Teaching speaking skills in english pdf

In addition, speaking can be a reference to a person's ability in communication. However, the point is that speaking is a message or information so that it can be understood when communicating. Many linguists and language teachers agree that the way to improve speaking skills is through interaction. Students can be said to be successful in speaking skills when they have reached several points in speaking activities.

According to Ur characteristics of successful speaking activity, the first is learners talk a lot. Means they can express their ideas what they thought by speaking a lot. The second is participation is even. And then motivation is high, students can motivate themselves to improve their speaking well. And the last speaking is of an acceptable level. Being able to speak English fluently is the aims of English skills.

In teaching english in class, the teacher faces various problems. These problems occur when the teacher teaches language competence to students, one of which is when the teacher teaches speaking competence. Reiser and Dick , p. Qualitative research is research using methods such as participant observation or case studies which result in a narrative, descriptive account of a setting or practice. The instrument used to collect data was observation.

Although it is important to consider what is done over and over again there is no point if the method given for teaching is wrong. More teachers in Indonesia when teaching speaking only uses rote dialogue without making an English discussion. Learning systems like this that make our English less effective. English speaking learning system must prioritize students' communication skills, because by making students will be able to communicate themselves to learn to use the rules of English when communicating.

Among others, the strategies of teaching speaking are discussion, role-play, creative tasks, and drilling. Cameron states that role play is a learning activity that should be appropriate for students and social culture experience because the activity should give learners opportunities to use language they know and should start with simple dialogues before moving on to more advanced interactions.

Drilling Drilling is a way of standardizing pronunciation of a language item and developing fluidity the ability to introduce language quickly and easily Houston, Harmer also points that drilling is mechanical ways in getting students to demonstrate and practice their ability to use specific language item in a controlled manner. Furthermore, Budden states that a drill is a classroom technique used to practice new language. It involves teachers in modeling a word or a sentence and learners in repeating it.

Games A game is an activity with rules, a goal and an element of fun. Furthermore, Klippel , p. Stephen , p. This can be done in English or Turkish depending on the level of the students. In addition, students should be given all the necessary role cards, pictures, listening and reading texts, etc. Teacher intervenes whenever required. In this stage, a feedback on the content of the activity rather than the grammatical accuracy would be more appropriate.

Informing students what they have achieved is better than saying them what they have failed. Such a feedback would contribute to their inner motivation, sense of achievement and self-confidence. This would also have a positive contribution to low affective filter which is considered to be an essential condition in language acquisition by Krashen We can summarize the above mentioned instructional stages in Figure 1.

Introduction and The explanation possession of the required knowledge by the Putting forth the learners details of the task The Observation of the Activity by the Teacher Giving The Follow up Feedback Activity Figure 1. For example, while driving a car, we pay attention to the road without noticing until a rabbit appears in front of us.

We immediately notice it away from the other details on the road. Just like that, a learner learning a new word can see it in many different places, because s he is now noticing it. We cannot talk about a real noticing without understanding. Understanding is noticing a general rule or system and comprehending the relation of the subparts between each other and how these parts interact.

To be an example of such awareness activities, we are here presenting a part from Neville J. Grant and C. In this activity, the learner performs an awareness practice on the likely problems of communication in daily life conversations and s he practices the required language to overcome these communication challenges.

Here, the likely difference between the real daily conversations and course book conversations can be emphasized. The course book conversations usually do not reveal features of pausing, repetition, reflection that usually help better understanding in daily life conversations. For example, the following excerpts taken from J.

The learners can be asked to state their opinions why these two versions differ and how the course book version of the dialogue can be changed to make it more authentic.

There are points however that should be taken into consideration. This background activation is more essential especially in hard topics. For example, if the learners are supposed to hear a speech on a comparison of hybrid engine cars with traditional benzine cars, they would be asked to carry out a brainstorm session to find the already possessed vocabulary on the topic.

In this way, a useful vocabulary activity and an awareness raising can be done simultaneously. Are they friends, relatives, colleagues, etc.? What is their purpose? The above like questions would help the teachers to find out the general comprehension of the learners. The determination general understanding is a prerequisite for developing detailed activities on the topic.

Such activities can be filling out a table, answering multiple choice questions, sentence completion, matching, etc. In this stage, the text can be listened or watched a few times until the learners can answer the majority of the questions with ease. Such examples revealing the culture of the target language would raise cultural awareness. For example thanksgiving, street musicians, employer- employee relations, the status of women in the society, methods of saving money, etc.

Comparing and contrasting the mother tongue culture and the target language culture could be a useful discussion topic. For example, the intensity of the words in written and spoken languages is different. The intensity of the words mean the rate of the content words in the text. In spoken language, the intensity is less than the written language.

Controlled Activities Making learners to become fluent speakers, controlled practice helps them to learn the control of speaking skills. Drill and chants, in this case involve practicing that control. In a drill type exercise the learner is given words, phrases and even whole utterances to mechanically repeat and imitate so that s he is supposed to notice and use the piece of useful language supposed to be produced automatically in everyday conversations.

