Similarly, when working on the language of discussion, you can produce a set of cards with the key phrases/exponents on. The cards are laid out in front of each group of 2/3/4 students. If a student uses the language on a particular card appropriately during the discussion, he/she keeps the card. The student with the most cards wins. If he/she uses the language inappropriately, then he / she can be challenged and has to leave the card on the table.
Part Four Goals and Techniques for Teaching Speaking
The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation.
To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, instructors can use a balanced activities approach that combines language input, structured output, and communicative output. Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material they need to begin producing language themselves.
1) Language input may be content oriented or form oriented.
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Content-oriented input focuses on information, whether it is a simple weather report or an extended lecture on an academic topic. Content-oriented input may also include descriptions of learning strategies and examples of their use.
? Form-oriented input focuses on ways of using the language: guidance from the teacher or another source on vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar (linguistic competence); appropriate things to say in specific contexts (discourse competence); expectations for rate of speech, pause length, turn-taking, and other social aspects of language use (sociolinguistic competence); and explicit instruction in phrases to use to ask for clarification and repair miscommunication (strategic competence).
In the presentation part of a lesson, an instructor combines content-oriented and form-oriented input. The amount of input that is actually provided in the target language depends on students' listening proficiency and also on the situation. For students at lower levels, or in situations where a quick
explanation on a grammar topic is needed, an explanation in English may be more appropriate than one in the target language.
Structured output focuses on correct form. In structured output, students may have options for responses, but all of the options require them to use the specific form or structure that the teacher has just introduced.
Structured output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific language items recently introduced, sometimes in combination with previously learned items. Instructors often use structured output exercises as a transition between the presentation stage and the practice stage of a lesson plan. textbook exercises also often make good structured output practice activities.
In communicative output, the learners' main purpose is to complete a task, such as obtaining information, developing a travel plan, or creating a video. To complete the task, they may use the language that the instructor has just presented, but they also may draw on any other vocabulary, grammar, and communication strategies that they know. In communicative output activities, the criterion of success is whether the learner gets the message across. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it interferes with the message.
In everyday communication, spoken exchanges take place because there is some sort of information gap between the participants. Communicative output activities involve a similar real information gap. In order to complete the task, students must reduce or eliminate the information gap. In these activities, language is a tool, not an end in itself.
In a balanced activities approach, the teacher uses a variety of activities from these different categories of input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels, including beginners, benefit from this variety; it is more motivating, and it is also more likely to result in effective language learning.
Part Five Suggestions for the Classroom
In speaking classes students must be exposed to three key items: (1) form-focused instruction, that is, attention to details of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and so forth; (2) meaning-focused instruction, that is, opportunities to produce meaningful spoken messages with real communicative purposes; and (3) opportunities to improve fluency. Elements of all of the above should be present throughout a speaking program, with emphasis on form-focused instruction at the elementary levels
and, as the learners progress, on meaning-focused instruction at the higher levels. This paper will also discuss different types of errors and how to work with them to help learners. 1) Form-Focused Speaking
When learners first begin to speak in another language their speaking will need to be based on some form-focused learning. An effective way to begin is to base speaking on some useful, simple memorized phrases and sentences. These may be greetings, simple personal descriptions, and simple questions and answers. These can be practiced in Repetition drills. The teacher says a phrase or sentence several times and then asks the learners to repeat. Some learners can be called on to repeat individually, and then the class may repeat together. Because it is helpful to give learners quite a lot of repetition practice in beginning level courses, the teacher needs to find ways of varying repetition activities to keep the learners interested. Here is a list of possible ways to vary repetition. As an example, use the sentence \
1. The teacher varies the speed. The teacher says the sentence slowly and the learners repeat. Then the teacher says the phrase a little faster until the phrase is being said at normal speaking speed. 2. The teacher varies the way of choosing who is to repeat the sentence. The teacher says the sentence and points to the first person in the first row to repeat it. The teacher says it again and points to the second person in the first row. Then the teacher starts pointing at people at random so that the learners cannot predict who will be the next person called on. This variation can also include choosing individuals or choosing the whole class to repeat the sentence. Another variation of this kind is to get the learner who just repeated the sentence to call the name of the next person to repeat the sentence. 3. The teacher can vary the content of the sentence. That is, the teacher can substitute a word for one of the words in a sentence. So instead of only saying \be called on to repeat \Substitution drill.
