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Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Speaking. Introduction For communication. The most demanding, and the centre of the four skills. A variety of demand, such as monitoring, understanding, contributions thought, producing that contribution, and monitoring its effect.
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Introduction • For communication. • The most demanding, and the centre of the four skills. • A variety of demand, such as monitoring, understanding, contributions thought, producing that contribution, and monitoring its effect.
Acquire the stress, rhythm, and intonation of English • It is almost always accomplished via interaction with at least one other speaker • Teaching of oral communication skills as a contextualized sociocultural activity has become the focal point in many ESL classroom.
Languagecomprises four dimensions as following • Grammatical competence including rules of phonology, orthography, vocabulary, word formation, and sentence formation. • Sociolinguistic competence expression and understanding of appropriate social meaning and grammatical form in different context. • Discourse competence how sentence elements are tied together via reference, repetition, synonym, etc. • Strategic competence A repertoire of compensatory strategies that help with a variety of communication difficulties.
In the Speaking Class • Students should be allowed and encouraged to initiate communication. • when possible. • Determine the content of their response or contribution. • Evaluate their own production and learning progress.
The oral skills class Class Aim • Who are the students? • Why are they there? • What do they expect to learn? • What am I expected to teach. • One basic consideration is the level of the students, and their perceived needs.
Four- point scale from poor to excellent confidence, pronunciation, social conversation, listening ability.
How to enhance students’ skills: • Extensive authentic practice in class participation (taking part in discussions, interacting with peers and professors, and answering questions). • From life realistic. • Give, and request personal information. Directions, and price. • Talking family members; tell time; give, and accept compliments.
Conversation courses Emphasize- • speech acts such as; greeting (congratulation, hi, hello), and apologizing (sorry, please forgive me..)
Speaking Naturally • covering opining an closing a conversation, introducing and addressing people, giving invitations, expressing thanks, apologizing, complimenting, getting attention and interruption, agreeing and disagreeing, controlling the conversation, and getting information.
Oral activities- discussions, speeches, role plays, conversations, audiotape oral dialogue. Journals, and other accuracy base • Discussion- The most commonly use activity in the oral skills class. • Method- introduce a topic, via reading or listening passage, or from videotape, then asked to get into pairs or groups to discuss, in order to come up with a solution, or response, or the like.
First, planned (versus random), the “right way” to group is necessary. • Second, to reach a good solution, each student should need a specific responsibility. • Third, clear about the reasons (what, and why), and what outcome expected.
Speech-normal type Prepare speech • Provided by teacher • Avoid boring in the class, making responsibilities during speeches, and listener. • Summarize its content. • Note strength, weaknesses, or relate the speech topic to a personal experiences. • Videotape, audiotape-the language analysis activities described below can be used to encourage learners to become aware of their individual problems with pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and fluency.
The categories of performance • Delivery - Is the volume loud enough or speed appropriate. • Interaction/Rapport with audience - With eye contact, posture, gestures, nervousness?
Content and organization - the gist of main point. • Language skills Were there any particular problems with grammar, fluency, vocabulary, or pronunciation? • Language skills - Were there any particular problems with grammar, fluency, vocabulary, or pronunciation
Second type of speech • Impromptu speech- it is without preparation, rehearsal or thought in advance. Role Plays the third major speaking activity. • It’s suitable for practicing, the sociocultural variations in speech acts, such as complimenting, complaining. • There are varieties factors can be used such as practice prototypical, socioculture. • Additionally, requiring students to observe native speakers interacting can supplement in class production activities such as role plays.
For example, when teaching a unit on complaints, one assignment might be to have students go to places where complaints might be common (the return desk at a discount store). • Then, they can listen carefully for how complaints are stated and responded to perhaps using a checklist that the students themselves create for observing that particular speech act.
One way to approach this activity is to assign students to find a native speaker (or near- native speaker) they know such as; a friend, room-mate, or colleague, and arrange to tape-record a 20-30 minute interaction with this person. • The next step is to transcribe a portion of their interaction. Transcription involves a faithful reproduction of what was said on the tape onto paper and can provide a genuine awareness of what speech is really like.
For evaluation, choosing one of a interesting topics such as; abortion, gun control, illegal, immigration, then in pairs or in groups, survey native speakers about their opinions. The results of survey can then be presented in the form of an oral presentation, which in turn can be audiotaped and or videotaped for self peer, and teacher evaluation.
Audiotaped Oral dialogue Journal • The activities discussed so far have emphasized fluency and meaning negotiation rather than accuracy. • Oral dialogue journals are one format where practice with fluency and attention to accuracy can be accomplished at the same time.
Conversations • one of the more recent trends in oral skills pedagogy is the emphasis on having students analyze and evaluate the language that they or others produce. • This is the most fundamental form of oral communication. Almost all ESL/EFL students can benefit from a unit on and practice with informal conversation.
For example, the student gives an audiocassette tape to the teacher, then start the oral journal on the tape by giving some directions for the assignment and perhaps suggesting a topic, such as asking student “Tell me about your first day in New York?”
Be sure to remind students to speak extemporaneously and explain why. Some students will want to write their entries and read them, or turn the tape recorder on and off, so that they can sound “perfect”. This activities is to work unplanned speaking.
Other Accuracy-Based Activities • In the past, speaking activities that focused on accuracy invariably involved drills (commonly uncontextualized pattern practice exercises). • If drills are to be used, they should be short, simple, and snappy, they should be used sparingly, and they should lead to more authentic communication activities.