In such an activity taken from Thornbury , students first listen to a recording of a conversation in which a number of useful formulaic expressions are embedded. After the teacher ensures the content of the conversation is comprehended well, the recording is played again, but this time the teacher pauses the recordings at strategic points and the students repeat the already heard chunk in chorus.

Then, a few individuals repeat the same key phrases until a certain degree of confidence in producing these phrases are achieved.

A list of such expressions can be given from Thornbury Autonomous Activities Since one of the main objectives of the foreign language class is to create autonomous learners who achieve a certain degree of fluency and automaticity in speaking competence, activities requiring the learner to produce authentic language should be carried out.

According to Thornbury , the speaking activities that enable the learners to produce autonomous language should include the conditions of productivity, purposefulness, interactivity, challenge, safety and authenticity. Productivity includes the maximal new language production rather than just exchanging certain phrases.

Purposefulness is the clear and well defined outcome of the language activity usually achieved through cooperation among learners. Challenge means the difficulty level of the task. The task that the learner is engaged should be a little bit above the current language level of the learner. It includes supportive, non-judgmental and encouraging classroom atmosphere for making errors. Authenticity is the relation of the speaking tasks to real life language use.

Ray believes students should be given enough opportunities to express themselves in a stress free environment, not just repeat memorized lines. Some examples of autonomous speaking activities in a TPRS class are given below: Team Retell: You can use this activity after a story to get students speaking without calling on specific students and forcing them to speak.

First, split the class in half and have both sides of the class stand up. This will prevent kids from just repeating one or two statements forever.

Story Telling Cube: In order to do this activity, you will need to create storytelling cubes for your students. One cube should have a different character on each side and the other cube should have a different problem image on each side ie. Once students have rolled each cube, have them come up with a story. This activity is very flexible and could be used as a speaking or writing activity. Students can work individually, in pairs, or in groups, depending on what you want them to accomplish.

You can even hand out a cube template and allow students to make their own storytelling cubes. This way they get to decide which characters and problems they want to use.

Put some examples on the board of things that they can say about their books and then model a few sentences for them and tell them a little bit about your book.

Put students into groups and have them tell the other students about their own books. It is nice if they still have the books at this point because they can show them to the other students at the same time. After everyone has finished sharing with their group, ask for volunteers to share something about their book with the whole class. The Motivation of the Learners In a speaking class, some learners might be unmotivated to attend the class due to various reasons.

For such learners Harmer proposes some strategies taken from Helgesen in Harmer, A strategy for such learners can be making a mental plan in advance and rehearsing it for a few times before starting to talk. Or they can make up imaginary talks to explain a friend the best or the worst thing occurred on that day. Making up such imaginary talks can reduce the anxiety of speaking for the learners.

Having learners form discussion groups can be another strategy for encouraging learners to become more motivated contributors to the speaking activities. Before discussing the topic, the learners can be asked to brainstorm on the topic and think about it deeply before the actual discussion starts. Some unwilling, shy students can think they cannot express themselves clearly in large groups.

In such cases, smaller groups can be formed in which shy students have a better share of speaking. If so, these learners can be coerced. For example, in a group activity consisting of 4 students each student can be given a part of a whole text and the students can be asked to share the information covered in their parts with the others so that they will be able to answer the comprehension questions at the end of the passage.

Or from the point of view of Krashen, speaking is important to provide comprehensible input. Therefore, especially for advanced level students more speaking activities that enable students to exchange communication practice should be incorporated into the syllabus. A piece of white paper divided into 16 equal squares with four columns down and four rows across. At the bottom of each square there is a piece of information at least one student in the class may have experienced or a quality at least one student may have, such as "broken a bone," "loves pizza," "speaks two languages," "has been on an airplane," or "good dancer.

Do they like to learn more about their classmates? Then have students watch Speaking and Listening Strategies to further explore good skills. After watching the program, talk about experiences when students have to ask questions or follow directions.

Ask them: Why is it important to give clear directions? What kind of situations have you been in when you have had to listen very carefully to someone talking? Why is it important to develop good speaking and listening skills? Have students describe situations when they have not used good speaking or listening skills. What were the results? Explain the students that they will play a scavenger hunt-type game with their classmates. Hand out copies of "Have You Ever?

To do so, they must match a classmate's name to the criteria written in a square. Each square must represent a different person, so a winning "Have You Ever?

Tell students that they will walk around the classroom and ask their classmates questions to fill in the squares on their sheet, such as "Have you ever broken a bone? If not, the student can choose to ask the person a different question or move to a different classmate until they have found one who has broken a bone.

Explain to students that they will also answer questions. Remind students that everyone in the classroom will be working on their scavenger hunt at the same time, so it is important that students use indoor voices, listen to what their classmates are saying very carefully, and not to run.

The first person to fill in all of their squares without repeating a name wins. Tell students to raise their paper and call out if they think they have won. Walk around the classroom while students are engaged to make sure everyone is playing fairly and nobody is running. Call time when a student has announced they have finished and have students quietly freeze where they are standing while you check the possible winning sheet. If the student is mistaken, have the class resume the activity.

If not, ask students to return to their seats. Discuss the scavenger hunt with students. Who learned something new about their classmates?