4. The teacher varies the way the substitution is signaled to the learners, for example, on the board there may be a substitution table like this: Where is
the station?
the post office? your house? the bank? the hospital?
At first the teacher points to the words \learners repeat. The teacher points to the next substitution, \learners repeat. After doing this for a while, the teacher just points to the substitution and does not say it, but the learners have to say the whole sentence. After doing that for a while the teacher does not point but just says the substitution.
5. The teacher may vary the way of choosing the substitution. At first, the teacher chooses the substitutions in the same order as they are written on the board. Then the teacher may choose them in random order so that the learners cannot predict what the next substitution will be. 2)The Role of Drills
The skill of a teacher in carrying out a drill lies in learning when to vary the activity so that the learners do not become bored by it. Skilled teachers make continual, small variations so that the activity is always challenging, smooth, and interesting. The activity can be taken a step towards a more meaning-focused activity by getting the learners to choose their own words to substitute for words in the model sentence.
The use of drills, however, should be seen as merely one kind of form-focused activity that needs to be balanced with other types of form-focused activities, as well as with meaning-focused and fluency development activities. Drills play a useful part in a language course in helping learners to be formally accurate in their speech and in helping them to quickly learn a useful collection of phrases and sentences that allow them to start using the language as soon as possible. As their proficiency and experience in the language develop, most of these sentences and phrases may be re-analyzed and incorporated into the learners' system of knowledge of the language. Language use based on memorization can be the starting point for more creative use of the language. 3) Meaning-Focused Speaking
In addition to form-focused speaking, language learners should also be exposed to and given
opportunities to practice and use meaning-focused communication, in which they must both produce and listen to meaningful oral communication. An example of a meaning-focused activity for beginning students is Speaking by numbers. Each learner is given a number and a topic. The topics could include family, money, coming to school, a color, future goals, travel, work, and so forth. The learners can think about their topics for a minute or two and then the teacher calls a number. The learner with that number then says two or three sentences about his or her particular topic. The speaker then calls a number and the learner with that number has to ask the speaker a question or two related to the topic just spoken about. When the question is answered, the questioner calls a number and the person with that number asks another question. This continues three or four times and then the speaker calls the number of a new person who will speak about the topic that she or he was given.
This is a meaning-focused speaking activity because both the speaker's and the listeners' attention is on the message being communicated.
4) Developing the Learner's Knowledge of Language Items
A problem in meaning-focused speaking activities is making sure that the activity is actually developing the learner's knowledge of language items. There are several ways of using speaking to increase the speaker's control of the language items.
1. The meaning-focused speaking activity follows some form-focused instruction. That is, the teacher presents some new vocabulary or grammatical features, gives the learners some practice, and then uses a meaning-focused activity to help the learners use and remember these items.
2. Before the learners speak on a topic or take part in an activity, they work in pairs or groups of three of four to prepare. This gives the learners the chance to learn new items from each other. Here is an example using a Same or different information gap activity. In this kind of activity the learners work in pairs. Learner A has a set of small numbered pictures. Learner B has a similar set except that while some of B's are exactly the same as A's, some are different. They should sit facing each other so that they cannot see each other's picture(s). Learner A describes the first picture and B listens and then says if her picture is the same or different. If it is the same they both write S next to their picture; if it is different they both write D. Then Learner B describes picture number 2 and they decide if the pictures are the same or different. After they have done five or ten pictures, they can change partners so that Learner A works with a new Learner B. Before the activity begins, all the Learner As can get together
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