Teaching Speaking Skills To Pre Intermediate And Intermediate Students

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TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS TO PRE-INTERMEDIATE AND INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS

INTRODUCTION

It is a well-known fact that nowadays, English is a global language, also known as lingua franca. With more than 375 million native English speakers and approximately 750 million speakers that learn English as a second language (Reddy, 2016:179), it becomes clear that communication is facilitated at all levels and in all fields by English. Learning English has become a priority in schools worldwide, yet the process of teaching this language has changed while trying to adapt more effective techniques and methods. As any other second language, English has been taught using traditional methodology for the past decades. Throughout this thesis, I will study and analyse the way the perspective over language learning has changed and adapted to the students’ needs.

There are several important reasons why teaching English as a second language is crucial. Being able to communicate with foreigners all over the world, adopting a language that eases the understanding of information and data from different fields of activity, finding employment opportunities and being a part of an interconnected world are just a few reasons why all individuals should learn English. In the twenty-first century, speaking, reading, writing and understanding the English language is essential and these four macro language skills are best learned in the early stages of education.

This paper focuses on an important topic of language learning: teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students. As various authors claim, learning English as a foreign language allows you to fully appreciate the culture and context of a country and widens your understanding (Mahu, 2012, p. 374). I strongly believe that language learning is a vital tool in a person’s development, which is why I have chosen to analyse this topic in depth. When looking at English as a second language, it becomes easy to observe that in order to communicate efficiently, productive skills such as speaking and writing, give individuals the ability to express themselves with ease. In this paper, I have chosen to focus on speaking skills and the methodology that can be approached by professional teachers in order to ensure a proper learning process that leads to an overall improved communication, to achieving intellectual benefits and to enhance career opportunities from young ages.

In this thesis, I will mostly refer to methodologies that can be used to teach English to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, with a focus on young individuals, such as children or teenagers, as these are basic levels that ensure the ability to deepen the study of English as a second language. Also, starting from these levels, teaching approaches can be classified as effective or ineffective. At this point, students have the ability to question a particular method and send feedback.

The motivation behind the choice of this topic is mainly the importance of learning the English language, as well as the importance of effective teaching, so that students can acquire strong speaking skills that prepare them for thriving intellectual and career paths. The number of English speakers worldwide is continuously increasing ever since this language has been declared lingua franca.

Determining why teaching English using modern techniques is highly important, determining the future of English and the importance of learning a second language, all represent objectives of this paper. In order to establish whether or not teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students should be a teacher’s primary focus represents the hypothesis of this thesis and will be confirmed or disproved in the last chapter, Conclusions. I will attempt to confirm this hypothesis by highlighting various topics, such as the global importance of English, the importance of learning a second language, the impact of language learning over a person’s development, the differences between traditional and modern English teaching methods and the requirements of effective teaching. Moreover, I will bring into discussion the language teaching systems, the focus of teachers over the language’s grammar, vocabulary and progress, while also touching a sensitive subject such as the various categories of learners.

Proving that teaching speaking skills effectively has a great impact over a person’s education is also one of the objectives of this paper. Pre-intermediate and intermediate students have a different understanding of the English language, although in many teachers’ view, their language notions and knowledge is similar. The pre-intermediate level, also categorized as A2 is defined by a basic understanding of English. According to the British Council and the CEFR (Common European Framework for Reference of Languages), A2 students can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to common situations such as personal information, shopping or local geography. Students with this level are mostly children or persons that have a first contact with the English language. On the other hand, the intermediate level, also categorized as B1, is defined by a basic understanding of the language that gives students the ability to communicate in familiar situations. B1 students are usually able to speak English while traveling, at work or at school and can describe their experiences in simple words fluently. Therefore, there is an entire level that separates A2 and B1 students, who cannot be included in the same learning category when being taught English or any other second language. As I will describe in Chapter II and III of this thesis, there are essential steps that must be taken throughout the learning process that ensure the transition from one level to the other in terms of speaking skills. Skipping a step is neither productive, nor efficient and can create knowledge gaps. Assessing the language level before starting teaching any English skills is important for both the teacher and the student. Before emphasizing the most effective teaching techniques for pre-intermediate and intermediate students in the following chapters, I also find it important to determine what the most practical assessment method is. Based on my findings, I will be able to reach to a conclusion regarding the evolution of teaching speaking skills methods.

One of the most important questions that will be answered in this thesis is how do students learn a language? In my attempt to give a complete answer to this question, I will refer to language study techniques, to palpable progress, exposure, output and the noticing ability of both students and teachers. Also, I will focus on different types of students, as well as on different types of English teachers. In this context, I will highlight the limitations of teaching speaking skills to children and teenage students, with the purpose of eliminating traditional language learning gaps and filling them with the findings of linguists and researchers.

In order to confirm or disprove the above mentioned hypothesis, I will use the observation as research method, as it seems to be the most effective method when referring to language learning. This first method will include classroom observation and an appeal to recent studies and specialty authors. A secondary method that I will use in the third chapter is the experiment. This method will help me study groups of students that are taught English teaching skills in different ways and their final results. An interaction and a conversation analysis will be conducted and described in the last part of this thesis.

The structure of this paper is simple, being divided into three major chapters. Chapter I represents the theoretical part of this thesis. It focuses on the methodological approaches in the teaching of English as foreign language. In this chapter, I will highlight the main theories of English language teaching that have shaped today’s understanding of classroom teaching and the teachers’ perspective over this matter. Chapter I also focuses on describing the communicative language teaching, by emphasizing the importance of oral communication in the process of language learning. If the first chapter’s purpose is to make a general introduction into this process, Chapter II focuses on the four macro skills that a student needs in order to learn a language: reading, listening, writing and speaking. Speaking skills are the last to be discussed, as my intention is to determine the relevance of learning other receptive and productive skills and their impact over the students’ ability to speak once the other skills have been acquired. Chapter III combines theory with practice, by referring to real life situations and classroom teaching. Teaching speaking skills to secondary school students is the main point that I will touch in this chapter. However, I will also penetrate a more complex field when bringing into discussion the speaking activities that can be used in the workplace. Contrary to the fact that most A2 and B1 students are children or teenagers, the work field in non-native English speaking countries shows that a large number of adults find themselves into this category. Teaching speaking skills to adults at work can be challenging and teachers have to consider applying different methods and techniques. Adults have already been taught a set of speaking skills, often defective, that must be corrected, reassessed and retaught. This topic is of great importance and is often encountered in today’s society, which is why I will attempt to connect the importance of learning English speaking skills that will be correct, efficient and of use in the later phases of an individual’s life.

It is necessary to mention the limitations of this topic, as I will study and analyse a specific group of students (A2 and B1). Although this subject is extremely broad and can be discussed on a variety of levels, I have to set some boundaries which will prevent me from touching sensitive and important points, such as the accent in the English language, advanced grammar skills, presentation skills and many more. When referring to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, I have to focus on the basics of speaking skills learning and teaching. The knowledge and the students’ prior contact with the English language is limited in this case, this being the reason why the above mentioned topics cannot be analysed.

Chapter I: Methodological Approaches in the Teaching of English as Foreign Language 

Language learning is an important asset for any individual’s early development and career path. An effective language learning process cannot take place in the absence of effective teaching methods and techniques. It is a well-known fact that English is being taught in more than 100 countries around the world and that its popularity is owed to globalization.

Before discussing about some of the most important theories of English language teaching, I find it essential to make a short introduction into the chapter and highlight the reasons why English has been declared a lingua franca and why teaching it using effective methods is so important.

Understanding the difference between a “first”, “second” and “foreign” language is useful, according to David Crystal (2003), as fluency and ability should not necessarily be what differentiates these statuses. The author affirms that individuals who are born in countries where English has an official status are not always more competent than those who have been exposed to it at a much smaller scale.

In Crystal’s oppinion, it is not important how many people speak a language that becomes a lingua franca, but who those people are. From his perspective, the language dominance, the ease of learning or teaching or the language structure are not the main reasons why English is a global language, but the political, economic, technologic power of the individuals who speak it.

The fact that the United States and Great Britain have always represented great military powers represent the main reasons why this language has become worldwide known and spoken. Globalization is another important reason why English teaching has become a priority for all of the world’s countries. In Crystal’s view (2003, p.1), English itself is a symbol of globalization, diversification, progress and identity.

The English language has been declared lingua franca decades ago. The exact moment when English became a global language is uncertain, yet what is certain is that it has taken the place of other lingua francas, such as French, Spanish or Russian. According to the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Translation, a global language is necessary whenever different groups come into contact (EC, 2011 p.27).

A global language enables communities with different native languages to communicate. Ever since English has become a lingua franca, the scale of international communication has changed, becoming unprecedentedly enormous. Nowadays, it represents the working language of all international organisations and most countries of the world are promoting its use. Besides the cognitive motivation that clearly shows that language learning enables the brain to create new synapses and helps individuals of all ages have a better understanding of information, the penetration of the work field in an unparalleled way, becomes the main motivation.

Authors of linguistics literature have debated the importance of foreign language learning many times during their careers. William Littlewood (1985), for instance, reminds us of the fact that language learning is not a new topic that characterizes the interests of the modern world. It has been a major interest of the humanity for centuries. His claim is backed by examples from the ancient world, such as the Roman rhetorician Quintilian or St. Augustine. Those who have shown an interest in language learning went beyond explaining the benefits of knowledge and studied the optimal ages for language learning, stating that by nature we retain best what is learned in our tenderest years (Littlewood, 1985, p. 501). Establishing the methods and the optimal age are obviously important topics that deserve our attention. However, agreeing upon the practical purpose of language learning is even more important, as it represents the motivation behind this process.

Language learning in the twenty-first century is looked at from different perspectives comparing to the past decades. The desire and necessity of learning a second language are given by political and economic developments. Younger theoreticians focus on proving that multilingual individuals have the ability to play various roles in the modern society, especially in the academic and cognitive fields.

Going back a few decades, we must be reminded of the goal of a second or foreign language. Littlewood (1985) explains that the goal of second language learning consists of more than grammar and vocabulary, but also of language elements. He then reaches to the conclusion that second language learners must acquire a set of skills that is recognized in the academic field as communicative competence (Littlewood, 1985, p. 503). The skills or competences that he highlights are the following:

• Linguistic competence (vocabulary, grammar, semantics, phonology)

• Discourse competence (idea linking, long spoken turns, interaction, opening and closing conversations)

• Pragmatic competence (the use of linguistic resources with the purpose to interpret meanings)

• Sociolinguistic competence (awareness of the basic knowledge and cultural elements that can affect meanings)

In an attempt to establish the second language learning goals, Littlewood (1985) states that there are several motives that can be taken into consideration. The desire to improve learning and teaching is one of the motives and being able to create contact outside a community is another important goal of language learners.

When looking at the meaning of this global language from a perspective that goes beyond the academic field, today’s reality is the most important element that all language learners and teachers should consider. According to the European Commission, speaking English means being part of a global culture through which local barriers can be overcome (EC, 2011, p.27). It is the main language used in international businesses, in corporations, in fields like technology, science and in the academic world. Therefore, I drew the conclusion that not being able to speak English is probably robbing a large number of people of a long list of opportunities. Also, it makes them “deaf” and “mute” whenever traveling to a foreign country.

In 2011, there were 330 million native English speakers in the world and approximately 500 million speakers who use English as a second language. Also, there are about 1 billion speakers of English as a foreign language (EC, 2011, p.28). In this context, native speakers are a minority in an English speaking world. They are the nucleus if a higher sphere in which the next “layer” is represented by speakers with high proficiency and a third layer of speakers with low proficiency Taking this scheme into consideration, English has been defined as a contact language between individuals who do not share a common native tongue or culture (EC, 2011, p.28).

David Crystal (2003, p.61) proposes a similar scheme through which he aims to offer a clear view over the number of English speakers, as seen below.

Figure 1

The three circles of English, as proposed by David Crystal (2003)

Crystal highlights the fact that a language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign-language teaching, even though this language has no official status. He further explains that this language is usually the one which children are most likely to be taught in school. Also, he claims that English is taught in more than 100 countries in the world nowadays (Crystal, 2003, p. 5), in favour of French, Russian, Spanish and many others.

In spite of the status and popularity of English, not all countries and theoreticians approve its privileged status. In some countries, this status is rejected and criticized. Having its roots in territories that have become colonial powers throughout history, its use is rejected by promoters of indigenous languages. In 1974, Jomo Kenyatta, former president of Kenya stated that the basis of any independent government is a national language and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers (Crystal, 2003, p.124). Such arguments, similar to that of Gandhi in 1958 in which the use of English language is a form of slavery, as millions of people must learn this language in order to gain a position or participate to a trial, refer to a nation’s identity. Such nations’ leaders have a protective attitude towards their native languages. However, in their discourses, these leaders ignore the importance of self-development and access to information that is written or spoken in an international language. They, therefore, also choose to ignore or refuse globalization. As Crystal (2003, p. 127) confirms, there is a need for intelligibility that these countries refuse their people. The author also states that the rejection of English has important consequences for the identity of a nation.

All of the above perspectives show that teaching English as a foreign or second language is highly important in a globalized world, where individuals have better chances at development, understanding of the current world situation and education. However, teaching English as a foreign language must be done strategically, by adapting to the students’ level of knowledge and to their final purpose.

In the following paragraphs, I will bring into discussion some of the most important theories of English language teaching that have shaped today’s techniques and methods used in modern classrooms.

1.1 Theories of English Language Teaching

The analysis of English language teaching theories allows us to comprehend the views and goals of teachers who have taught millions of students using old and new methodologies. When discussing about methodology, understanding the difference between methodology and method is crucial. In this context, I must mention David Nunan’s (1991) view, as he expresses the ideas that he supports from an empirical point of view. Also, the author encourages teachers to use empirical-based approaches when teaching a second or a foreign language. Throughout his work, he tries to answer a few relevant questions related to methodology:

What is methodology?

What does recent research have to say about the nature of language processing and production?

Why is it important to relate theory and research to what actually goes on in the classroom?

Why is `task` an important element in language learning and teaching?

How can teachers and student teachers explore the ideas in this book to their own classroom? (Nunan, 1991, p.3)

While presenting the analysis and research in this thesis, I will try to answer those questions by combining new theories and findings with the older ones.

As previously mentioned, there is a difference between method and methodology in foreign language teaching that is worth defining. Being able to differentiate method from methodology means understanding that first one is just a part of the second one. In language teaching, an example of a method is using a syllabus or making a habit out of giving students reading tasks or interaction tasks. An example of methodology is a set of practices that has been well-organized, structured and put in practice, based on research, experience, experiments and results. Methodology can be changed, altered and completely modified depending on the group of individuals that are attending language classes. Also, the methodology depends on their language level, their prior experience, age and needs.

Nunan (1991, p. 2) uses the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics to quote the definition of language learning methodology: the study of the practices and procedures used in teaching and the principles and beliefs that underlie them. In the same definition it is stated that methodology includes the study of the nature of language skills and procedures for teaching them, the study of the preparation of lesson plans, materials and textbooks for teaching language skills, the evaluation and comparison of language teaching methods.

Another author that focuses on method is J. Harmer. He stresses the difference between method and methodology, affirming that the method is a practical realisation of an approach. He states that the originators of a method have arrived at decisions about types of activities, roles of teachers and learners, the kinds of materials which will be helpful and some model of syllabus organisation (Harmer, 2001, p. 93).

In this context, it is necessary to remind of other elements that comprise methodology. Apart from method, the approach, the procedure and the technique must be defined and should be a part of a teacher’s methodology. In Harmer’s opinion, the approach refers to the way in which knowledge is acquired by people. The approach describes the conditions in which language learning takes place. Also, he describes the concept of procedure as an ordered sequence of techniques and can be compared to a set of step-by-step instructions. As for the technique, the author claims that methods are often confused for techniques, yet a technique is a very specific method, such as “silent viewing”. It refers to very specific activities and not general ones (Harmer, 1991, p. 79). The four mentioned elements are all part of a methodology and should be used together in order for language learning to take place successfully.

According to Nunan, although there are plenty of methods available to teachers, they all have a common purpose and that is the assumption that there is a single set of principles which will determine whether or not learning will take place (Nunan, 1991, p. 3).

