UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CHIMBORAZOMETHODOLOGY II

NAMES: Joselyn Aguilar, Mayra Iguasnia, Adriana Lara, Angely Ocaña, Blanca Santacruz.COURSE: 4thLanguages “B”

SPEAKING

Speaking comes naturally to humans, but it is not as simple as it seems. A complex and dynamic skill Involves use of several simultaneous processes – cognitive, social and physical Challenging aspect of language learning because knowledge and skills have to be

activated rapidly in real-time Therefore needs to be taught explicitly in the classroom – “doing” speaking activities is not the same as learning the knowledge

and skills of speaking

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.Language input may be content oriented or form oriented.

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.

A GOOD SPEAKING CLASS Teacher realised from early in her/his career that it was important to develop

her/his students’ speaking abilities. She/He wanted to make sure that her/his students had plenty of opportunities to

communicate with one another in English, so she/he set aside two lessons a week for speaking practice.

She/he planned many interesting activities for her/his students. Her/his lessons were carefully guided by instructional objectives. These objectives were in the form of either what the students should produce (e.g.

presentations, debates, descriptions) or what they had to do e.g. discuss, narrate, role play)

Sometimes when they had finished the activities, Teacher would ask the students to present the outcomes to the rest of the class. At other times she/he would simply move on to another activity, such as reading or writing

PROS AND CONS OF SPEAKING CLASROOMPROS Variety of activities Students enjoyed Interacting Opportunities to practice speaking Some opportunities present outcomes

CONS Little preparation for practicing specific skills Lack of explicit teaching of key areas of speaking. Little attention to knowledge,skills, strategy development. Little feedback on performance. Little or no follow-up.

SPEAKING COMPETENCE IS COMBINATORIALKnowledge of language and discurse.Discourse as ‘language in its social context, as it is used to carry out the social and intellectual life of a community’. This meaning of discourse emphasizes the importance of looking at language in context and usually involves an analysis of actual stretches of spoken and written language, often referred to as ‘texts’. Note that ‘text’ is a term widely used in language research to refer to both spoken and written language, and, more recently, visual images, as we will see in section.

Communication strategiesCOMUNICATION STRATEGIESare plans for communication information related to a specific issue,event, situation, or audience. Communication strategies do not have to be formal written documents. They can simply involve taking the time to think about communication in order to achieve a good message in the communication. • Talkaboutperson’sfeelings.• Talk to a person, rather than about them to others.• Tell a person what you are doing or going to do.

Core Speaking SkillsIs the premier applied interpersonal communication skills course. In Core, you learn six talking skills and five listening skills for resolving conflicts, making decisions, solving problems, and negotiating more effectively. These practical communication skills strengthen your relationships and increase your personal and professional opportunities.

HOW COULD A TEACHER HELPOn the oral presentation I feel a little nervous.it remains me that a good speaker includes so many meanings, such as a proper tone, compatible body gestures and so on. Many people are not accustomed to use body language when they speak maybe the traditional character.

The rhythm and accent in sentences are very interesting. It can also help us to speak clearly, but sometimes I do not know when we speak which should be stressed which word should not.

I practice a lot on my own by copying recordings I hear, but when I try to speak to native speakers I fail terribly.

A TEACHING SPEAKING CYCLE

1. Focus Attention on Speaking, get students to think about their experiences in learning to speak a second language, it is important to spend some time about their learning processes. To help you get started, for example: What do you like most about learning to speak English? Is there anything don’t like?

2. Provide Input/Guided Planning, the most important is identify a interest topic for having their attention, write phrases or expression to use to show that you will be moving from point by point. Finally practice giving the explanation.

3. Conduct Speaking Tasks , the purpose of this stage is provide a context to practice speaking through a communication task. The task should encourage learners to express meaning with whatever linguistic knowledge, skills and

strategies they have, this stage encourages learners to develop fluency without having to pay too much attention to accuracy.

4. Focus on Language Skills and Strategies , in this stage the aims for creating opportunities to improve language accuracy, as well as to enhance effective use of skills and strategies. The teacher draws learner’s attention to selected ¨parts¨ of the fluency task they have completed. The parts include language features such as pronunciation. Grammar and text structures. As well as vocabulary.

5. Repeat Speaking Tasks, for this stage learners carry out the speaking task of stage 3 (Conduct Speaking Tasks). The difference between stage 3 and stage 5 is that learners have had a chance to analyses and practice selected language items or skills during stage 4. Therefore, they are able to apply this knowledge to enhance their performance.

