • This indicates the children's names.
  • This is their job.
  • This is the their husband's or wife's job
  • This describes the family house and tells the listener where it is located
  • This last point tells us what country they come from.

  1. Fashion statements
This is an activity were students have the opportunity to give their personal opinions of style and fashion.
Procedure:
  • Before doing this activity, give your students some statements on the board and ask them if they agree or disagree.

  • Here are some example statements you can use:
      1. What you wear says a lot about your personality
      2. I love buying new clothes.
      3. I really do not care about what I wear.
      4. Second hand clothes can be cool.
  • Then make pairs and ask them to discuss how much they agree or disagree with it.

  1. Food Flashcards
This activity is really useful because just by having simple pictures on hand, students can get great results. It is a good activity to revise vocabulary or to generate discussion.
These activities take little or no preparation. You can either cut pictures from magazines, or download them from the internet.
Preparation
  • Learners look at the pictures and try to name as many items as possible.
  • Ask learners to describe the setting for the meal.
  • There is a common saying "We are what we eat." Get the learners to try to describe the people who may be eating this meal.
    • What can you guess about a person from the food they eat?
    • Describe the person you think cooked the meal / will eat the meal?
    • Where are the people now?
  • You can get your learners' personal reactions to the pictures.
    • Which meal would they most / least like to eat?
    • What country does the food come from?

Here you have a video about some recommendations on using flashcards


  1. Picture Dictation: this activity requires a low preparation and works well with large classes, especially with young learners and teens. All your students need is a blank piece of paper and all the teacher needs is a little bit of imagination.

Procedure
  • First of all explain to students that they are going to do a picture dictation, that you are going to describe a picture to them and that all they have to do is simply listen and draw what they hear you describe.
  • When you are describing the picture, it is best to describe one object at a time slowly and to repeat each description two or three times.
  • Make sure you give students enough time to finish drawing one object before you move onto the next object.
Tip for making the activity work well
  • Before starting the activity, you may elicit from the students vocabulary that they will need to know for the activity.
Finally, they have to swap roles and then they have to compare the pictures they drew and pointing out some of the possible differences.

  1. True- False Story
This speaking activity is very effective for practicing the telling of stories and for learning fascinating things about the students in the class.
  • What you have to do is just to tell the students an interesting story about yourself, describing it in detail way; what happened. At the end of the story, give them an opportunity to ask you questions about the story. Finally, ask them to decide if they think the story is true or false. Then you tell students the answer and now it's the students' turn to make up stories.
  • Put the students into groups of two or three members and tell them to prepare two stories for the class. Each student must have one story to tell. In a pair, one story must be true and one must be false. In a group of three you can have one true and two false, or two true and one false. The important thing is that the false stories must be realistic and the true stories must be unusual.
  • When all the groups have finished their stories, conduct a feedback session and highlight the effective language that was used as well as the language that needs to be worked on.
  1. Finding the murderer
This speaking activity gives student the chance to take roles and participate in different way in the performance of the activity.

    1. First, write on the board: Mr. Johnson was found dead in her house on Tuesday morning. You have to find who killed him and why.
    2. Explain to students that they are going to prepare a play and perform it (in groups).
    3. The objective is that the audience has to guess who the murderer is.
    4. Tell students that they are free to invent a story about why he is dead. They can choose their own personalities, and decide who will be the inspector as he or she prepares a few questions to interview the suspects. Or you can give them a hand by saying before some information of the dead. Such as if he had money, if he was famous, etc.

  1. Brain Storming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas quickly and freely. The good characteristic of brainstorming is that the students are not criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.

  1. Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news. Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in their daily lives before class.


Besides the previous activities, here you have this video with five successful activities to teach speaking.


SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS WHEN TEACHING SPEAKING
  • Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials and tasks, and shared knowledge.
  • Try to involve each student in every speaking activity.
  • Reduce teacher speaking time in class. Step back and observe students.
  • Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
  • Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
  • Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great. It was a good job. I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use of your voice…"
  • Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking. Correction should not distract student from his or her speech.
  • Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and other people who can help.
  • Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
  • Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
  • Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language.

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