Language learning is a complex process that can be fully understood only when both the teachers and the learners become focus points. Learning does not work when looked at unilaterally. A bilateral analysis must be performed in order to understand the strong and weak sides of language skills acquiring. Both Nunan and Harmer analyse the topic using both perspectives. Moreover, most linguists and specialty authors look at language learning through the eyes of the teacher and the learner, analysing their abilities and impact over the learning process. Littlewood (1985) shares the same vision, yet he approaches the topic by emphasizing the role that the conscious and the unconscious play in this process. In his opinion, there are four processes that may occur while learning a second or a foreign language:

Transfer

Generalization

Simplification

Imitation (Littlewood, 1985, p. 509)

Littlewood states that the all four can occur consciously or unconsciously and that usually, in formal learning situations, they are raised to the consciousness, which is why the teacher plays a major roe when choosing their teaching methodology. Another author who studied language teaching, J. Scrivener (2005), analyses teachers and learners by trying to identify the individuals or groups that attend language classes, their needs, their training and their feedback. Also, he focuses on teacher from a management perspective, by highlighting the methods and techniques that they can use in order to achieve good results. Penny Ur (1991) looks has a more practical view, rather than theoretical. She seeks to find the differences between younger and older learners and presents clear information about the learners’ motivation and interests.

When referring to English teaching, Harmer mentions the fact that this language can be taught in many different ways, as it has several varieties. Although it is a lingua franca, it has more than one form, pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as grammar differences (Harmer: 1991, p. 6). In this context, he reminds us of the most basic differences between British and American English. Except for these two main varieties, there are others that must be taken into consideration while putting in place a teaching plan: Australian English, South African, Canadian, Sri Lankan, Nigerian etc. The author quotes Braj Kachru (1958), the creator of the three concentric circles that divide the English speaking world: the inner circle, the outer circle, the expanding circle. According to Kachru, the inner circle is comprised on Englishes of countries like Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Britain and the Unites States. The second circle or the outer circle includes countries like Singapore, India, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria or Pakistan, where English is spoken as a second language. The third circle or the expanding circle includes countries in which English has a commercial role, such as China, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Greece, Japan, Israel etc. (Harmer, 1991, p. 8). In the author’s opinion, teachers should be completely aware of the variety that is most appropriate and most helpful for their students.

In an article in the International Journal of Applied Linguistics from 2016, Erin Carrie stated that British is professional, American is urban (Erin, 2016, p. 427) . Although she was referring to a specific community in Spain, the message was clear and successful. Such an affirmation briefly answers the question why do Europeans learn British English instead of American English? Apart from the obvious reason, that being the territorial delimitation, the historical context and the European rules and policies, there is more behind this unwritten rule according to which most Europeans are being taught British English and its accent in schools.

Just like Harmer, Erin (2016), shows that linguists have investigated deeply the attitudes that learners have towards language with the purpose to detect which is the most appropriate language in social circles. Also, she states that the varieties of English merit a great deal of attention and that that today’s global status of this language offers plenty of research opportunities with regards to the linguistic variations that exist across its varieties. More importantly, these varieties have a social-psychological fundament (Erin, 2016, p. 428).

Teaching English as a foreign language should begin, therefore, with determining the variety that should be stressed in a classroom. Harmer’s conclusion regarding this topic has a strong logic behind it: the safest conclusion to draw is that teachers should work with the variety that best reflects their own language use, always provided that this will be understood by most other English speakers in the world and/or the speakers that the students are most likely to come in contact with.

When referring to the Romanian groups that are being taught English as a foreign language, determining this aspect depends on the purpose of learning. If the purpose is to travel to a foreign English-speaking country, such as the Unites States, it becomes obvious that the American accent and the grammar and phonological particularities should be taught. On the contrary, in the case of intermediate and pre-intermediate students in Romanian schools, British English is more likely to be taught by most teachers. However, students with this language level are not necessarily young learners. In the case of adult learners whose purpose is resumed to professional development, the English variety that is to be taught should be appointed from the beginning of the course.

Also known as RP English (Received Pronounciation), the British English variety is the Standard English language and it is used in educational environments all over Europe. According to P. Kerswill (2006), this is the language through which they (the populations of the British Isles) are all educated, and which, many of them are persuaded, in both correct and, in an absolute sense, good. In this context, it is also stated that the ideas surrounding Standard English depend on the social and economic relationships between sections of the population in a particular time and place – and on the ideologies that are linked to these social conditions (Kerswill, 2006, p. 4).

In his attempt to foresee the future of global English, Crystal (1985) analyses the linguistic character of New Englishes. He focuses mainly on grammatical and lexical issues, by comparing the American and British varieties. According to his studies, the comparison between the two has to do with vocabulary and phonology, rather than with grammar (Crystal, 1995, p. 147). In his work, it is also mentioned that grammars, especially those motivated by teaching considerations, have traditionally focused on Standard English, and thus essentially on printed English, which provides the foundation of that standard. Except for clarifying this aspect, Crystal affirms that new varieties are mainly associated with speech and therefore, they have attracted less attention. However, he completes his statement by affirming that as English becomes increasingly global, we must expect far more attention to be paid to speech. In order to offer a better understanding over the differences between American and British English, he refers to the adverbial usage, as it can be seen in the below table.

Figure 2

Adverbial usage – David Crystal (1995, p. 150)

Although many theoreticians argue that only Standard English should be taught to students, P. Trudgill (2011) explains thoroughly that it is not a language, but probably the most important variety of English among many. He claims that it is the variety that is spoken by those who are often referred as educated people, as well as the variety that is taught to non-native learners. Trudgill points out that Standard English is not an accent and has nothing to do with pronunciation, as a high number of native British speakers do not have an RP accent (Trudgill, 2011).

The above theories allow today’s teachers to understand the importance of the English variety that they teach. In Romania, Standard English is being taught in schools, which is why I will refer to this variety in the following paragraphs.

As far as English language teaching is concerned, I previously mentioned that this topic focuses on both the teacher and the students. This being said, it is important to define the teacher’s role in the learning process, as well as their responsibilities.

According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, teaching means giving knowledge, instructing or training someone (Harmer, 1991, p. 56). According to Scrivener (2005, p. 15), not all students require a teacher in order to learn language skills, which is why it is essential to determine the teacher’s role. Giving the numerous examples in any individual’s life of traditional teachers whose results are below expectations and whose students do not manage to absorb knowledge with success, it becomes crucial to define the characteristics of a good teacher, in the context of language learning.

Scrivener (2005) emphasizes two main categories of teachers: the traditional and the entertainer. In his opinion, the traditional teacher focuses on explaining various concepts to its class by using the board and asking learners occasional questions. After explaining, a test usually follows, in the form of exercises or interactions, with the purpose to check whether the information has been understood. The entertainer teacher, on the other hand, focuses on amusing the class, by telling stories, using their voice and gestures to make the learning process more interesting. However, the second teaching style is questioned by Scrivener, as he doubts that this method can lead to real learning. This topic is extremely important in the context of teaching speaking skills, which is why I will come back to it in the second chapter of this thesis.

Wallace (1991) has described three main categories of teachers in his attempt to determine the most effective type: the craft model, the applied science model and the reflective model. When taught by a craft model teacher, learners discover a traditional teaching style, in which prior experience and a well-defined apprenticeship system help transfer the knowledge. In this case, the teacher is a master. The applied science model follows the idea of teacher learning, in which the construction of a suitable methodology that will be applied to classroom practice is required. The reflective model is characterized by teaching using past experience recalling and lesson observation, followed by reflections. According to Wallace, this model aims for continuous improvement (Ur, 1991, p. 5).

When teaching English as a foreign language and, as a matter of fact, when teaching any kind of language skills, one must not be tempted to believe that teaching equals learning. Scrivener highlights the fact that teaching does not necessarily equal learning. It was previously mentioned that traditional teaching is mostly characterized by explanations. In this context, it is important to mention that explanations might work in case of some students, but not all of them. Observing the students is crucial, as there are students who listen, follow and take notes, but there are also students who get easily distracted and need more than simple explanation for their attention to be drawn by the teacher. Also, Scrivener affirms that a teacher must choose the right way of explaining, giving the fact that long explanations often do not work in the case of language learning. He argues that the language of the explanation must be carefully chosen. If it will be given in the foreign language that is to be taught, students will have a hard time understanding it. Even when given in the mother tongue of the learner, it usually works in the case of hint, corrections and guidelines (Scrivener, 2005, p. 19).

Ur (1991) suggests that a teacher has three functions: to encourage learners to articulate what they know and to bring forward their own ideas, to provide feedback and to bring sources of relevant information into the classroom, as well as to teach students the habit of processing feedback by using their own experience and critical thinking (Ur, 1991, p. 8).

Scrivener draws a similar conclusion, stating that language learning takes place when students are able to communicate themselves, to interact and to perform language-related tasks for which teachers can provide constructive feedback. He adds that the teacher’s role in the language skill acquiring process is to help learning to happen using clearly defined methodology.

The roles of a teacher are also described by Harmer (1991), who enumerates the following functions:

Controller

Organiser

Assessor

Prompter

Participant

Resource

Tutor

Observer (Harmer, 1991, pp. 61-62)

What Harmer concludes is that a teacher must switch between roles and cannot focus on having just one, isolated role, as they are all necessary in different phases of the language learning process.

With regards to the English language skills, Harmer’s findings show that learning can be split into acquisition and learning. Referring to the work of Stephen Krashen, an American applied linguist, he reinforces the idea that language which we can acquire subconsciously is language we can easily use in spontaneous conversation because it is instantly available when we need it. Language that is learnt, on the other hand, taught and studied as grammar and vocabulary, is not available for spontaneous use (Harmer, 1991, p. 71). Traditional English language learning has been long questioned by linguists in the context of traditional education. One issue that Harmer highlights is represented by traditional techniques such as repetition and drills. The solution that he proposes is the focus towards elements such as exposure, motivation and opportunities for use.

Another important point that Harmer raises targets the techniques that can be used in the case of young children. This topic is particularly important giving the subject of this thesis which focuses on teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students. According to Harmer, many teachers have stated that grammar teaching is avoided when teaching young learners, as it does not prove to show results. Compared with adults, children learn language skills subconsciously and a focused language study is not helpful for them. Communicative teaching is more effective in this case.

Scrivener exposes his point of view regarding the learning cycle, by creating a simple scheme, as seen below:

Figure 3

Learning cycle proposed by Scrivener (2005)

The learning cycle is divided into five steps, as follows:

Doing something

Recalling

Reflecting

Drawing conclusions

Using the conclusions to inform and prepare for future practical experienced (Scrivener, 2005, p. 20)

The author’s first conclusion is that this learning cycle shows how students learn more by doing things themselves than by listening to theoretical explanations. A second conclusion is that learning is not a one-dimensional intellectual activity and it involves more than the intellectual functions of a person. More importantly, Scrivener adds that new learning is constructed over the foundation of our own earlier learning.

Ur (1991, p. 10) has a logical and clear perception over the process of learning a foreign language, stating that it is a complex one that has to be split into components for purposes of study. The components that Ur mentions are:

The teaching acts of presenting and explaining new materials

Providing practice

Testing

By presenting, practicing and testing, teachers ensure that students perceive and understand new language elements, learn through mental rehearsal and check their knowledge by asking for feedback (Ur, 1991, p. 10). She completes her argument by saying that this is not the only way in which students get to learn a language, but also unconsciously or semi-consciously. Learning in this way can take place through engagement, speech and writing.

Another relevant theory regarding language teaching methods belongs to Nunan (1991), who acknowledges the fact that a perfect method does not exist and that not all methodology works for all learners in all contexts. He confirms that the focus has shifted from traditional methods to classroom talks and other activities that help acquire second or foreign language acquisition. In this context, he brings into discussion the psychological factors that help teachers transfer knowledge to their students and that help students learn effectively, stating that audio-lingualism and cognitive code learning should be taken into consideration by teachers. Audio-lingualism has a great impact on foreign language learning because hearing and perceiving are at the base of the learning process. According to Nunan, language is speech, not writing. Also, he states that a language is a set of habits and teachers should teach the language, not about the language (Nunan, 1991, p. 228-231).

Teaching methodologies that included audio-lingualism are suitable for beginner teachers, as it offers a set of procedures, methods and principles to follow. Nunan explains that there are aspects in a child’s emerging linguistic system which cannot be accounted for in terms of stimulus-response psychology. The best example is that of the use of irregular past tense forms, which children cannot attain simply by imitation. Although young students use correct forms of irregular verbs such as went or ran, they start to use incorrect forms of the verbs in the later stages of learning, such as goed or runned, by creating their own simplified rule on the simple past, by adding ed to the root form of the verb. This theory stands at the base of transformationalism, a set of theories that gave birth to the cognitive code learning method. This method does not undermine the prominence of audio-lingualism, yet it opposes it partially. Nunan’s work described how linguists who work with frameworks of cognitive psychology demonstrated that language development can be characterised by rule governed creativity. They insist on the idea that imitation is simply not enough when learning a foreign language, as an infinite number of sentences can be created using limited grammar rules and vocabulary, yet one could never learn them all through a process of stimulus-response. (Nunan, 1991, pp. 231-233).

Nunan mentions another potential approach and names it the natural approach, which involved affective-humanistic activities that are meant to involve the learners’ feelings, desires, reactions, ideas and experienced. These activities attempt to lower the affective filter and they focus on meaning, not on form (Nunan, 1991, p. 241). Teachers can create problem-solving activities, content activities and games when using this approach.

With regards to the effective teaching of English skills, Penny Ur’s opinion is that offering students effective presentations is crucial. She affirms that it is a teacher’s responsibility to mediate new material by presenting it properly. Although a new language can be perceived and acquired without presentations (the first language that children learn is never presented to them using formal methods), after a certain age, new inputs are almost impossible to be understood by learners. By presenting the elements of a foreign language such as English correctly, teachers can manage to activate and harness the learners’ attention and effort, as well as their intelligence. However, not all elements must be formally introduced, such as sounds, words, structures and texts, as some of them are unconsciously and intuitively absorbed by students. When an effective presentation is given, learners become alert, their perception is reinforced, they begin to understand and their short-term memory is activated (Ur, 1991, p. 11).

Apart from effective presentations, explanations and instructions are essential to learning English as a foreign language. For them to be effective, a few steps must be taken into consideration: the preparation, making sure that the class is paying attention, presenting the information more than once, the illustration of information using examples. Also, teachers should spare time for feedback in every class and ensure that students are comfortable with providing their inputs (Ur, 1991, pp. 15-17).

Giving these theories of language teaching, it becomes easy to conclude that communicative teaching, speech and interaction play a major role in the learning process, especially when teaching young individuals. Therefore, it is worth analysing further the topic of communicative language teaching, to have a better understanding of the reason why teaching speaking skills is highly important in any classroom.

1.2 Communicative Language Teaching

Linguists and specialty authors have long discussed about the various aspects of communicative competence, as it represents the entire set of skills that a student needs in order to communicate effectively and correctly in a foreign language. There are several abilities that a learner requires in order to acquire to gain communicative competence:

Linguistic competence (vocabulary, grammar, semantics, phonology)

Discourse competence (linking ideas, interactions, opening conversation and closing them)

Pragmatic competence (convey and interpret meanings in real situations)

Sociolinguistic competence (the use of correct language in social situations, using suitable degrees of formality, directness etc.)

Sociocultural competence (background knowledge, cultural assumption that affect meanings and can lead to misunderstandings) (Littlewood, 1985, p. 503)

Having known all that is required to gain communicative competence, it is essential to determine how these skills can be taught.

The communicative approach has been described thoroughly by numerous authors (Eg. Harmer, 1991). Being known as CLT, or Communicative Language Teaching, this approach is comprised of a set of beliefs that include a re-examination of aspects that are important to each and the best ways to teach them. The entire approach is based on the motivation and desire of students to communicate something. According to Harmer, students should use a variety of language rather than just a language structure (1991, p. 84). A communication continuum is presented in Harmer’s work, in which the non-communicative and communicative activities are described. These two can be found at opposite ends of the CLT. As opposed to non-communicative activities, when participating to communicative ones, students have a desire to communicate, a communicative purpose, non-form content, a variety of language, no materials control and no teacher intervention.