Teacher can design a activity, for example’ using an interview form, asking the question with wh-and/yes or no for answer. A variation on this is an activity in which students need to “Find someone who can answer the question, then give them a sheet of habits or characteristics. The first student to find someone who can answer each question wins the game.
Before closing this section, a word about error correction is in order, explicit error correction will probably be out of place because it disrupts the communication that is going on. Teachers may note errors that occur at these times for some later instruction to the class as a whole or to individual student, as necessary.
Teaching Oral Skills in an EFL Context • Teaching a heterogeneous (by native language and ethnicity) class of learners in an English-speaking environment. • Motivation- getting students to speak. • Confidence- teacher might be not a native speaker, he/she might not be competent to speak the language which they teach. • Authentic- he use of authentic, engaging materials should be the basis for in-class activities.
Assessment • The oral skills teacher may be required to make decision about two kinds of oral assessment. As following • First whenever possible, extended chunks of speech that have a purpose and that are structured or organized should be elicited. • With no planning time-isolated sentences, spontaneous, production with no planning time.
Second giving input to students, whether it be visual (a picture for description), aural (directive to “tell me about the most exciting day you have had”), or interactive ( e.g., questions in an interview).
Finally the results of oral assessment should be reported using terms, that are clearly defined for and understandable to students. For example, the student level, and the speaking task itself, note the difference in specificity between “generally effective communication and can answer questions about home family, even in a work place.
Four large scale good examples The University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) offers two large-scale speaking tests, which are Oral Interaction test in the Certificate in Communicative Skill in English (CCSE).
The test can be taken at one of four levels; at any given level the test taker is awarded a Pass or Fail based on the degree of skill in five areas: accuracy, appropriate, rangy, flexibility, and size of contributions.
The Business Language Testing Service (BULATS) a language procedure for business and organizations to asses the English Language skills of their employees, job applicant, or trainees. The 12 minutes face to face speaking test, consisting of as interview, a presentation, and discuss, is conducted by a trained examiner and then rated by the examiner and another assessor.
The Educational testing Service TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), offers the test of Spoken English (TSE) The 20 minutes test is conducted and record on audiotape and is composed of 12 speech-act based tasks that are presented in a printed test booklet and on the audiotape. The test answer tapes are score independently by two trained raters using the five points:
rating scale of communicative effectiveness • Each point contains description of functional ability • Response appropriacy • Cohesion, and coherence. • Linguistic accuracy
Oral examination, administered by the American council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTEL) Is the ACTEL oral Proficiency Interview. • The 10-30 minutes tape- recorded interview is administered (either over the telephone or face to face by a trained Oral proficiency the interaction to elicit the best possible performance from the candidate.
Conclusion/Future Trends • In a English speaking world-English is the most important Language. • Oral skills are not only critical for communication in the ESL classroom, they are necessary for communication in, and with, the English speaking world.
Teacher will want to do whatever they can to promote the development of speaking, listening, and pronunciation skills in their students. • In this chapter, there are varieties activities for us to improve students’ oral skills, in order to enhance oral proficiency, then can improve students’ aural skill as well.
How to improve? And what is the ways students can improve? • Give an overview of the theoretical basis for teaching in this area, such as discussions, speeches, role plays, and conversations.
What is the future holds for language teaching in general, and oral skills pedagogy in particular. It is reasonable to assume that the focus on the sociolinguistic and socioculture dimensions of oral communication will continue.
Foreword • *Three goals of teaching pronunciation • Enable learners to understand • and be understood. • 2. Build their confidence in entering communicative situations • 3. Enable them to monitor their speech based on input from the environment
Introduction *Pronunciation is the language feature. *In the past – the articulation of consonants and vowels & the discrimination of minimal pairs. *In recent years – suprasegmental features (stress, intonation, and so on) *should be taught as communicative interaction along with other aspects
The Segmental/Suprasegmental Debate * Segmental: individual sounds * Suprasegmental: stress, intonation… * It’s not sufficient to focus on only segmental or only suprasegmental * to know which features should be taught and which communicative situation should be used are important issue
Setting Realistic Goals 1. Functional Intelligibility 2. Functional communicability 3. Increased Self-confidence 4. Speech Monitoring Abilities
Setting Realistic Goals 1. Functional Intelligibility ★ Intelligibility: The spoken English is presented with accent, and is not distracting the listeners. -> use “accent addition” rather than “accent reduction” (not force learners to eliminate their L1 accent to learn new second language)
Setting Realistic Goals 2. Functional communicability ★ Learners have a ability to use spoken English successfully in real communicative situations. ★ Using survey to elicit students’ needs and interests => What the features do we need to choose and which pronunciation practices should be emphasized
Setting Realistic Goals 2. Functional communicability 1. Prominence 2.Topic management 3.Information status 4.Turn-taking 5.Social meanings and roles 6.Degree of involvement
Setting Realistic Goals 3. Increased Self-confidence ★speak and be understood ★Design the materials in real situation: Control-> Free Production-> Provide feedback
Setting Realistic Goals 4. Speech Monitoring Abilities ★ Let learners pay attention to their own speech and others’ speeches -> learners hear and try to imitate.
A Description of the Sound System of English * Traditional (bottom-up) : sound → syllables → phrases and thought groups → extended discourse * the steam of speech (top-down): sound system is used naturally => both segmental and suprasegmental features