SPEAKING
According to Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams (2011) speaking is one of the
four English skills. It is considered a productive skill along with writing. Speaking
involves the use of speech to communicate meanings to other people. When we speak
we use intonation, appropriate register,
words, and sentence stress, paraphrase, hesitate, pronounce words,
answer questions, and so on. However, the only thing that we do not do is
planning what will say. Speaking involves several subskills such as making use
of grammar, vocabulary, and functions,
making use of the register to speak appropriately, using features of connected speech, body language,
and interactive strategies, producing
different text types, and oral fluency. We use interactive
strategies in order to communicate our meaning successfully for instance eye
contact, use of gestures. And
the functions we use are repeating, agreeing, and asking for clarification. Moreover, fluency, accuracy, and appropriacy are necessary to
have successful oral communication. To wrap up, to develop and produce oral
communication we need to be aware of the use of the subskills, features of
connected speech, and functions to convey the meaning of what we will say.
How to apply knowledge related to Speaking Skill in the English classroom:
To develop speaking skills, learners need
to interact. Communicative Language Teaching and Collaborative learning are the
best approaches to do it. Since CLT is based on real-life situations learners
will be able to communicate with each other in the target language. Teachers
should use authentic material, and meaningful tasks to promote oral skills.
One of them is, information-gap games, these activities can be developed in pairs, one participant has to talk to the partner and draw a picture, put things in the right order, or solve a picture. For instance, learners may talk about the differences they found between two maps. This activity demands a lot of language from the learners and they have to be aware of details.
Another
activity is, buzz groups, it is a
discussion activity. This activity aims to have a whole range of discussions,
for example, learners can predict the
content of a book, and also they can talk about their reaction after reading
it.
References:
Harmer, J. (1983). Chapter 20: Speaking. In
J. Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching (pp. 348-352).
Kayi, H. (2006). Teaching Speaking:
Activities to Promote Speaking in a Second Language. The Internet TESL
Journal. Retrieved from: The Internet TESL Journal.
Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., Williams, M., & University of Cambridge. (2011). The TKT course: Modules 1,2 and 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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