It is important to note that at the early stages of learning, conscious attention should be devoted to lower-level plans in regards to grammatical structuring and word selection, because this leads to a non-fluent speech that often contains errors, but encourages students to interact in class (Littlewood, 1985, p. 517).

The CLT aims to improve the students’ ability to speak in a foreign language and determining which communicative activities are effective is key to the learning process of English language.

Scrivener (2005) notes that individuals normally communicate when one of them has information that another one does not has, such as facts, opinions, ideas or instructions (Scrivener, 2005, p. 152). As mentioned also by Harmer, this is known as an information gap. The exchange of opinions or information and by creating an interaction between students is the best way to communicate.

Scrivener proposes a few communicative activities that prove to bring results in terms of teaching speaking skills:

Repeating sentences

Doing oral grammar drills

Reading aloud

Giving a speech

Acting out a scripted conversation

Giving instructions for the use of an object or a device

Improvising a conversation

Describing a picture in a textbook (Scrivener, 2005, p. 152)

Enabling and encouraging communication is the main purpose of CTL. In this case, controlling the use of language elements and accurate pronunciation is not essential. Scrivener (2005) proposes more types of communicative activities such as a picture difference task, in which students pairs are given two pictures. Their task is to identify the differences without looking at the other picture. Group planning tasks such as planning a holiday is another example of effective activity. During this exercise, students collect advertisements with the purpose to promote a holiday. Each student of a team must bring arguments and, at the end, the group should agree on a particular holiday that they will present. In Scrivener’s opinion, the ranking tasks or list sequencing tasks should also be part of communicative teaching. During this activity, the teacher should prepare of list of topics and place them in a particular order. Board games or puzzles and problems also encourage communication (Scrivener, 2005, pp. 153-154).

These types of communicative activities are also promoted by Ur (1991), who acknowledges that by doing them in class, they give teachers the ability to study strong and weak points of the classroom. Except for describing pictures, planning an activity or doing a shopping list, there are different other kinds of interaction that may be used to achieve the desired results. Interactional talks, in which students learn how to greet, leave, apologize or thank, as well as the discussions that involve feelings or relationships are often effective (Ur, 1991:129-130).

Another important point regarding speaking tasks is the class organisation and arrangement. For the activity to work as planned, the class arrangement is crucial. Therefore, he claims that it is important for learners to be able to make eye contact when speaking to a colleague, to hear clearly when any other colleague is speaking and to be close to one another (Scrivener, 2005, p. 154).

When teaching English as a foreign language, several challenges arise. One of the most important ones is the students’ tendency to use their native language, especially in monolingual classes. Young learners tend to use their own language for a number of reasons: they think that it is easier to express themselves in their own language, they know that they will be corrected when using wrong English words, they do not want to make mistakes in front of their colleagues, they cannot find their words in English, the teacher cannot hear them etc. (Scrivener, 2005, pp. 100-101).

Although students may bring plenty of arguments for not wanting to speak in English, using this foreign language in class is crucial for learning. When teachers encounter such difficulties, there are a few methods that can help, such as using listening material, placing English-language posters on the walls, discussing the purpose of the activities in class, offering positive feedback when students attempt to speak in English or encouraging fluency without correcting the students in the first learning phases. These methods prove to have better results than prizes and threats, even though many teachers think that competition and bribery are more effective (Scrivener, 2005, p. 101).

Communicative language teaching is one of the most important points of focus in an English class, which is why all teachers should take it into consideration when building a teaching plan. Having this information, I will continue discussing about the receptive and productive skills that need to be taught using traditional and modern methods to acquire to a higher language level.

Chapter 2: Receptive and productive skills

Teaching a second language to pre-intermediate and intermediate students requires a well-planned strategy that encompasses knowledge about the four basic language skills that every student needs:

Reading

Listening

Writing

Speaking

A student that is competent in English and has the four above skills is able to speak fluently, to express their ideas and to communicate in casual situations. These basic skills must be taught from the early stages of the class. They have been split into two categories: receptive and productive skills, as the students either receive an input or produce it. These categories must be differentiated, so that students understand what they are learning and what skill are they developing during a specific class. I find it important to analyse the four language skills in these two main categories in order to achieve a better understanding of the language teaching process. Following this study, the third chapter, in which I will practically describe the speaking activities that help intermediate and pre-intermediate students learn, will have a strong foundation.

2.1 Reading and Listening

Reading and listening are considered to be receptive skills. These help an individual comprehend a foreign language at a certain level, depending on the depth of learning. They have to be learned step-by-step, as they do not come naturally. After years of practice, they can be mastered by students who learn a second language.

In his work, Harmer (2001, p. 199) describes receptive skills as being the ways in which people extract meaning from the discourse they see or hear. He affirms that this is a general statement about receptive skill processing that applies to both reading and listening. Also, he mentions that there are many differences between these skills. The author offers a few reasons for which reading and listening should be learned and splits them into two categories:

Instrumental

Pleasurable

According to Harmer (2001, p. 200), the instrumental reasons help learners achieve clear aims, such as reading instructions or understanding audio messages that they hear on the street. The pleasurable reasons help individuals understand more information in a foreign language in relaxing situations, such as reading poetry, listening to the radio, watching a movie or attending a show.

Scrivener (2005, p. 185) has a more practical approach, as opposed to Harmer’s theoretical descriptions. He observes that the main challenge of a teacher is to eliminate the difficulties that students have when reading and listening. With regards to reading, many issues can be encountered. Students may refuse to read or may limit their reading, especially in front of other people, for reasons such as the lack of a poor vocabulary, the need of using a dictionary all the time, slowness in reading, confusion, lack of pleasure.

Gabrielatos (1998) offers a great perspective in regards to receptive skills, affirming that the main objective of a receptive skills programme is not the teaching of more grammar and vocabulary, but the development of the learners' ability to understand and interpret texts using their existing language knowledge. He also mentions that receptive skills development can be combined with language input in the same lesson, but the procedures need to be staged in such a way that the 'language' component does not cancel out the 'skills' one. For example, explaining all unknown lexis before learners read or listen to a text will cancel out training in inferring the meaning of lexis in the text.

Another important aspect that Harmer (2001) mentions is the different skills that are required for reading and listening in various circumstances. He identifies six situations in which different skills might be needed:

Identifying the topic

This ability helps individuals to process texts more easily when they are able to understand the topic

Predicting and guessing

Topic identification is not always enough. Most readers guess the topic even from the first words in a sentence. As they become better and better at reading and listening, they can become more efficient in guessing and predicting a topic immediately.

Reading and listening for general understanding

General understanding is not an in depth understanding. When referring to reading for general understanding, many people think of skimming, this means looking at a text superficially and getting a general idea about it. This type of reading is passive, but not incorrect, depending on the interest of the reader with regards to a specific topic.

Reading and listening for specific information

Obtaining specific information from a text or from a conversation requires in depth understanding and therefore, intense concentration. In this case, readers or listeners scan, as opposed to skimming.

Reading and listening for detailed information

Detailed information can only be obtained if the reader or the listener pays full attention to the text or to the persons that are talking. This means that a high level of concentration is required and that any other topic becomes irrelevant in that particular moment. Procedures, instructions or directions are examples of materials that require focused reading and listening.

Interpreting text

A proficient listener or reader becomes able to understand beyond the literal meaning of words and phrases, which is extremely important when reading complex materials, literature, poetry, jokes or when communicating and receiving messages from interlocutors (Harmer, 2001:201-202).

Scrivener (2005) also brings into discussion the skimming and scanning, affirming that there are many activities that are designed to increase the reading speed. Reading quickly and getting the gist of the passage is called skimming, while reading quickly and finding a specific piece of information is known as scanning, as also mentioned in the previous paragraphs. Although these two might seem to be superficial activities, they are actually top-down skills.

Gabrielatos (1998) emphasizes the fact that usually, learners are asked to read or listen to much longer and complex texts and perform new tasks such as reading selectively or extracting the gist and that this can become a challenge. He highlights the fact that there are a few areas that can be problematic, such as following. Following issues can be solved at early stages, by insisting on systematic receptive skills development. According to the author, there are a few issues that all teachers encounter during their classes: learners read/listen for the words and not for the meaning, learners get easily discouraged by unknown lexis and they do not make conscious use of their background knowledge and experience.

Reading is mostly seen as a passive activity by most people, but in reality it is more than that. According to Mundhe (2015), reading is interactive the reader brings his personal knowledge to the text in front of him. The interactivity is triangular between the reader the text and the message. The goal is specific to engage the thoughts, facts, and viewpoint, bias etc. The writer has to put together on the page in order to arrive at the best personal meaning. Reading is the most favoured and most practiced skills in English classes. Reading should be followed by checking the learners’ understanding of comprehension. In addition, teacher can use specific activities for developing reading, using materials that are authentic. Mundhe (2015) also mentions a few techniques that can be used for teaching reading skills, such as:

The reader need not either seek or find in a text all or only what the writer has put into what the writer. In order to understand a text, each reader brings to it different types of knowledge to make meaning.

The teacher’s main task is to help make students’ reading efficient and effective by intervening differently at different stages in its development.

Equip the school library with plenty of books and journals or magazines at the appropriate levels. This will require the co-operation from teachers belonging to all subjects and every department.

Dictionary – based activities: pages from a good dictionary can be given to the learners and reading activities such alphabetic words or finding out abbreviation may be set.

Harmer (2001) and plenty of other authors identify two types of reading: extensive and intensive. In his opinion, students should be involved in both in order to get maximum benefit from reading. Extensive reading takes place when students read on their own. Intensive reading, on the other hand, takes place when the intervention of the teacher is needed or simply happens without being necessary. The author affirms that one of the fundamental conditions of successful extensive reading is that students should be reading about a topic that they understand in order to read for pleasure. Teacher can, therefore, offer books or materials that are easy to read and that refer to well-known topics. He also suggests that setting up a library is important in this teaching process and that teachers should be actively contributing to it.

Intensive reading, on the other hand, creates enthusiasm among students and teachers should work to create interest in their tasks. Except for being teachers, they also have other roles:

Organiser

Observer

Feedback organiser

Prompter (Harmer, 2001, pp. 211-213)

In the case of intensive reading, a common paradox must be solved while teaching. Although teachers encourage students to read for general understanding, they tend to overlook the fact that they might not understand every single word or passage. In this case, focusing on each word’s meaning can be more productive than reading continuously, without breaks. However, Harmer recommends teachers to set a time limit for vocabulary checking (2001, p. 214).

Scrivener (2005) proposes teaching activities that help students learn how to read fast and efficiently, as it can be seen in Table 1. This is a route map that encompassed top-down reading tasks.

Table 1 – Route map for reading lessons

Source: Scrivener (2005, p. 186)

Some of the tasks proposed by Scrivener (2005) for reading learning in English are very easy to put in practice:

Reading a whole page of classified advertisements in an English newspaper

Asking students to find a specific word in a page of a newspaper

Placing a pile of tourist leaflets and ask students to plan a day out

Asking students to read an extract from a novel and answer five multiple-choice questions about details of the novel

Other tasks can be:

Putting illustrations of a text in a correct order

Putting paragraphs in a correct order

Finding words in a text with the same meaning as the words in a provided list

Finding mistakes in a text

Reading a text and making a list of particular items

Giving a headline to each section of an article

Discussing the missing last paragraph of a text

Put the list of events in a text in the correct order

Extensive reading is extremely important in the language learning process and has a powerful impact on it, according to Scrivener (2005, p. 188). The author states that the more someone reads, the more they pick up items of vocabulary and grammar from texts, without even realising it. Also, extensive reading tends to widen one’s language knowledge and increase their overall linguistic confidence. In order to encourage extensive reading and to make it easier to perform this activity in class, teachers should provide a library of magazines, newspapers and leaflets. Also, they should provide training about suitable reading materials and ways to read it. Creating a book club is another idea that Scrivener recommends for reading skills (Scrivener, 2005, p. 189).

Listening skills are as important as reading skills, as they offer students the ability to understand the messages that are passed on to them, to focus and to filter the information that they need. Although listening activities are often avoided by teachers, they are highly important in the second language learning process. Listening is not the same thing as hearing. Although they both imply the reception of sounds, listening involves understanding what is heard. Listening skills, just like any other language skills, must be developed in class, using certain tasks. Mundhe (2015) proposes some techniques that might help teachers with passing on listening skills to students:

Make it a point to expose the student to a ‘good’ model because the students are required to produce or generate the language.

Learner should bear in mind that listening has the same significance as speaking.

Make listening activities motivating and informative.

Listeners must distinguish that phonic substance the sound patterns in bounded segments related to phrase structure.

Listen and complete the story: Learner should listen to a part of a story from the teacher or from a cassette and complete it individually or in groups.

Understanding intonation patterns and interpreting attitudinal meaning through variation of tone.

Teacher should give more importance to training listening skill and learners must become more aware of their own listening skill.

There are different types of listening that have been identified by linguistics experts. The two main types are intensive and extensive listening, just like in the case of reading. Harmer and Scrivener, as well as Nunan and other authors specify that it is important to make this differentiation as a teacher. Also, there are other types of listening that appear in the form of a dichotomy. Nunan (1991) discusses the reciprocal and non-reciprocal listening. While reciprocal listening refers to listening from both sides. In this situation, a listener not only listens, but responds to a message, participates in a conversation and interacts. Non-reciprocal listening refers to the listening as a sole activity, deprived of any interaction. The students listens in a situation where he is unable to respond, such as during formal lecture, or a radio transmission.

Cook (2008, p. 125) also introduces a dichotomy: bottom-up and bottom-down processing. Bottom up listening implies starting from the sentence as a whole and working down to its smallest parts. Bottom-down listening is starting from the smallest parts and working up. In Cook’s opinion, there are three stages of teaching listening skills:

Pre-listening (serves to activate students' background knowledge and to get the general idea of the listening material)

While-listening (improving their ability to interpret the message)

Post-listening (includes task sheets and possibly a second listening) (Cook, 2008, p. 130)

Another important term that was introduced by Cook (2008, p. 125) is parsing. In the listening teaching context, parsing is the through which the mind works out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentence. Cook’s vision on listening skills is very pragmatic. The author enumerates some of the most important elements of listening:

Access to words

The author states that in order to comprehend a sentence you have to work out what the words mean. The mind has to relate the words that are heard to the information that is stored about them in the mind.

Parsing

Parsing refers to how the mind works out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentences it hears, that is to say, the term is only loosely connected to its meaning in traditional grammar.

Memory processes and cognition

All comprehension depends on the storing and processing of information by the mind. The extent of the memory restriction in a second language depends on how close the task is to language. Hence getting the students to perform tasks that are not concerned with language may have less influence on their learning than language-related tasks. For example, comprehension activities using maps and diagrams may improve the learners’ problem-solving abilities with maps and diagrams, but may be less successful at improving those aspects of the learners’ mental processes that depend on language (Cook, 2008, p. 129)

2.2 Writing and Speaking

As opposed to receptive skills, writing and speaking are known to be productive skills. They are different in many ways and they are being used to communicate, either verbally, or in writing. According to Harmer (2001), in order for communication to be successful, a discourse has to be structured in such a way that it can be understood clearly by listeners or readers. He states that fewer formulaic phrases are found in writing than in speech, which is why writing has to be coherent and cohesive. On the other hand, speech can often take place in a less organised and chaotic way than writing. Speakers tend to employ a variety of structuring devices that are not used in the same way in writing (Harmer, 2001:246).

The main difficulties that are encountered in writing and speaking are the following:

Improvising

Discarding

Foreignising

Paraphrasing (Harmer, 249)

Scrivener (2005) identifies different kinds of speaking while studying productive skills learning. He reaches to the conclusion that genre definition is extremely important during speech and writing. Also, he comments that in everyday life, people speak in a variety of ways, depending on who they are and the nature of the situation. He defines genre as a variety of speech or writing that one would expect to find in a particular place, with particular people, in a particular context, to achieve a certain result.

According to Harmer (2001), students to learn writing and speaking skills have a chance to rehearse language production in safety. He also states that when students work on their language production, they should be operating towards the communicative end of the communication continuum, such as language drills.

