TEACHING

SPEAKING
LESLIE MICHELLE VIDALES MUÑOZ
MELISSA LEAÑOS LUNA
 Elements of speaking!
If students want to be able to speak fluently in English:

• Students need to be able to pronounce phonemes

correctly.

• Use appropriate stress and intonation patterns

• Speak in connected speech.

• Be able to speak in a range of different genres and

situations.

• Use a range of conversational repair strategies.

Different speaking
events

Scott Thornbury suggests various dimensions of speaking events in order to describe different
speaking genres.

Transactional functions : its main purpose conveying information and facilitating

the exchange of goods and services.
Interpersonal functions : maintaining and sustaining good relations between
people.

Interactive : conversation that takes place when we buy a newspaper at a news

kiosk.
Non Interactive : talking over Skype

Planned conversations : lecture or wedding speech

Unplanned conversations : conversation that takes place spontaneously when
bump someone in the street.
 Conversational Strategies

Conversational rules Survival and repair Real Talk

and structure strategies
Further categories of discourse Repair strategies when Face-to-face conversations. Students
such as conversational: listening in interactive expose any kind of questions that are
commonly found in coursebooks.
• Openigs- How are you? That´s
situations:
a nice dog! • Questioning reformulation-
• Interrupting- Sorry to • Paraphrase- it’s a kind of repeating what someone had just said.
interrupt, but.. … • Multifunctional question forms- Did
• Topic Shift- Oh, by the way, • Not knowing a word-You you consider the possibility of an
that reminds me… know, it's a what-d´you-call- alliance?
• Closings- It's been nice talking it. • Piling-up questions- How much
to you… Well I don't want to • Appel for help - What's the technology? Who does it?
keep you from your
work….We must get together
word for something you play
sometime. a guitar with?
 Functional Language, adjacency pairs
and fixed phrases.
When teaching speaking , we need to make students aware of fixed phrases, functional secuences and
adjacency pairs. We can do this by teaching functional exchanges.

Fixed and semi-fixed phrases crop up a lot in functional exchanges. For example, we can
offer people things, such as a drink, a coffe, etc., by saying Would you like a …? Shall I get
you a …?

Adjacency pairs follow a set pattern. For example ,if we say D’ you fancy a coffe? the
adjacency pair is Yes, please or No, thank you because we expect a paired response.
 Getting students to speak in class can be extremely easy, but
sometimes students are often reluctant to speak because
they are shy and are not predisposed to expressing
themselves in front of other people. In such situations there
are a number of things we can do to help.

Students and speaking

Preparation : trying out a conversation in our minds, put them in buzz groups
to brainstorm about the subject.

The value of repetitions: repetition, let the students memories how it sounds,
rehearsal gives them confidence.
-plan –> perform –> analyse <–> repeat

Big groups , small groups: it´s good for the student to work in different kind
of groups. We can use the smaller groups, too preparation for dialogue-making
or discussion.

Mandatory participation: model The speaking grid, group work, short

conversation between all of the students.
 The roles of the teacher

Teachers need to play a number of different roles

during different speaking activities.

Prompter: sometimes we need to let the students struggle and sometimes we need to
lead them the right way.

Participant: sometimes the teacher should participate in activities to give the students
more information but sometimes the teacher shall not.

Feedback provider: everything depends upon our tact and the appropriacy of the
feedback we give in particular situations, this involves giving clear instructions and
demonstrating so the students don’t have doubt about what they should do.
 Acting from script

Playscripts acting out is both a learning and language producing

activity.

Acting out dialogues: create the right kind of supportive

atmosphere in the class, don’t pick the shyest students first, time to
rehearse.
Classroom
speaking activities
Communication games

Information-gap games: talk to a partner in order to solve a puzzle,

draw a picture.

Television and radio games: games from radio and tv provide good
fluency activities.
Discussion
Discussions range from highly formal, whole-group staged events to informal small-group
interactions.

Buzz groups: Predict the content of a text, talk about their reactions after reading the text.

Instant comment: Say the first thing that comes into their head.

Formal debates: Students should prepare arguments in favor or against various

propositions.

Unplanned discussion: just happen in the middle of a lesson.

Reaching a consensus: provide activities which force students to reach a decision or a

consensus.
 Prepared talks Questionnaires
• Students make an oral presentation on a topic. • Research instrument
• Not designed for informal conversation, because it is • Depending on how tightly designed, they can encourage
prepared. use of certain repetitive language patterns
• It is important to involve active listening as well as active • Students can design questionnaires on any topic that is
speaking. Teachers can give to the other students task to appropriate.
carry out while the presentation. • The result obtained can form basis from written work,
• Feedback- the presenter has the chance to analyze what discussion and prepared talks.
they have done so they can do better.

Simulation on role play

• Simulate real life encounter, as if they were doing so in the real life.
• This simulation is called a role-play.
• Can be used to encourage general oral fluency or to train for specific situations,
English for specific purposes (ESP).
• They can be good fun and thus motivating.
• Hesitant students can be more forthright in their opinions and behavior when
speaking.
• Include the world outside that allows a wider range of language.
 “Experts”
Speaking lesson Used by the writer Ken Wilson (Wilson 1997) for getting students to think and speak
quickly.
sequences
Activity: Comunication game Age: Any
Example of speaking activity.
Focus: Controlled language Level: Elementary and above
processing

1 3 5
The class chooses The game stops
4 or 5 students to Teacher forms pairs or when an expert can’t
be a panel of groups, then they need to think of how to Experts encourage even
‘experts’ write down questions they continue it. Or reluctant speakers on
want to ask the experts maybe is out of time. the panel to speak
about the subject. because they only have
2 to produce one word at a
Example time. Both experts and
Question: How do fish questioners engaged in
Then chooses a 4
The experts then
breath? the construction of
subject.
have to answer. The Expert 1: The
utterance in a controlled
rule is that each Expert 2: Answer environment
can only say one Expert 3: To
word at the time so Expert 4: This
the sentence is Expert 1: Question
gradually build up. Expert 2: Is
Expert 3: An
Etc…
 Making
Recording
Group – Make sure to
divide the class into
groups so each
member has a
Students work
function.
cooperatively
together using Process – No rules are
variety of chosen until last
language in the moment
process.
Make sure to Assigning – Assign
The activities in get everyone different roles
this section involved.
suggest ways in Some
which the students may
camera can get left out of
become a the video.
central learning
aid.
REFERENCES

Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. United Kingdom: Pearson
Longman