Repetitions could be carried out by:

Repeating parts of the original task

Repeating the entire task

Having students change groups or partners

Introducing a new task similar to the one learners have just done (e.g. instead of the topic of making a fruit salad, learners could give instructions about a topic of their own choice. So that they rehearse a procedure genre again).

6. Direct Learner´s reflections on Learning, in this stage the teacher evaluate, but he/she create an interesting test for example: Complete. In this week´s lessons, I learned to do the following in spoken English: …………………

7. Facilitate Feedback on Learning, in this final stage, the teacher provides learners with feedback on their performance in earlier stages of the cycle.

10 TIPS FOR TEACHINF SPEAKING

1. Help learners to master pronunciation at segmental (syllable/word/sounds) and Suprasegmentals (stress, intonation) levels.

2. Focus on pronunciation in context – integrate practice with relevant speaking activities.

3. Stress intelligibility and comprehensibility rather than native-speakerness4. Focus on both enabling skills and interaction skills.5. But always work towards meaning and communication.6. Provide preparation and scaffolding for task completion.7. Provide explicit guidance for skill and strategy development.8. Give multiple opportunities for practicing related tasks.

9. Provide feedback on various stages of task performance and on development of knowledge about spoken language, core skills and speaking strategies.

10. Be aware of affective factors - anxiety, nervousness, embarrassment.

WHY SPEAKING IN THE TARGETLANGUAGE (TL) CAN BE DIFFICULT.

• It takes place in ‘real time’

• Speakers worry about producing utterances with many errors or oddities in them.

• Pronunciation that is not intelligible

• The effects of the Affective Principles

language ego, self-confidence, risk-taking

CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUCCESSFUL SPEAKING ACTIVITY

1. Learners talk a lot. Classroom activities must be designed in such ways that provide opportunities for learners to talk a lot.

2. All get a chance to speak. A minority of talkative students should not dominate Classroom discussions, and contributions must be fairly distributed. Classroom activities must be designed in ways that help all the students to take risk.

3. Motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the topic, and want to contribute to achieving a task objective.

4. Language is comprehensible. Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy. The teacher must also base the activity on easy language so that the students can use the language fluently without hesitation.

5. Students speak the target language. The teacher must keep students speaking the foreign language.

WAYS OF ORGANIZING SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

The way in which a classroom is organized can have a significant influence on language learning processes. The dominant view of second language classroom processes today favors a great amount of student-centered learning instead of the traditional teacher-dominated classroom. The teacher-dominated classroom is characterized by the teacher’s speaking most of the time, leading activities, and constantly passing judgments on students’ performance, whereas in a highly student-centered classroom, students will be observed working individually or in pairs and small groups. The

followings are different ways of organizing classroom activities according to Doff (1990):

1. Pair work: the teacher divides the whole class into pairs. Every student works with his or her partner and all the pairs work at the same time.

2. Open or public pair work: as with the pair work, the class will be divided into pairs, and each pair of students speaks in turn in front of the class.

3. Group work: the teacher divides the class into small groups to work together, and as in pair work, all the groups work at the same time.

4. Whole class activity: the whole class takes part into an activity together. An example of this activity is Circle games These games involve the learners sitting in a circle and working as a whole class.

ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE SPEAKING

Information GapIn this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the others need. These activities are effective because everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively in the target language.

Role PlayOne other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are David, you go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and..

Brainstorming

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 characteristics of brainstorming are that the students are not criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.

StorytellingStudents can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening.

In this way, not only will the teacher address students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of the class.

WHAT MAKES A GOODSPEAKING CLASS

Have you ever had to speak in front your class—perhaps to give a report—and you got real nervous? Perhaps you stammered, started to sweat and even started to shake.

Many students have this problem. In fact, the fear of speaking in front of a group is one of the worst fears people have.

Teacher:

Teacher is monitoring. When teacher monitors pairs or groups, he tries to join them for a short while to make a small contribution to their conversations. This also allows the teacher to give instant corrections naturally by rephrasing some of the things they say. We can use this approach that quickly builds students confidence in trying to communicate in English.

Learner:

The learner can hardly understand anything at all, unless the speaker is talking about things the learner is observing, or unless the language being learned is closely related to some other language the learner knows. Through comprehension activities the learner can internalize some vocabulary and some grammatical structures, which will help the learner to understand more in stage two, when she or she knows enough to actually converse in a simple way. The result of getting through stage one is that the learner has acquired enough of the basic building blocks of the language to begin to function in real communication situations in a halting way.