Teaching writing and speaking is more challenging than teaching reading and listening, as these are skills that require the student to be active and productive. In the opinion of most authors, teaching writing is the most challenging part of an English class for second language learning. There are several activities that must be completed in this process, such as:

Classifying writing activities and giving instructions

Choosing the criteria for the evaluation of textbook writing activities

(Supervising the process of composition)

Giving feedback on writing (Ur, 1991 p. 75)

Harmer (2001, p. 254) highlights the fact that there are other differences between writing and speaking than just vocabulary and grammar. He states that there are issues of letter, word and text formation that manifest through handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuation. Also, he emphasizes the fact that in the teaching of writing, teachers can focus on the product of writing or on the writing itself. When focusing on the product, teachers are only interested in the aim of a task. When focusing on the writing itself. They pay attention to various stages of writing and insist on pre-writing phases, editing and drafting. Putting together a piece of writing involves:

Checking the grammar

Checking the vocabulary

Checking the linkers

Checking the punctuation

Checking the writing for unnecessary repetitions

Decide on the information for each paragraph

Decide on the order of paragraphs

Note down ideas

Select the best idea for inclusion

Write a clean copy of the corrected version

Write out a rough version (Harmer, 2001, p. 257)

In Ur’s opinion (1991), there are many differences between writing and speech. In spoken and written discourses, the following differences can be observed:

Permanence

Explicitness

Density

Detachment

Organization

Slowness of production and speed of reception

Standard language

Learnt skills

Sheer amount and importance

Ur (1991) proposes teachers to ask the following questions before starting to apply a specific method in class:

Is the task motivating and engaging enough to the students?

Is the task on the appropriate level of difficulty (not to easy, not to hard)?

Will the students benefit from this type of writing activity?

Will it be necessary give additional instructions for this type of activity?

Is it part of my teaching style?

Harmer (2001) states that the teacher’s role in the process of teaching writing skills is the following:

Motivator

Resource

Feedback provider

Speaking skills are also challenging to teach to students, as the ability to speak in a second language implies being able to interact and produce speech. Also, it implies being able to listen, understand and interpret the message, as well as to produce a response that the interlocutor can understand and process. There are many elements of speech that must be taken into consideration when teaching speaking skills to second language learners. According to Harmer (2001), the ability to speak fluently involves not only knowledge of language features, but also the ability to process information and language immediately.

The most important language features that Harmer (2001, p. 269) identifies are the following:

Connected speech

Expressive devices

Lexis and grammar

Negotiation language

Productive skill learning also involves mental or social processing, especially when it comes to speaking. Harmer identifies a few important processing types:

Language processing

Interaction with others

On the spot information processing

Also, he proposes a few activities that he considers to be the most effective in this learning process. Acting from a script, using communication games, creating discussion groups or prepared talks, as well as using questionnaires and simulation games can prove to be very effective.

Scrivener (2005) takes into consideration a few aspects that make speaking skill teaching easier, such as structuring the talks, avoiding the talk-talk loop or using open questions. He believes that the following activities can enhance the students’ confidence while speaking:

Students repeat the sentences that the teacher says

Students chat with the teacher about weekend plans

Students look at a list of tips for a business presentation

Students listen to a recording and repeat words with the same vowel sounds

Students work in pairs and set up a top of best five films

Students prepare a monologue about their hobbies

In Harmer’s opinion, the roles of the teacher in this process are the following:

Prompter

Participant

Feedback provider (Harmer, 2001, p. 276)

In teaching speaking skills, the following activities can also prove to be effective:

Board games

Pyramid discussions

Puzzles and problems

Role play

Simulation

According to Ur (1991), a successful oral fluency practice is achieved when:

Learners talk a lot

Participation is even

Motivation is high

Language is of an acceptable level

The same author suggests that the most frequent problems encountered in speaking activities are inhibition, the fact that students do not have anything to say, low or uneven participation and mother tongue use in English class.

As it can be observed, teaching receptive and productive skills is not an easy task for teacher, yet some skills are easier to teach than others. It is clear that listening and reading are easier to learn, by comparison to productive skills that require active participation. Also, in order for students to learn productive skills, they must already be know how to read and listen. Therefore, it is easily observable that receptive and productive skills are interconnected and English learning cannot take place in lack of one of the two categories.

In the third chapter I will focus on analysing the ways in which speech is taught in secondary school students, how different speaking activities are approached and how these are overtaken by teachers. I will mostly study speaking skills that can be taught to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, in my attempt to demonstrate the hypothesis mentioned in the introduction of this thesis.

Chapter 3: Teaching Speaking Skills to Secondary School Students

3.1 How to Approach Different Speaking Activities

Communicative language teaching can be comprehended as a set of principles about the objectives of language teaching, how students take in a language, the sorts of classroom exercises that best encourage learning, and the parts of instructors and students in the classroom. Communicative language teaching sets as its objective the teaching of communicative capability.

Communicative ability incorporates the accompanying parts of language learning:

knowing how to utilize language for a scope of various purposes and capacities;

knowing how to shift our utilization of language as per the setting and the members (e.g., knowing when to utilize formal and casual discourse or when to utilize language suitably for composed instead of talked correspondence);

knowing how to deliver and comprehend diverse sorts of writings (e.g., accounts, reports, interviews, discussions);

knowing how to keep up correspondence in spite of having constraints in a single's language learning (e.g., through utilizing various types of correspondence methodologies).

In the 1970s, a response to customary language teaching approaches started and soon spread the world over as more seasoned strategies, for example, audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching dropped out of form.

Communicative language teaching can be perceived from a multidisciplinary point of view that incorporates, at any rate, etymology, brain research, logic, human science, and instructive research.

The multifaceted nature of figuring out how to talk in another language is reflected in the range and kind of sub-abilities that are involved in L2 oral creation. Students should all the while take care of substance, morpho-punctuation and lexis, talk and data organizing, and the sound framework and prosody, and in addition fitting register and pragma-phonetic highlights. In a cooperation that commonly includes talking and understanding in the meantime, L2 speakers need to self-screen with the goal that they can recognize and rectify creation issues at the quick pace of a genuine conversational trade. Research on the attributes and

Improvement of L2 oral abilities has indicated convincingly that conveying in a L2 is a subjectively requesting endeavour, also that the achievement of an association frequently relies upon creation quality.

Correspondence between individuals is an extremely mind boggling and regularly evolving thing. In any case, there are speculations that we can make which have specific significance for the teaching and learning of languages.

Whenever at least two individuals are speaking with each other, we can make certain they are doing as such for they have some communicative reason, they need to state something, they need to tune in to something, they are keen on what is being said.

Along these lines, if an instructor wishes to acquaint a communicative action with the students, he or she ought to acquire some of the said factors. The instructor must make the need and want, in the students, to impart. On the off chance that these elements are absent, it is far more improbable that the action will be the achievement the educator had visualized. In the event that the students don't see the point in accomplishing something, they're far less inclined to need to take an interest.

While talking and composing are generously extraordinary from numerous points of view, they both are utilized for a similar reason to convey.

From numerous points of view, composing is the most disregarded ability in the TEFL world, which stands for " teaching English as a foreign language", the same number of instructors don't care to see the classroom hours committed to what is frequently 'calm time'. Composing, along these lines, is regularly consigned to homework, which thus is as often as possible not done as such the aptitude is never created. Beyond any doubt most students like to centre around their talking aptitudes, yet this doesn't imply that composition ought to be overlooked.

From various perspectives, composing and writing are the more troublesome of all aptitudes, requiring a more noteworthy level of precision. When talking, any misconception can be cleared up' on the spot', while this isn't conceivable in composing. Talking, then again, requires a more noteworthy level of familiarity as the speaker will once in a while have room schedule-wise to think and plan an answer.

Correspondence between individuals is an extremely mind boggling and a consistently evolving concept. Yet, there are speculations that we can make which have specific pertinence for the teaching and learning of languages.

When talking, there are various variables that could make the assignment simpler for a foreign language speaker: talking ordinarily happens in a specific setting and other previous learning is frequently expected with the goal that not all data must be clear and exact; prompt criticism is conceivable and speakers can alter as the discussion unfurls. Discussion is frequently casual in regular daily existence and less demanding for an ESL student to wind up associated with and hone.

Composing, nonetheless, is a substantially more formal process. ESL students will in all probability need to utilize their composition aptitudes for formal and expert reasons. This can be exceptionally distressing and out and out incapacitating in the event that they have never learnt to write in English.

Composed writings are settled and should be unequivocal. Criticism is for all intents and purposes outlandish and its absence can be not kidding if the composed content was for a vocation application or assessment form. Composing abilities should be instructed, they can't be learnt through osmosis and drenching like discourse can.

Usually acknowledged points of view on language teaching and learning perceive that, in important correspondence, individuals utilize incremental language abilities not in disconnection but rather pair. For instance, to take part in a discussion, one should be capable talk and appreciate in the meantime. To make language learning as sensible as would be prudent, coordinated direction needs to address a scope of L2 aptitudes all the while, which are all imperative in correspondence. For example, teaching perusing can be effortlessly fixing to guideline on composing and vocabulary, and oral abilities promptly loan themselves to teaching elocution, tuning in, and diverse pragmatics.

The four language abilities are infrequently utilized alone in regular daily existence. The scholars, in this manner, expect to assemble them in joining for teaching perusing which is for the most part dismissed in course readings, course books and additionally perusing classes and want to maintain a strategic distance from the customary classroom models of perusing direction whereby educators rule classroom talk and students react amid content driven inquiry and-answer sessions.

Of the 'four aptitudes,' listening is by a wide margin the most as often as possible utilized. Tuning in and talking are frequently educated together, yet apprentices, particularly non-proficient ones, ought to be given more tuning in than talking practice.

Talking lessons regularly tie in articulation and language structure (examined somewhere else in this guide), which are vital for viable oral correspondence. Or then again a sentence structure or perusing exercise may join a talking movement. In any case, students will require some planning before the talking undertaking. This incorporates presenting the subject and giving a model of the discourse they are to deliver.

Finding bona fide perusing material may not be troublesome, but rather discovering materials suitable for the level of your students can be a test. Particularly with amateurs, you may need to altogether alter writings to rearrange language and vocabulary.

Great written work passes on a significant message and uses English well, however the message is more vital than remedy introduction. In the event that you can comprehend the message or even piece of it, your student has prevailing with regards to imparting on paper and ought to be commended for that. Sentence structure is frequently named as a subject hard to instruct. Its specialized language and complex principles can be scary. Teaching a decent sentence structure exercise would one say one is thing, however consider the possibility that you're amidst a perusing or talking movement and an student has a punctuation question.

Elocution includes much more than singular sounds. Word pressure, sentence pressure, pitch, and word connecting all impact the sound of communicated in English, also the way we regularly slur words and expressions together in easygoing discourse. English articulation includes an excessive number of complexities for students to take a stab at an entire disposal of emphasize, however enhancing elocution will support confidence, encourage correspondence, and potentially prompt a superior employment or a slightest more regard in the working environment. Successful correspondence is of most noteworthy significance, so pick initially to take a shot at issues that essentially ruin correspondence and let the rest go.

Notwithstanding, the scholars trust that the coordination of aptitudes isn't the main sort of joining instructors should go for.

They trust that there exist three territories, which ought to be coordinated with each other amid course book composing and keeping in mind that creating different materials.

These regions can be entitled as linguistic joining, useful combination and topical mix. It is recommended that each of the three kinds of combination ought to be assembled beyond what many would consider possible.

It is by and large watched that in a valid setting, the utilization of any expertise may lead on normally to the utilization of another.

Teaching incorporated English aptitudes requires an intuitive type of learning between the educators and students to guarantee dominance of both oral and composed abilities.

So as to instruct incorporated aptitudes educators ought to think about the accompanying:

formulate an exercise intend to create familiarity with the language and consolidate exercises in which your students take an interest. Then again, incorporate extra exercises to a prior educational modules that is gone for tending to particular regions. Building up an inviting air in the classroom influences the students to feel good talking with their cohorts;

identify frail regions that require your uncommon consideration or request that students list the different territories they require help;

prepare teaching helps to make the lessons intuitive and intriguing;

distribute exposition points to the students and request that they pick subjects that they are happy with perusing, exploring and expounding on;

conduct an oral introduction session whereby the students convey their papers before their schoolmates.

The measure of consideration given to every expertise territory will depend both on the level of the students and in addition, to their situational needs. Individuals who are not educated in this field, benefit the most from tuning in and talking. As familiarity builds, the measure of perusing and writing in your lessons may likewise increment. With educated students, up to half of your exercise time can be spent on composed abilities, in spite of the fact that your students may wish to maintain their concentration weighted toward oral correspondence if that is a more prominent need.

Dynamic teaching includes the utilization of instructional methods that are meant for important student commitment in the disclosure of learning. Thoughtfully, the approach has a long history, from Socrates to John Dewey to the teaching case technique refined at Harvard University. The cognizant determination of objectives for the classroom and strategies for teaching makes a feeling of reason in the instructive procedure. It likewise speaks to coordinated effort – a dedication with respect to educators and students to breathe life into the instructive condition. Dynamic learning implies that students are cooperating, and with the educator, to accomplish instructive goals.

Dynamic learning is where students are occupied with exercises, for example, perusing, composing, discourse, or critical thinking that advance investigation, amalgamation, and assessment of class content.

The teaching procedures are proposed to make the students dynamic (as opposed to uninvolved) members in learning. Learning imperative wellbeing information and expertise isn't not at all like learning numerous new aptitudes, be it physical ability, mental or social. Numerous people learn best and wind up capable in aptitudes by honing tem instead of only being an observer to the ability, for example, tuning in to educators discuss the expertise, perusing about the aptitude or watching others play out the ability.

Dynamic, hand-on teaching methodologies and learning exercises are intended to make students out of their books, once in a while out of their seats, some of the time out of the classroom and in some cases out of their well-known state of mind. Dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises are planned to make students dynamic members in their own particular learning.

The teaching methodologies allude to structure, framework, strategies, systems, techniques and procedures that an educator uses amid guideline. These are techniques the instructor utilizes to help student learning. Learning exercises allude to the educator guided instructional errands or assignments for students. One of the essential advantages of dynamic learning is the open door for the joining of perusing, composing, tuning in and talking. Some dynamic learning exercises may include every one of the four of these language and relational abilities in a solitary action. Similarly as with numerous teaching procedures, practice and redundancy frequently result in more prominent educator aptitude in conveying the method. Arranging and executing dynamic learning exercises is the same. At an early stage, numerous students frequently require practice to wind up more capable at dynamic learning.

Dynamic learning is any learning knowledge other than autonomously and inactively perusing, finishing a worksheet or tuning in to an address. Amid dynamic student taking in, the part of the instructor changes from pioneer and moderator to mentor and facilitator. Dynamic student learning infers that students are doing the majority of the work and that they assume a more prominent liability for their own particular work and learning.

Dynamic student learning begins with the instructor. It is basic that instructors build up the classroom and instructional tone, condition and energy that give openings and urge students to wind up dynamic learning members. With watchful arranging, educators can make a learning domain that is conductive to dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises. This condition would incorporate a safe physical condition, available asset materials, reasonableness by the instructor to all students, compelling class administration and scholastically strong student affinity.

Dynamic teaching includes the utilization of instructional methods intended for important student commitment in the disclosure of learning. Thoughtfully, the approach has a long history, from Socrates to John Dewey to the teaching case technique refined at Harvard University. The cognizant determination of objectives for the classroom and strategies for teaching makes a feeling of reason in the instructive procedure. It likewise speaks to coordinated effort – a dedication with respect to educators and students to breathe life into the instructive condition. Dynamic learning implies that students are cooperating, and with the educator, to accomplish instructive goals.

Dynamic learning is where students are occupied with exercises, for example, perusing, composing, discourse, or critical thinking that advance investigation, amalgamation, and assessment of class content.

The teaching procedures are proposed to make the students dynamic (as opposed to uninvolved) members in learning. Learning imperative wellbeing information and expertise isn't not at all like learning numerous new aptitudes, be it physical ability, mental or social. Numerous people learn best and wind up capable in aptitudes by honing tem instead of only being an observer to the ability, for example, tuning in to educators discuss the expertise, perusing about the aptitude or watching others play out the ability.

Dynamic, hand-on teaching methodologies and learning exercises are intended to make students out of their books, once in a while out of their seats, some of the time out of the classroom and in some cases out of their well-known state of mind. Dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises are planned to make students dynamic members in their own particular learning.

The teaching methodologies allude to structure, framework, strategies, systems, techniques and procedures that an educator utilizes amid guideline. These are techniques the instructor utilizes to help student learning. Learning exercises allude to the educator guided instructional errands or assignments for students. One of the essential advantages of dynamic learning is the open door for the joining of perusing, composing, tuning in and talking. Some dynamic learning exercises may include every one of the four of these language and relational abilities in a solitary action. Similarly as with numerous teaching procedures, practice and redundancy frequently result in more prominent educator aptitude in conveying the method. Arranging and executing dynamic learning exercises is the same. At an early stage, numerous students frequently require practice to wind up more capable at dynamic learning.

Dynamic learning is any learning knowledge other than autonomously and inactively perusing, finishing a worksheet or tuning in to an address. Amid dynamic student taking in, the part of the instructor changes from pioneer and moderator to mentor and facilitator. Dynamic student learning infers that students are doing the majority of the work and that they assume a more prominent liability for their own particular work and learning. Dynamic student learning begins with the instructor. It is basic that instructors build up the classroom and instructional tone, condition and energy that give openings and urge students to wind up dynamic learning members. With watchful arranging, educators can make a learning domain that is conductive to dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises. This condition would incorporate a safe physical condition, available asset materials, reasonableness by the instructor to all students, compelling class administration and scholastically strong student affinity.

These days English language ended up one of the fundamental languages in correspondence everywhere throughout the world because of the expanded enthusiasm of individuals in voyaging, work necessities, pen-companions, informal organizations, globalization and not last social mindfulness. Schools in Romania and instructive framework put an accentuation on the need of teaching and learning English language and the new educational module underpins teaching English as the second language beginning from private academy or kindergarten. The fundamental motivation behind teaching English being the gaining and advancement of communicative ability, an exceptional consideration is appeared to the beneficial aptitudes, talking and composing, however, every one of the four aptitudes – tuning in, talking, perusing, composing – are similarly fortified). Among these aptitudes talking stays a standout amongst the most essential parts in learning English language, all students needing to pick up and get capability in correspondence field.

Talking and imparting fluidly remains as the fundamental objective surprisingly who take in a language as this gives them a chance to convey effortlessly in various social and between social circumstances, collaborations and situations. Speaking remains, not constantly but rather regularly, the primary deterrent that forestalls them to get what they need. A considerable lot of the students of English language come to know sentence structure exceptionally well, to deal with vocabulary things, expressions and structures, to compose accurately yet they discovered fairly hard to communicate fluidly and proficiently in English. Relatively few of the students have the likelihood to utilize and rehearse English outside the classroom and to appreciate talking and talking unreservedly and normally utilizing it. Much more, the greater part of them find fairly hard to do this in the classroom as well, before their schoolmates, they turn out to be out of the blue on edge and modest and see the demonstration of talking as a weight and a focusing on circumstance. Padmadewi (1998, p. 12) cited in Widiati and Cahyono (2006), states that, because of the weight from the talking errand students are appointed, they feel on edge when they go to a talking class, predominantly on the grounds that they need to introduce in an individual and suddenly route inside a farthest point of time. Subsequently they keep quiet or to grasp the part of an "onlooker" instead of a dynamic member to the exercise.

It is a known fact that students of any age, kids, youngsters or grown-ups, learn better when they are effectively engaged with the way toward learning and they are getting it done when they appreciate it and have some good times at an indistinguishable measure from gaining information. It is likewise realized that connection widens and develops comprehension of a specific subject since while communicating students share thoughts, musings, sentiments, creative ability and not last, imagination.

In this way, keeping pace with the requirement for utilizing a language as a methods for correspondence, it is a need that talking aptitude ought to be shown utilizing options strategies and procedures that can make for students circumstances and conditions which Supports considering and innovativeness, gives students a chance to create and rehearse new language and social abilities in a generally nonthreatening setting, and can make the inspiration and association important for figuring out how to happen. (Tompkins, 1990, p.1).

For the reasons over this investigation goes for the enhancing students' communicative abilities and improvement of their enthusiasm for talking by methods for pretends and show arranged exercises. By utilizing and applying pretends and dramatization, by making a charming and appealing setting and climate amid talking class students can be initiated and set into a fascinating talking and communicative condition. Elizabeth F. Barkley (2004, p.150) states that pretend as an action to be utilized amid talking classes makes a circumstance in which students carry on or expect characters, personalities or parts deliberately, things that would not regularly happen or be accepted by them with a specific end goal to achieve the learning objective. As indicated by what McDonough and Shaw (1993, p. 165) satiate, pretend is by all accounts the perfect movement in which students can utilize language inventively and the one that goes for empowering discussion giving students a chance to rehearse and build up their talking aptitudes and communicative skill.

In the customary model of ELT, sentence structure assumed a focal part to the drawback of the other language segments. The abrogating significance joined to sentence structure depended on the presumption that exactness (syntactic rightness) secured effective correspondence. The conviction was tested in the mid-1970s with the acknowledgment that language structure learning was just a single segment of the communicative fitness (close by talk ability, sociolinguistic skill and key capability). Therefore, syntax teaching was relatively relinquished; it is just as of late that sentence structure has recovered its legitimate place in a coordinated way to deal with language teaching. The inquiry still remains WHAT to educate (what syntax things) and HOW to show language in a powerful and effective way.

The response to the primary inquiry (determination of language structure structures to be instructed) indicates out consistence with two criteria:

1. Comprehensibility – educators should instruct the practical heap of language structure, i.e. structures which empower significance understanding in a communicative circumstance: fundamental verb frames; certifiable, interrogative and negative examples, tenses and modals, and so on.

2. Acceptability – it is compared to a sufficient level of rightness and instinctive nature of the etymological yield.

With reference to HOW to show sentence structure, we say two lines of approach:

1. form-centred guideline (very esteemed in the conventional model) – students' needs are pre-characterized in the linguistic syllabus. As a matter of fact, syntax teaching mirrors the run of the mill classroom utilization of language, outside of any relevant connection to the subject at hand in a somewhat non-real route; centres around very much shaped sentences (which are not extensive), on language yield as confirmation of language learning; depends vigorously on express information and on controlled practice.

2. "fluency-first" instructional method/which means centred association (contemporary approach) – students' needs are evaluated in view of their execution amid familiarity exercises. It underlies the characteristic utilization of language in genuine like correspondence settings; depends on understood information and on automaticity (disguise of tenets); initiates students' key ability (circumstance administration by summarizing, rearrangement, therapeutic work), and so forth.

The typology of sentence structure exercises falls into three expansive writes:

1. controlled/mechanical practice (for instance, reiteration and substitution drills).

2. semi-controlled/contextualized/important practice: students are urged to relate shape to importance by demonstrating how the syntax structures are utilized as a part of genuine correspondence. For instance, keeping in mind the end goal to rehearse the utilization of relational words to depict areas of spots, students are given a road delineate different structures recognized in various areas. They are likewise given a rundown of relational words, for example, opposite, on the edge of, close, on, beside. They at that point need to answer inquiries, for example, "Where is the book shop? Where is the bistro?, and so on. The training is presently important in light of the fact that they need to react as indicated by the area of spots on the guide.

3. free/communicative practice (students utilize the structures in credible correspondence while focusing on this run represented conduct). For instance, students are solicited to draw a guide from their neighbourhood and answer inquiries concerning the area of better places, for example, the closest transport stop, the closest bistro, and so forth.

Comprehensively, language structure exercises show the accompanying highlights: particular punctuation structures are in centre and students are furnished with express data about the govern; students are requested to utilize the structures in sentences of their own; students need to chance to utilize the structures over and again amid the English classes (there is requirement for support and for working up on earlier information); students are relied upon to comprehend the run (by means of cognizance raising) utilize the syntactic structures effectively; there is criticism on the students' execution (they get a feeling of their execution).

Controlling components in teaching punctuation (principles)

1. constant presentation to language at a proper level of trouble (generally tuned input – the information is marginally over the students' level of capability).

2. building of importance centred communication.

3. opportunities for students to distinguish and guide regard for sentence structure shape, semantics or significance and realistic states of their utilization previously and keeping in mind that really utilizing the language .

To whole up, correspondence can't occur without structure, or sentence structure, a set of shared suspicions about how language functions, alongside an ability of members to participate in the transaction of importance. Consequently, the objective of sentence structure teaching is to empower students to disguise administers to end up effective in correspondence. Besides, communicative familiarity does not infer loss of syntactic precision, rather they are interrelated.

In the customary model, teaching vocabulary was decreased to students' looking words up in the lexicon, compose definitions, and utilize words in pretty much conventionalized sentences. Word records, instructor clarification, dialog, remembrance, vocabulary books, and tests were frequently utilized with a view to encouraging students to learn new words. Generally speaking, the teaching of vocabulary above rudimentary levels was for the most part coincidental, constrained to exhibiting new things experienced in perusing or some of the time listening writings. This aberrant teaching of vocabulary was introduced by the possibility that vocabulary extension would occur through the act of other language aptitudes, which has been demonstrated insufficient to guarantee vocabulary development.

In the current ELT technique, it is broadly acknowledged that vocabulary teaching ought to be a piece of the syllabus and instructed in a very much arranged and customary basis. Vocabulary is a rule supporter of cognizance, familiarity, and accomplishment. Vocabulary advancement is both a result of appreciation and a contribution to it, with word implications making up as much as 70– 80% of understanding.

Strategies for teaching vocabulary

1. utilizing a L1 interpretation;

2. utilizing a known L2 equivalent word or a straightforward definition in the L2;

3. demonstrating a protest (realia) or picture;

4. giving fast showing;

5. drawing a straightforward picture or outline;

6. breaking the word into parts and giving the significance of the parts and the entire word (the word part system);

7. giving a few case sentences with the word in setting to demonstrate the importance.

Controlling components in teaching vocabulary (principles)

1. Depend on students' earlier information and related encounters previously teaching new words to present a topical zone. For instance, before perusing a content on Communication Cyberspace, instruct the word blog, characterize it (an online diary), determine that the word is a mix (blog originates from web log), and demonstrate a photo of somebody situated at a PC forming an exposition or answer to post on their own site. At that point, demonstrate students a genuine blog .

2. Show frame and substance and parts of the idea of significance and vocabulary organizing/word relations:

elocution and spelling: capacity to perceive and duplicate things in the talked and composed structures.

• denotation and meaning: e.g. rose – denotative significance: reference to the bloom; obvious importance: enthusiasm (all-inclusive image), the Royal House (as in The Wars of the Roses).

• Polysemy: recognizing the different significance of a solitary word shape with a few however firmly related implications (foot: of a man, of a mountain, of a page).

• Homonymy: recognizing the different significance of a solitary word shape which has a few implications which are not firmly related (e.g. record: used to place papers in or an apparatus).

• Homophony: understanding words that have a similar articulation however unique spellings and implications (e.g. hold up weight).

• Synonymy: recognizing the distinctive shades of implying that synonymous words have (e.g. little).

• Style, enlist, lingo: Being ready to recognize distinctive levels of convention, the impact of various settings and themes, and in addition contrasts in land variety.

• Translation: consciousness of contrasts (particularly at the connotational level) and similitudes between the local and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).

• Chunks of language: set expressions (in the act), collocations (migraine, torment in the back, sore throat), maxims (to convey coal to Newcastle).

• Grammar of vocabulary: taking in the standards that empower students to develop diverse types of the word or even unique words from that word (e.g. rest, dozed, dozed; capable, incapable; incapacity).

3. Independent of the students' level of capability, revelation, guided disclosure, relevant mystery (inferencing abilities) and lexicon building aptitudes ought to be energized.

4. Vocabulary choice should meet the accompanying criteria: scope: data ought to be given about the different implications and employments of a word frame (numerous significance words beat monosemantic things); recurrence: the more the quantity of the word events, the more inclined to be chosen.

Assessments go that the rundown incorporates 2,000 words with semantic and recurrence data drawn from a corpus of 2 to 5 million words. It is guaranteed that knowing these words offers access to around 80 for every penny of the words in any composed content and in this way animates inspiration since the words procured can be seen by students to have a certifiably brisk return.

3. comprehensiveness: words valuable in all English-talking nations;

4. utility: empowering talk on as wide a subject range as could be expected under the circumstances.

Proposed action

Movement write: Teaching vocabulary

Level of capability: middle of the road

Timing: 10 minutes

Students' gathering: pairwork

Directions: Students are requested to utilize a lexicon and look into the words in the rundown underneath and aggregate them into unbiased things and words having negative implications:

infamous versus popular strange versus gay

reputation versus promulgation meddlesome versus official

thin versus thin partner versus partner

talk versus chatter single guy versus old maid

immature versus virtuous

Development: students are brought issues to light that implication is rendered by both linguistic means (additions, for example, – like and – ish) and lexical means (diverse lexical things) and they are solicited to think from different sets of nonpartisan versus words which are contrarily or emphatically hinted.

The intuitive, social and contextualized point of view of language learning centres around associated discourse (talk) as opposed to on separated pieces. There is additionally a move from focusing on formal parts of language to substance and significance, to communicative plan (deliberate perusing). Data handling while at the same time tuning in (successive request of information, observation, acknowledgment, and understanding stages) is combined with a constructivist position: perusers effectively develop significance as per their own particular purposes for perusing and additionally their own particular earlier learning (etymological information and additional phonetic/all-encompassing learning) and convention of experience. Earlier learning is recognized to schemata, additionally subdivided into content schemata (theme recognition, social information and past involvement with a specific field) and formal schemata (learning about content sorts – elaborate traditions and additionally the basic association/assortment of organizations). The socio-social setting has picked up ever expanded significance in language learning as the procedure does not happen in a social vacuum. As a matter of fact, uncommon consideration is paid to the writer – peruser relationship in significance development while perusers read powerfully (specifically).

Speech learning is context dependent and it requires interaction, as well as the ability to coordinate distinctive relational and psychomotor perspectives. Levelt (1989) supports a programmed 4-organize model of discourse creation: 1) conceptualization, i.e. choice of the message content based on the situational setting and the specific reason to be accomplished; 2) plan, i.e. getting to, sequencing and picking words and expressions to express the expected message properly; 3) verbalization, which concerns the engine control of the articulatory organs to execute the arranged message; and 4) observing, which enables speakers to effectively distinguish and redress botches if fundamental.

In the CLT, talking positions highest and students are prepared in order to adapt to genuine circumstances. They are worried about frame, i.e. step by step instructions to create phonetically satisfactory expressions in purpose of articulation, sentence structure and vocabulary, and with settlement/appropriacy, i.e. determination of substance and frame given specific socio-social settings and standards. Furthermore, they should be deliberately capable with the goal that they can make modifications amid the continuous procedure of talking (since as a rule there is prompt input) and convey the message over.

The intelligent, social and contextualized point of view of language learning centres around associated discourse (talk) instead of on segregated pieces. There is additionally a move from fixating on formal parts of language to substance and significance, to communicative expectation (intentional talking). Talking improvement supports constructivism: they effectively utilize language as indicated by their own motivations for talking and their own particular earlier information (etymological learning and additional semantic/broad learning) and convention of experience. Earlier learning is recognized to schemata, additionally subdivided into content schemata (theme commonality, social information and past involvement with a specific field) and formal schemata (highlights of the oral method of correspondence: talk, structures, and phonological and prosodic frameworks of talking).

In language classrooms, teachers unfurl a few employments of language and heaps of chances of sentence structure, vocabulary, language examples et cetera. Regardless of whether students understand numerous things about target language, they think that its difficult to create their thoughts through composing and talking. To represent, when instructors need students to talk or compose even about themes that require straightforward tenses and expressions of target language, for example, their youth, main residence or companions, they for the most part say that there is nothing in their psyche to compose, or they don't comprehend what they are to tell. It appears to be likely that this condition doesn't change in students' primary language and it ought to be considered in the differential reasons. It can be accepted that absence of creative ability and imagination capacity may somewhat seem, by all accounts, to be a component of this circumstance of discovering nothing to compose or talk.

Denote that the word spontaneous creation in our test recommends the capacity to make or deliver new things without premeditation on previous learning and that the word innovativeness proposes the capacity to make or deliver new things utilizing the creative ability on prior information. The information ought to be acknowledged as the tall tales here.

In language teaching, it is basic to enhance foreign language students' four fundamental abilities perusing, composing, talking and tuning in target language. In spite of the fact that the course books we utilize for the most part give every one of those fundamental abilities, we require supplementary materials in a few conditions. In the trial composing and talking aptitudes are issued worried with the accompanying viewpoints: Firstly, two abilities composing and talking are beneficial abilities and students may require fairly innovativeness capacity to give them.

Innovativeness enables students to use the learning picked up as they need. Tall tales can be utilized for this point because of their qualities. Secondly, an instructor, who wants to take students' thoughtfulness regarding the exercise and to make it pleasant while teaching those aptitudes, requires thoughts that reinforce students' energy and appropriate materials for this desire. Subsequently, tall tales are valuable from these perspectives and helpful too. We have planned a few exercises, activities and test lessons on exploratory writing and improvisational talking with a specific end goal to exhibit how to use children's stories in EFL classrooms and looked through their impacts on students' learning and change of lessons.

While instructors need students to talk or compose even about straightforward subjects, for example, their adolescence, main residence or companions, they by and large say that there is nothing in their psyche to compose or they don't realize what they will tell. It appears to be likely that this situation doesn't change in students' first language and it ought to be considered in the differential reasons. Furthermore, it is one of the fundamental focuses to be energetic about language figuring out how to succeed. By and by, language students may lose their inspiration quickly. To maintain a strategic distance from this inconvenience teachers by and large need charming course materials. Children's stories are adored by everyone that is the reason it is viewed as that they are really advantageous to give the dependable inspiration to the two instructors and students in language teaching. In the wake of having the students arranged through tall tales in an inventive climate.

Enhancements in the students' composition and talking aptitudes are normal, when they are given additional fable exercises notwithstanding their standard class work.

Improvement in students' inventive self-articulation is not out of the ordinary through experimental writing and improvisational talking exercises.

When learning English as a foreign language, students need to develop the four most important skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. At the same time, they need to think independently, to learn to be creative, to follow their inspiration and interest, to learn what they want to know, to learn how to find that information, to learn how to do research, how to present their ideas to others, how to communicate conclusions and how to develop personal responsibility (Holmes, 2004, p. 5). According to some authors (E.g. Holmes, 2004), this approach is much more effective than the old-school approach that implied:

Memorizing lists of facts

Making ticks on multiple Choice sheets

Following orders like cadets

Showing no independence and

No ability to think for themselves

No ability to share in decision-making and

No experience in sharing responsibility (Holmes, 2004, p. 7).

Another important point of view that Holmes (2004) has expressed is related to the teacher’s attitude during class. In his opinion, the cornerstones of student-centred learning are:

Task-based learning means helping the students choose a job that they want to do and then let them go out and do it, individually, on their own or within peer-learning a group.

Student-centered learning means allowing the students the freedom to work on topics of their own choosing, within reasonable guidelines, in accordance with the body of knowledge.

Self-access learning means letting the students go out and find their own information on their topics from anywhere they can, such as the Internet, books, journals, magazines, newspapers, interviews, and etc.

Group Activities means allowing the students to form groups of four or five in which they will share the responsibility of getting-the-job-done and of doing the planning, preparation and presentation of their accumulated information as a team, each with an assigned task to fulfil, so they can learn from working with others and from the constructive comments the teacher makes in helping them through the steps of the process.

3.2 Speaking Activities at Work

Most of the communication that takes place in real life situation is oral for example either face to face or telephonic. Learners need to develop this skill of speaking for their existence. In the process of acquisition of the mother tongue, listening and speaking come naturally. It is because the child is exposed to the language all through the day. He absorbs the sounds and speaks the language quite naturally. But, while learning second language like English, the learner learns the skills of reading and writing first. He has to put a lot of effort in speaking the language.

Speaking is the skill that seems intuitively the most important because people who know a language are referred to as speakers of the language. Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech are an important component of a language class.

A successful speaking activity in the classroom has the following characteristics: learners talk as much as possible, the participation is even and the classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants, all students get a chance to speak, students’ motivation is high and they are interested in the topic, language is of an acceptable level and learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant and easily comprehensible to each other. However, teachers always have to face some problems with speaking activities like inhibition or the feeling that the students have nothing to say, low or uneven participation and the greatest difficulty, the problem with the use of mother tongue.

There are a number of things that the teacher can do to help to solve some of these problems. Group work, for instance increases the amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time and also lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the class. One downside of the group work is that the teacher cannot supervise all learners and sometimes utterances will be incorrect and learners may sometimes slip into their native language. Even so, the amount of time remaining for oral practice is likely to be far more than in the full-class set-up. Another thing that teachers can do is to base the activity on easy language.

Generally, the level of language should be lower than that used in intensive language-learning activities. This language should be easily recalled and produced by the participants so that they can speak fluently with the minimum of hesitation. It is a good idea to teach or review vocabulary before the activity starts. The teacher can also make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest. Both the tourism and commerce offer a wide variety of topics that are possibly used at listening and later on can be continued as speaking activities. While working with the topics related to tourism and commerce the teacher can also give some vocabulary together with the instructions and later on ask students to use the target language.

Some discussions are provoked or introduced by short recorded texts or interviews. After a listening exercise, Penny Ur (1991) suggests as a follow up continuing with a speaking exercise. This exercise can be of two types either topic based or task based. The topic based is one to which learners can relate using ideas from their own experience and knowledge. A topic centred discussion can be done as a formal debate where an idea is proposed and opposed by other speakers. A task based exercise is goal-oriented; it requires the group or pair to achieve an objective that is an observable result. This result can be attained only by interaction between participants.

There are a set of different exercises that can be used by teachers at various levels. These exercises might be of great help for students studying in vocational schools, who later on intend to work in the tourism and commerce industry, where they always have to face situations when communication is essential. Analysing the student’s needs, they will have to be able to deal with many situations in which they may find themselves in their work where they have to be effective English speakers, cope with unexpected occurrences, not only the predictable ones. Having these jobs they have to be able to engage in conversations with clients, offer them advice and reassurance, speak to others on their behalf and so on. Anyone who deals with visitors, customers, clients, tourists needs to be able to give directions, recommend products or services, talk about local places and customs, and explain local habits and rules while using English as a lingua franca with foreign people.

Teachers should always encourage students to actively participate in role play activities. In these activities they are asked to play a role in order to simulate the kind of situations in which they may find themselves when dealing with customers or guests. This is an ideal way of preparing for real-life situations in which students might find themselves in their work. The good side of this type of activity is that they have the chance to experience both roles either the member of staff or the guest or client. Students can actually learn a lot from playing both roles. If they play the role of a customer they get an insight into how members of staff ought to behave and speak, and enables them to give useful feedback afterwards to the member of staff about the way he or she has dealt with them. It is good if the role plays also involve telephone conversations. Students should also try to simulate the essential fact that they are not able to see the person they are talking to, therefore they should sit back-to-back and have to communicate with their voice not gestures or eye contact.

Discussions are designed to best work in small groups. Even though this type of exercise has its own disadvantages and it has no direct relevance to dealing with guests or clients, discussion is an ideal way of helping students to develop their confidence and fluency in conversation. Particularly in small groups discussion gives a good chance to use and consolidate the vocabulary that they have encountered.

Most of the course books contain a lot of units with topics that deal with situations related to either tourism or commerce. If we take for example tourism we can easily say that there is no course book that would not have covered speaking activities or questions related to holiday types, dialogues at a travel agent, booking holidays or plane tickets. We often have questions related to students’ last holiday, dealing with complaints at a hotel or a restaurant. In this way these topics can easily be covered even if the teacher does not have a specific course book designed for students learning travel or tourism. The same thing applies to business as we often find topics related to buying or selling products, asking for information or complaining about a certain product. Telephone conversations are also very often present in books with different tasks, like filling in certain lines or finishing the dialogue and acting it out. In this case drama exercises can help students learn better pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure and also reinforce the language that has been learnt. Drama improves oral communication, it provides opportunity for the student to be involved actively. If we analyse it deeply, drama is communication because it concentrates on the predominant language that is present in our daily life. Experiencing different roles, students will be able to understand how language can be either a bond or a barrier between people.

Every opportunity for speaking in the classroom should be taken, right from the arrival of the teacher in the classroom the target language should be used. Students should learn to follow the teacher, understand and use instructions. Speaking is not only limited to this, rather it is a more complex activity and combined with listening exercises can provide variety to the speaking activities and in the same time they raise students’ interest and motivation.

A great deal of the language teacher’s time and attention is devoted to assessing the progress pupils make. In teaching and testing, it is traditional to speak of the four skills and assess them separately. The simplification is intended to make learning and assessment more efficient by focusing on one type of skill at a time. All the skills are often used more or less at the same time and even in teaching and testing learners may be asked to read or listen to something before they start to interact with each other. Speaking skills are an important part of the curriculum in language teaching, and this makes them an important object of the assessment.

Assessing speaking is challenging because there are many factors that influence the teacher’s impression of how well someone can speak a language and because we expect students to be accurate. Many speaking tests clearly concentrate on spoken interaction or spoken production and avoid mixing extended reading, writing or listening activities with the speaking tasks. Other test types, mainly the task-based ones explicitly include tasks that are frequent in the target language-use situation and that involve combinations of reading, listening or writing activities with speaking. These are called integrated tasks and they are used with the motivation to focus on more language use in the test. If the students do well on these tasks, they have shown that they process the skills and abilities required in the situation. On the other hand if they do not, it is not clear whether it is reading or speaking skill that the student failed to acquire.

The most common way of assessing speaking is in live, face-to-face interaction. This can be done in several configurations: one-to-one interview, paired tasks between students and group testing. It is very rare that live interaction is tested through the telephone or through a video conference. This is only done if it is difficult to bring the tester and the student face-to-face for geographical reasons. However, this can be done for a job testing, to see how well the examinee can handle himself or herself on the phone.

The main characteristic of the live test mode is that the interaction in it is two-directional. Each speaker has to react to the other speaker’s affirmation and if there is need for clarification or other modification, these can be done. It is spoken interaction that is assessed.

Oral presentation test is one directional. The examinee is expected to accommodate to the task, which only covers some aspects of interactive speaking and the construct of this is more clearly concerned with spoken production. These tests often include monologist speaking tasks, where one speaker produces a long turn alone without interacting with other speakers.

One question that researchers have tried to answer about the two testing modes is how far they test the same skill. Studies have indicated that there is a considerable overlap, in the sense that people who score high in one mode also score high in the other. However, as discourse events and assessment experiences, the two modes differ. When the examinees sit the oral presentation exam, their language is a little more literate and less oral-like, and many of them feel anxious about the test because everything they say is analysed and the only channel they have for communication is speaking, no gestures or expressions should be used. Nevertheless, many examinees also feel that an oral presentation test can be a good test of their speaking skill, even if they prefer interaction testing.

In a practical sense, a recording tests is unlikely to be used for classroom assessment due to the amount of work that it requires. For formal tests it is a possibility to arrange tape-base testing, especially for the final exams. At the final exam in our testing system it is a requirement to include both modes in order to get the best of both oral presentation and live interaction.

While testing the productive skills of speaking following criteria such as fluency, accuracy, pronunciation, accent, intonation, comprehension and communicative ability should be taken into consideration. To test the ability to produce correct vowels/consonants, the learners should be given minimal pairs such as: tell-tail, major-measure. Words with changing stress such as: 'photograph, pho'tographer, photo'graphic can be given to check the shift. Students should be asked to produce correct intonation of a statement order or a request. In the same time they should be asked to describe pictures, people, place, events or objects. They can also be asked to participate in a role-play to test the ability for natural communication in real life situations or to participate in group discussions to test their communicative abilities following the conventions of turn taking, asking for their opinions, interrupting, agreeing, and disagreeing in a polite way. The teacher must check that they speak intelligibly and confidently. They can also be asked to make announcements, narrate anecdotes and jokes etc.

Speaking scores express how well the examinees can speak the language that is being tested. They usually take the form of numbers, but there may also be categories like excellent, fair, etc. In addition to the plain score is usually a shorter or longer statement that describes what each score means and a series of statements from lowest to highest constitutes. The Common European Framework of Reference (CEF- Council of Europe, 2001) is a resource for language education which is intended to help learners, teachers and assessors set goals for language learning and give them support to reach them. This contains a range of illustrative descriptors of language ability, including some for speaking. These descriptors can be used as a basis for creating test-specific criteria. The CEF has six levels: two are basic – A1 and A2, two are independent – B1 and B2 and two are proficient – C1 and C2. These scales have five criteria and these describe what the learners actually do. These descriptors have been written for general purposes because these focus on language from the perspective of interactive communication. The five criteria of the speaking test is: global achievement; grammar and vocabulary; discourse management; pronunciation; interactive communication.

• Global achievement: the students are expected to handle communication on a range of familiar topics with little hesitation whereas accuracy and appropriate linguistic resources are also tested.

• Grammar and vocabulary or grammatical and lexical resource: in this category students are scored for the accurate and appropriate use of syntactic forms and vocabulary to meet the requirements of the task.

• Discourse management: students are marked for their ability to express ideas and opinions in a coherent and connected way. Students are expected to construct sentences and produce utterances to convey information to express and support opinions. Good marks are awarded for coherent flow of language with an appropriate range of linguistic resources over several utterance.

• Pronunciation: refers to the candidate’s ability to produce comprehensible utterances to meet task requirements.

• Interactive communication: refers to the student’s ability to interact with the interlocutor using appropriate speed and rhythm as well as to use functional language and strategies to maintain and repair interaction.

Thornbury (Thornbury, 2002, p. 129) summarized the marking schemes for the overall oral production according to which the 6 assessment levels have the following requirements:

• C2: Can produce clear, smoothly flowing well-structured speech with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points.

• C1: Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on complex subjects, integrating sub-themes, developing particular points and rounding-off with an appropriate conclusion.

• B2: Can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations with appropriate highlighting of significant points and relevant supporting detail. Can give clear, detailed descriptions and preservations on a wide range of subjects related to his/her field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples.

• B1: Can reasonably fluently sustain straightforward description of one of a variety of subjects with his/her field of interest, presenting it as a linear sequence of points.

• A2: Can give a simple description or presentation of people, living or working conditions, daily routines, likes/dislikes etc. as a short series of simple phrases and sentences linked into a list.

• A1: Can produce simple mainly isolated phrases about people and places.

According to Holmes (2004), the warm-up speaking activities are very important in pre-intermediate classrooms, as they can help the teacher and the students to know each other in a rather informal way. In this phase, two types of tasks can be given. The first one consists in interviewing one-another, while the second one implies basic games. An activity that could be put in practice in this case is an interview, during which students can be paired and can conduct interviews in English, asking questions such as:

What is your name?

What is your nickname?

What is your birthdate?

What is your place of birth?

Who are your family members?

Where do you go to school?

What skills do you have?

What are your hobbies?

Where did you travel?

What makes you unique?

The teacher can also be part of the interview in the warm-up phase. The students can gather in a circle and note down 20 different question that will ask the teacher in English. When students start asking the questions, they should not repeat the questions that have already been asked.

Klippel (1984) also proposes a set of activities that can be constructive in the warm-up phase, as seen in Figure 4.

Warming up exercises (Klippel, 1984)

Figure 4

The warm up phase can be followed by a number of creative exercises that determine students to start using more and more English words and put them in a sentence. The game Find someone who is interactive and might also represent a way of learning by having fun. In this exercise, every student must stand up and walk around the room, asking the other students about the information below, asking and answering only in English and using only full sentences. For example, the teacher could say: Find someone who has been to Chicago. Next, the student can ask the question to anyone in the class.

Example:

Question: “Kai, have you been to Chicago?”

Answer: “Yes, I have been to Chicago.”

Or “Nobody has been to Chicago.”

Other examples of questions can be:

Find someone who

Doesn’t like rock music.

Doesn’t smoke.

Never drinks alcohol.

Never tells a lie.

Doesn’t eat beef.

Has never been to Ranong.

Doesn’t have a TV.

Can do Thai dancing.

Cannot cook.

Can drive a motorcycle.

Can understand Chinese.

Wants to learn Japanese.

Can program a computer.

Likes computer games.

Can use Microsoft Word.

Has a bank account.

Never takes a taxi.

Usually takes the bus.

Doesn’t live at home.

Gets up at 4:30 a.m.

When everyone has finished asking questions and has written down the names of which students have done what, then, the teacher can position the students in a circle, ask them questions such as the above and correct their grammar mistakes as they speak.

Simon says… is another game that is suitable for young learners who learn English at a pre-intermediate or intermediate level. During this game, all students must stand in a circle and listen to the commands of the teacher, who could say: Simon says: close your eyes or Simon says: Hold your nose. Everyone in the circle must do whatever Simon says. In order for them to follow the order, they must understand what Simon asks, which is why listening carefully is crucial.

An activity during which students have to make up a story is also creative and puts their skills in practice. During such an exercise, they are forced to speak; otherwise the story cannot be created. When it comes to stories, there are endless possibilities as to how it should begin or end. Holmes (2004) proposes a few plots that should be continued by each student when their turn comes:

Once there was a beautiful young girl of eighteen.

It had always been her dream to study at English at Chula.

She did everything she could to prepare herself.

She knew the entrance exam would be very important.

Her family sent her to the British Council for extra lessons.

They spared no expense when it came to her education.

She often told her friends that she had no time for fun.

The entrance exam was the only thing she thought of.

She never thought about boys or falling in love.

She never took time to listen to music or go dancing.

She never went to the movies or watched TV.

Half the time she even neglected to eat regular meals.

She studied so much that she neglected to exercise.

She was so stressed that she always had trouble sleeping at night.

In the weeks before the entrance exam she was very nervous.

She worried so much that her friends were concerned about her.

Some people even thought that she might go crazy.

Towards the end, she even began to lose weight and look a little strange.

Eventually, however, she did extremely well on the entrance exam.

She was filled with joy when she won a place in the Faculty of Arts at Chula (Holmes, 2004, p. 32)

Can you guess who I am is another exercise that can challenge students and determine them to use words in English that they have recently learned, but are not aware that they know. By playing this game, they could start using them naturally. During this game, one of the students has to pretend to be someone else or something else and the other students have to guess who they are by asking questions such as:

Do you travel in outer space?

Do you live in a big city?

Do you have a family?

Do you like to eat spinach?

Do you wear a mask?

Do you live in an ancient castle?

Do you like to suck people’s blood?

Can you climb up the sides of buildings?

Are you human?

Do you sometimes talk to animals?

Can you blow fire out of your nostrils?

Have you lived for thousands of years?

Do you have horns?

Can you make yourself invisible?

Are you a child?

Are you the leader of a group of warriors?

Can you tell what other people are thinking?

Do you have X ray vision?

Can you fly?

Do you have a girlfriend?

Do you change identity?

Are you strong and muscular?

Are you very handsome?

Do you come from the planet Krypton?

Are you Superman? (Holmes, 2004, p.35)

The Detective game is also recommended in classrooms with pre-intermediate and intermediate students. This is a game where you put three people at the front of the room, who all claim to have had the same unusual experience. Like a girl who once went into the men’s restroom by mistake and felt quite embarrassed. Only one of them has had the true experience and the other two are imposters. The true girl must report the truth. The other two must make up their answers based on their imaginations. This means they are lying. Your job is to question the girls, as though you were detectives, to find out which two are lying and which one is the true person. Every class member asks one question, which all three girls must answer as though they had actually had the experience themselves and could tell the actual details the way they had experienced them. Detectives should be able to ask clever enough questions to catch the two imposters, because they should be able to hear when suspects don’t know what to say because they were not actually at the scene to remember and report on what really happened (Holmes, 2004, p. 39).

These are four examples of speaking activities that a teacher can initiate with her students, in order to develop both their ability to speak and their ability to listen. It becomes interesting for the teacher to observe the evolution of the students’ skills when repeating the games regularly, yet using advanced expressions, complex words and more difficult scenarios. Monitoring the students’ progress and praising them is essential in order to obtain good results.

Except for practical games that prove to be a lot of fun for students, word games and other activities that mostly involve the intellect of the students are very effective. For example, the teacher can ask students to think of related words and give a list of words that have easy synonyms.

Recognizing noises and imitating them is another exercise that stimulates the students’ thinking and that determines them to find their words. For instance, the teacher can ask them to describe sounds produced by traffic, animals, constructions, machines, nature etc. A list of words that can be related to noises can be seen in table 1.

Words for noise recognition games

Table 1 (Holmes, 2004)

Having a dictionary at their disposal during these exercises can be helpful for the students. They can search for the words that they do not understand and write them down.

Guessing games are also very popular in classrooms were the teacher puts an emphasis on teaching speaking skills. Klippel (1984) proposes a few activities that can be adapted according to the class’s needs, as it can be seen in Figure 5.

Examples of guessing games (Klippel, 1984)

Figure 5

Role play is an activity that plays an important part in the teaching process, which is why it is recommended to involve students in such activities that stimulate their creativity, help them learn new words, phrases and expressions. Role plays are great ways of creating dialogues, while pretending to be someone else. For instance, a real-life situation that is often encountered in the daily routine can be the easiest way of introducing students to role play, such as pretending to be a customer and a shop assistant. Roles and dialogues can be read from a piece of paper or can be improvised, depending on the preferences of the teacher and students, on the level of engagement that they are used to and their age.

This type of activity is well-known for its effectiveness in learning English as a second language. Its effects are being described by most specialty authors (E.g. Scott & Ytreberg, 1990), who claim that they are useful because:

Students start speaking in first and second person, while texts are often in the third person

Students learn to ask questions and answer at the same time

They learn to use bits of language and to reply correctly

They use more than words and learn how to adjust their tone of voice, stress, intonation, facial expressions etc.

They are encouraged to chat naturally (Scott & Ytreberg, 1990, p. 42)

Penny Ur (1991) also encourages such activities, but also proposes interactional talk, long turns, the simulation of varied situations, feelings and relationships in order for students to be able to create their spoken discourse. By interactional talk, the author refers specifically to role plays and dialogues. Practising speaking through long turns can be effective when telling stories, jokes, describing a person or a place in detail, recounting the plot of a movie or a book, giving a short lecture of talk, arguing a case and so on. Simulating various situations, feelings and relationships also resumes to dialogues and role play, which is a traditional language-learning technique.

There is an endless list of activities that teachers can bring into the classroom in order to teach pre-intermediate and intermediate students speaking skills, yet not all of them can be practiced during a semester or even a whole year. Giving this fact that depends upon the available time that the teacher has, the frequency of the classes and the school curricula, a well-thought plan must be put in place. The warm-up activities, getting to know each other and the early assessments are extremely important in determining how to conceive the plan. The final strategy will be based on the language level, the frequency of interaction that students have in the English language and the level that they must achieve by the end of the courses.

Throughout the year, monitoring the students’ performance, improvement and evolution is crucial, yet the teacher cannot have a full and unbiased view without assessing them formally. Giving the fact that, in this context, the teacher focuses on speaking skills, the testing should take place orally, as there isn’t any other way of establishing the talking skills of a pupil. To do that, interviewing them in front of the class is the most frequent assessment technique, but role plays, group discussions, monologues, picture descriptions are also effective methods that can help the teacher understand the level of language of a student.

Each and every activity during a language class should have a specific linguistic purpose either to give information in order to express emotions or to extract information from context. The purpose of many language teaching texts is to present language which never occurs outside the language class. For students it is essential to teach language which is studied for a purpose other than language itself. If the student is interested in a certain sport then he or she will be motivated to learn new vocabulary to that type of sport rather than learn a certain grammatical structure. The most effective teaching is to set realistic tasks where they use language for a purpose. Many students who do not succeed in acquiring language are de-motivated by an approach based on learning language and are highly motivated by an approach which is based on realistic tasks.

Students can have difficulties in understanding language if the text is way too long and the task is too complicated for them. Therefore the teachers have to be careful while teaching skills to break down large tasks into smaller ones and to select the correct length of the text. By text we can mean either a printed or a recorded one.

If we analyse traditional and modern language teaching we can realize that traditional language teaching has concentrated too much on understanding the sentence. Modern language teaching has shown that this is not sufficient. The reasons that were brought up demonstrated that if the students understand individual sentences they will not necessarily be able to transfer knowledge to understanding whole printed texts. A good example for this would be the paragraph structure. Paragraphs usually begin with topic sentences which are expanded and explained further in writing. These do not occur in other writings, therefore if the student does not understand structures, linking phrases, functions but can translate a sentence word by word, his or her learning will not be effective for long term. Furthermore, we can apply this theory also to speaking, while some structures are used only for asking information others only for responses. The final aim is that the student can communicate: ask for information and give information. Another difficulty that we encounter at speaking is that people very rarely speak in full sentences. It might happen that the speaker uses only certain phrases, or he or she might be interrupted by the other speaker. In the same time we can say that natural speaking is not a disorganised jumble of phrases, but on the contrary it is very carefully structured which depends on the speakers.

To sum up, natural language is structured at different levels: phrases, sentences, paragraphs and even larger units for instance whole chapters of a book or whole presentations. Traditional language teaching has tended to concentrate on only the sentence and the pronunciation. However, if teachers’ aim is to reflect what language really is and how it is used, they need to be aware of a wider range of skills that students need in order to encode and decode language.

Almost all the language skills, both receptive and productive can be broken down into sub-skills with the use of certain questions. Teachers must be conscious that it is unrealistic to expect from students to go from writing a sentence to writing an essay, or from answering to a question in one sentence to engaging into a natural conversation. Teachers should help students by explaining the specific structure of the paragraph and also by showing how to link what they have said to the previous speaker. Teaching should be built from small units to larger ones focusing on developing both receptive and productive skills.

There cannot be a good rule for the best order of teaching the four skills. However, due to the difficulty of spelling that might be confusing while teaching writing, it is suggested to start with listening, then follow with speaking, reading and finally writing. This sequence is not the only one to employ in most school systems. In many schools teaching starts with writing skills, only later on is it continued with listening and subsequently with speaking.

While we analyse how we started learning our mother tongue we can obviously answer the question that as little children we primarily start with listening. Modern theoreticians make a distinction between language learning which is a conscious activity and language acquisition which is an unconscious activity. Some experiments have shown that it is possible to teach language successfully while we require very little of the productive skills from the students during the early stages of teaching. If we carefully select comprehensible reading and listening texts, we can confirm that the students are motivated and this helps them to be confident in their own ability to manage to learn the foreign language. Later on these students are expected to do better than average in productive skills.

Teaching writing before speaking can cause a series of difficulties. A sound can often be represented by several spellings, therefore if we first start teaching writing the students can easily become confused and have a series of difficulties in differentiating similar sounds. However, teachers are suggested not to be dogmatic with the sequence of language skills and to bear in mind the primacy of listening.

Old-fashioned syllabuses assumed that language learning was linear and thus the structures of the languages were presented in single sequences. Nowadays this assumption is not relevant anymore. The new concept claims that the same language items need to be studied again and again throughout the course. There are three main reasons that support this idea:

All students forget, therefore straightaway revision is necessary from time to time;

Other uses of certain structures need to be studied;

As the learners advance they need to deepen their understanding and teachers must be prepared to return to certain fundamental problems and examine them.

The cyclical nature of language learning is not confined to structure, but it relates to all areas of language learning. As an example we could take speaking and pronunciation. We cannot take for sure that once we practiced a language structure students will not ever misuse certain structures or mispronounce certain words. Therefore, if we come back to practise the same skill over and over again students not only learn to simply answer but they also learn to take more initiative. The result of this practise is reflected not from week to week, but with a short sequence within a single lesson. It is advisable that teachers use the communicative pair work when students have to perform their dialogues in front of the class. A practice of this kind is not finished when it has been done once, it needs to be repeated both on a short term cycle and a longer-term cycle.

Both teachers and students are aware of the fact that doing the same thing over and over again is boring. Therefore teachers have to recognise that they should not repeat exactly the same type of exercise, each exercise should be a development of the previous type of exercise. Along with varying, the exercise skills should also be varied. Due to the fact that receptive and productive skills are so closely linked to each other the practise of the skills should be also cyclical. Teachers should never spend a whole class with developing only one skill with one type of exercise because students can easily get bored and lose interest if they do not understand a certain thing.

Speaking a foreign language is a complex skill, therefore language teachers try to simplify it. Nevertheless, it is not an easy process for teachers. There are very few interesting texts that from a grammatical point of view contain only one language structure. Sometimes teachers isolate a structure in order to practise the skill. There is a danger that occurs in this case, mainly that when the teacher goes through the tricks, which are part of the examination. Unfortunately this has very little to do with the student’s ability to use a foreign language. In order to be effective, teachers should concentrate on developing both receptive and productive skills in such a sequence that facilitates language acquisition.

As mentioned before, speaking skills are some of the most difficult to acquire. In order for a student to become fluent, they need a lot of practice. Theoreticians and experience show that speaking activities that are strategically organised throughout a specific period of time, depending on the type of class that students are attending, lead to the best results. In the paragraphs that follow I will describe a variety of activities that can help students engage in conversations, starting from the most basic level to complex discussions. They are described using the same structure that includes the objectives, the language level, the organization of the class, the timeframe, procedures and variations. These activities might offer teachers the option to choose different activities depending on the purposes and needs of the class.

In the warm-up phase, which plays an important role in making students feel comfortable and getting to know each other, as well as the teacher, I propose the following activities:

Remember the name

Finding the missing part of a story

A variety of activities can be done in the warm-up phase, yet once the teacher notices that the students have become acquainted to each other and are more relaxes, they can move on to a next phase. The next phases are meant to stimulate students’ attention, their concentration, listening skills, their ability to describe one another by using adjectives, expressing their opinion etc.

Spontaneous descriptions

“Interview about myself”

What’s in my suitcase?

Guess the object

Spot the differences

The detective

Where does the teacher live?

Who am I?

How do you spell this word?

Parts of an objects

The meaning of a number

Who are your talented colleagues?

Use the word

Optimists versus pessimists

Finish the sentence

What happens if…?

Finding synonyms

What would you do if…?

The above activities can be used for teaching speaking skills, yet they can be adapted in such a way that they can become useful in teaching reading, speaking and writing skills, too. However, they are meant to develop oral skills, increase the level of confidence, expand the student’s vocabulary and develop the ability to speak fluently during basic conversations.

In order for the exercises and activities to be well-organized, teachers can use worksheets that contain lists of words, questions or statements. There are plenty of reasons why preparation is very important. Time saving is one of the most important factors, yet the strategic planning of the class also represents a priority. For instance, in the case of unfinished sentences, teachers can use stem sentences like the ones below:

My favourite cars are……………………………………………………………….

I like to play with colleagues who……………………………………………………

My favourite food is …………………………………………………………………

I would never…………………………………………………………………………

My dream is to………………………………………………………………………..

The best time of my life was when…………………………………………………..

My favourite class is ……………………………..because………………………….

I would never eat …………………………………………………………………….

When teaching speaking skills, one of the most important purposes that the teacher has is making students feel comfortable with dialogues, expressing their opinions fluently and bringing arguments or asking questions, having a discourse that can be understood easily by their interlocutor. Teaching speaking skills is more effective when certain expressions or words are being presented to students. These can be used in a variety of situations and can help create speech patterns that make communication easier. Having a dialogue vocabulary worksheet is essential for any teacher. For instance, a worksheet such as the one below can be used to teach students what to say or how to begin their statements in most situations:

Dialogue vocabulary worksheet example

Worksheet 1

Personal recommendations

Materials such as Worksheet 1 are useful in class and can be filled in with expressions that have been mentioned in class before. The most important thing while creating such a material is the translation that should be as accurate as possible, eliminating the risk of confusion.

Teachers might find worksheets to be practical during class and help them save time, which is why it is recommended to use them especially in the case of activities like Finding the missing part of a story that was described above. A worksheet that can be used during this exercise is the one below:

Finding the missing part of the story worksheet example

Worksheet 2

Personal recommendations

Questions for The Detective worksheet

Worksheet 3

Personal recommendations

Although worksheets are very useful and represent an important tool that makes working with the class more efficient, most of the exercises and activities above are meant to develop speaking skills and don’t require a lot of written material, as opposed to teaching reading or writing skills. In the above cases, interaction and speech are the most important factors that help students develop oral abilities.

Methodology

Teaching speaking skills is considered to be the most difficult and complex process, as it takes more than simply learning grammar concepts and rules or understanding the words, phrases and expressions. In order for a student to be fluent in a foreign language and to achieve good oral skills, they must show progress in the following:

Pronunciation

Vocabulary

Accuracy

Communication

Interaction

Fluency

Language testing is a common activity, especially when it comes to reading and writing and can show a student’s progress immediately. When it comes to listening and speaking skills, progress is more difficult to track, especially due to the fact that there are psychological factors involved at the moment of testing, such as self-confidence. A student might be able to speak fluently and to understand the foreign language they are studying, but perform poorly when tested, due to intense emotions or anxiety. This is the main reason why teachers should focus on increasing a student’s delivery skills.

This paper’s research focuses on the six factors mentioned above that can help a teacher grade their students accurately. During this process, the observation and analysis methodologies were applied, as well as the questionnaire, in order to reach to a conclusion regarding a class’s results after a period of teaching speaking skills.

The research was conducted over a period of 6 weeks, at the ………………… School, on a group of 15 students. I tested the 20 activities (role-play, dialogue, monologues, descriptions etc.). Giving the fact that students participated to the English class three times a week, each activity was performed once. During each class, after teaching the regular theoretical information, I engaged students in one of the activities, writing down their mistakes, improvement points and strong points. My conclusions and notes regarding the performance of students were based on a weekly comparison. At the end of the six weeks, each student received one of the below grades:

Meets expectations high – 1

Meets expectations low – 2

Slightly underperforms – 3

Does not meet expectations – 4

Based on the 6 language requirements, pronunciation, vocabulary, accuracy, Communication, interaction and fluency, I answered 6 questions organized in a short questionnaire, where I input one of the above grades. To make the data analysable, I have given each grade a number equivalent. The questions were the following:

Does the student have a better pronunciation?

Does the student know and use more words?

Does the student have a better grammar command?

Does the student feel more comfortable to speak using longer phrases?

Is the student more confident when interacting with colleagues?

Is the student more fluent than in the beginning?

The data was centralized and analysed, obtaining the below results:

Student 1 – Final evaluation

Chart 1

Student 2 – Final evaluation

Chart 2

Student 3 – Final evaluation

Chart 3

Student 4 – Final evaluation

Chart 4

Student 5 – Final evaluation

Chart 5

Student 6 – Final evaluation

Chart 6

Student 7 – Final evaluation

Chart 7

Student 8 – Final evaluation

Chart 8

Student 9 – Final evaluation

Chart 9

Student 10 – Final evaluation

Chart 10

Student 11 – Final evaluation

Chart 11

Student 11 – Final evaluation

Chart 11

Student 12 – Final evaluation

Chart 12

Student 13 – Final evaluation

Chart 13

Student 14 – Final evaluation

Chart 14

Student 15 – Final evaluation

The above charts obtained after the data analysis show that most students at pre-intermediate and intermediate level have improved their fluency, vocabulary and pronunciation, but not as much their communication, interaction skills and grammar. This trend might influence more activities that stimulate the students’ delivery skills, their understanding of the grammar mistakes they are making, as well as their desire to interact with others.

Conclusions

The main objective of education is to prepare human beings to the real world. From born to death, we do many things with our own efforts to adapt ourselves to this world that we live in. We watch, analyse, learn, synthesize and then improvise, create on this pre-existing knowledge to cope with the situations. Life has many challenging conditions that require many abilities as Montuori says that (…) life in a complex world, and life which reflects and values the complexity of both self and world, requires the ability to improvise – to deal with, and indeed to create, the unforeseen, the surprise (….) and goes on (…) Life is participation and participation is creation and improvisation, because life doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurs always in a network of (…). and of organization, in a constant play of order, disorder and organization and ongoing learning( ….) . To conclude, the question of why we teach or learn a foreign language can be answered in many ways. Language is a precious tool for communication and understanding the world. It seems likely that when it is useful for our own life and only if it is used effectively, it will be meaningful to learn a language.

In a globalized world, there is a pressing need for a common language of communication, which makes possible to overcome interlingual and intercultural barriers. Undoubtedly, due to its wide spread in the world, English became a global language. A basic knowledge of it is almost an obligatory requirement for everyone. It is not only used in the information technology, but it is also required is various branches of the business industry like commerce, economics, travel, tourism etc. In order to keep up with the basic requirements of a job, some control of English is advisable for everyone.

Speaking remains also, not all the time but often, the main obstacle that prevents them to get what they want. Many of the learners of English language come to know grammar very well, to handle vocabulary items, phrases and structures, to write correctly but they found rather difficult to express themselves fluently and efficiently in English. Not many of the learners have the possibility to use and practice English outside the classroom and to enjoy talking and speaking freely and in a natural way using it. Even more, most of them find rather difficult to do this in the classroom too, in front of their classmates, they become all of a sudden anxious and shy and perceive the act of speaking as a pressure and a stressing situation.

This study aimed to show the ways in which students’ communicative skills can be developed. By using and applying role-plays, creative and stimulating game, as well as drama and fun, by creating an enjoyable and attractive setting and atmosphere during speaking class students can be activated and set into an interesting speaking and communicative environment.

Determining why teaching English using modern techniques is highly important, determining the future of English and the importance of learning a second language, all represented objectives of this paper that have been fulfilled, with the help of relevant specialty literature and the support that renowned authors have provided for teachers all over the world. The English language has a global importance nowadays and its role in our society cannot be ignored. The importance of learning a second language, the impact of language learning over a person’s development must be the primary purpose of learning and teaching English as a foreign language. The differences between traditional and modern English teaching methods and the requirements of effective teaching, which is why throughout this thesis, I highlighted the aspects that can lead to high-quality teaching.

In conclusion, teaching speaking skills using the most effective techniques should represent a priority for any teacher that teaches classes of pre-intermediate and intermediate students, as this skill enables them to communicate, understand and be understood, along with the other three main skills: listening, reading and writing.

Bibliography

Barkley, F. Elizabeth. Cross, Patricia K. Howell-Major, Claire. Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, John Wiley & Sons, 2004

Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. Fourth Edition. Hodden Education. London, 2008

Council of Europe, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Modern Languages Division, Strasbourg, 2001

Crystal, David. English as a Global Language, Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003

Erin, Carrie. British is professional, American is urban’: attitudes towards English reference accents in Spain. In International Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 27, Issue 2. 2016

Gabrielatos, C. Receptive Skills with Young Learners. In Gika, A.-S. & Berwick, D. (eds.) 1998, Working with Young Learners: A way ahead. Whitstable, Kent: IATEFL, pp. 52-59

Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of English Language Teaching. Third Edition. Longman, 2001

Holmes, David. Speaking Activities for the Classroom. Unknown Publication, 2004

Kerswill, Paul. Kerswill, Paul. RP, Standard English and the standard/non-standard relationship. In David Britain (ed.) Language in the British Isles (2nd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Klippel, Friederike. Keep Talking. Communicative Fluency Activities for Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press. London, 1984

Littlewood, William. Foreign and Second Language Learning. Language Acquisition Research and Its Implications for the Classroom. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984

Mahu, Diana-Petruța. Why is Learning English so Beneficial Nowadays? În Short Contributions – Perspectives on Communication, Vol. 2, No. 4, October/Decmber 2012 pp. 374-376

McDonough, Jo. Shaw, Christopher. Materials and Methods in ELT. Wiley, 1993

Montuori, Alfonso. The Complexity of Improvisation and the Improvisation of Complexity: Social Science, Art and Creativity, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2003

Mundhe, B. Ganesh. Teaching Receptive And Productive Language Skills With The Help Of Techniques. In Pune Research: An International Journal in English, Vol. 1, Issue 2. 2015

Nunan, David. Language Teaching Methodology. A textbook for teachers. Prentice Hall, 1991

Scrivener, Jim. Learning Teaching. A Guidebook for English Language Teachers Second Edition. Macmillan, 2005

Thornbury, Scott. How to Teach Vocabulary. Pearson Limited Education. Essex, 2002

Tompkins, G. E. Teaching writing: Balancing process and product. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Publishing Company. 1990

Trudgill, Peter. Standard English: what it isn’t. In Tony Bex & Richard J. Watts eds. Standard English: the widening debate. London: Routledge, 1999, Revised Version, 2011, pp. 117-128

Ur, Penny. A Course in Language Teaching. Practice and Theory. Cambridge University Press, 1991

Wallace, J. Michael. Bau Tzong-Ho. Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge University Press, 1991

Widiati, U., Bambang, Y. C. The Teaching of EFL Speaking in the Indonesian Context: the State of the Art. Bahasa dan Seni. No. 2 p. 269-292, 2006

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijal.12139/pdf, accessed in April 2018

https://www.britishcouncil.it/en/exam/why/english-language-levels-cefr, Accessed in April 2018

http://lagb-education.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEtrudgill2011.pdf, accessed in April 2018

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TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS TO PRE-INTERMEDIATE AND INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS

INTRODUCTION

It is a well-known fact that nowadays, English is a global language, also known as lingua franca. With more than 375 million native English speakers and approximately 750 million speakers that learn English as a second language (Reddy, 2016:179), it becomes clear that communication is facilitated at all levels and in all fields by English. Learning English has become a priority in schools worldwide, yet the process of teaching this language has changed while trying to adapt more effective techniques and methods. As any other second language, English has been taught using traditional methodology for the past decades. Throughout this thesis, I will study and analyse the way the perspective over language learning has changed and adapted to the students’ needs.

There are several important reasons why teaching English as a second language is crucial. Being able to communicate with foreigners all over the world, adopting a language that eases the understanding of information and data from different fields of activity, finding employment opportunities and being a part of an interconnected world are just a few reasons why all individuals should learn English. In the twenty-first century, speaking, reading, writing and understanding the English language is essential and these four macro language skills are best learned in the early stages of education.

This paper focuses on an important topic of language learning: teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students. As various authors claim, learning English as a foreign language allows you to fully appreciate the culture and context of a country and widens your understanding (Mahu, 2012, p. 374). I strongly believe that language learning is a vital tool in a person’s development, which is why I have chosen to analyse this topic in depth. When looking at English as a second language, it becomes easy to observe that in order to communicate efficiently, productive skills such as speaking and writing, give individuals the ability to express themselves with ease. In this paper, I have chosen to focus on speaking skills and the methodology that can be approached by professional teachers in order to ensure a proper learning process that leads to an overall improved communication, to achieving intellectual benefits and to enhance career opportunities from young ages.

In this thesis, I will mostly refer to methodologies that can be used to teach English to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, with a focus on young individuals, such as children or teenagers, as these are basic levels that ensure the ability to deepen the study of English as a second language. Also, starting from these levels, teaching approaches can be classified as effective or ineffective. At this point, students have the ability to question a particular method and send feedback.

The motivation behind the choice of this topic is mainly the importance of learning the English language, as well as the importance of effective teaching, so that students can acquire strong speaking skills that prepare them for thriving intellectual and career paths. The number of English speakers worldwide is continuously increasing ever since this language has been declared lingua franca.

Determining why teaching English using modern techniques is highly important, determining the future of English and the importance of learning a second language, all represent objectives of this paper. In order to establish whether or not teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students should be a teacher’s primary focus represents the hypothesis of this thesis and will be confirmed or disproved in the last chapter, Conclusions. I will attempt to confirm this hypothesis by highlighting various topics, such as the global importance of English, the importance of learning a second language, the impact of language learning over a person’s development, the differences between traditional and modern English teaching methods and the requirements of effective teaching. Moreover, I will bring into discussion the language teaching systems, the focus of teachers over the language’s grammar, vocabulary and progress, while also touching a sensitive subject such as the various categories of learners.

Proving that teaching speaking skills effectively has a great impact over a person’s education is also one of the objectives of this paper. Pre-intermediate and intermediate students have a different understanding of the English language, although in many teachers’ view, their language notions and knowledge is similar. The pre-intermediate level, also categorized as A2 is defined by a basic understanding of English. According to the British Council and the CEFR (Common European Framework for Reference of Languages), A2 students can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to common situations such as personal information, shopping or local geography. Students with this level are mostly children or persons that have a first contact with the English language. On the other hand, the intermediate level, also categorized as B1, is defined by a basic understanding of the language that gives students the ability to communicate in familiar situations. B1 students are usually able to speak English while traveling, at work or at school and can describe their experiences in simple words fluently. Therefore, there is an entire level that separates A2 and B1 students, who cannot be included in the same learning category when being taught English or any other second language. As I will describe in Chapter II and III of this thesis, there are essential steps that must be taken throughout the learning process that ensure the transition from one level to the other in terms of speaking skills. Skipping a step is neither productive, nor efficient and can create knowledge gaps. Assessing the language level before starting teaching any English skills is important for both the teacher and the student. Before emphasizing the most effective teaching techniques for pre-intermediate and intermediate students in the following chapters, I also find it important to determine what the most practical assessment method is. Based on my findings, I will be able to reach to a conclusion regarding the evolution of teaching speaking skills methods.

One of the most important questions that will be answered in this thesis is how do students learn a language? In my attempt to give a complete answer to this question, I will refer to language study techniques, to palpable progress, exposure, output and the noticing ability of both students and teachers. Also, I will focus on different types of students, as well as on different types of English teachers. In this context, I will highlight the limitations of teaching speaking skills to children and teenage students, with the purpose of eliminating traditional language learning gaps and filling them with the findings of linguists and researchers.

In order to confirm or disprove the above mentioned hypothesis, I will use the observation as research method, as it seems to be the most effective method when referring to language learning. This first method will include classroom observation and an appeal to recent studies and specialty authors. A secondary method that I will use in the third chapter is the experiment. This method will help me study groups of students that are taught English teaching skills in different ways and their final results. An interaction and a conversation analysis will be conducted and described in the last part of this thesis.

The structure of this paper is simple, being divided into three major chapters. Chapter I represents the theoretical part of this thesis. It focuses on the methodological approaches in the teaching of English as foreign language. In this chapter, I will highlight the main theories of English language teaching that have shaped today’s understanding of classroom teaching and the teachers’ perspective over this matter. Chapter I also focuses on describing the communicative language teaching, by emphasizing the importance of oral communication in the process of language learning. If the first chapter’s purpose is to make a general introduction into this process, Chapter II focuses on the four macro skills that a student needs in order to learn a language: reading, listening, writing and speaking. Speaking skills are the last to be discussed, as my intention is to determine the relevance of learning other receptive and productive skills and their impact over the students’ ability to speak once the other skills have been acquired. Chapter III combines theory with practice, by referring to real life situations and classroom teaching. Teaching speaking skills to secondary school students is the main point that I will touch in this chapter. However, I will also penetrate a more complex field when bringing into discussion the speaking activities that can be used in class. In this chapter I also described the research of this paper which is based on the analysis of the students’ evolution during a six-week period of teaching speaking skills and monitoring their progress.

It is necessary to mention the limitations of this topic, as I will study and analyse a specific group of students (A2 and B1). Although this subject is extremely broad and can be discussed on a variety of levels, I have to set some boundaries which will prevent me from touching sensitive and important points, such as the accent in the English language, advanced grammar skills, presentation skills and many more. When referring to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, I have to focus on the basics of speaking skills learning and teaching. The knowledge and the students’ prior contact with the English language is limited in this case, this being the reason why the above mentioned topics cannot be analysed.

Chapter I: Methodological Approaches in the Teaching of English as Foreign Language 

Language learning is an important asset for any individual’s early development and career path. An effective language learning process cannot take place in the absence of effective teaching methods and techniques. It is a well-known fact that English is being taught in more than 100 countries around the world and that its popularity is owed to globalization.

Before discussing about some of the most important theories of English language teaching, I find it essential to make a short introduction into the chapter and highlight the reasons why English has been declared a lingua franca and why teaching it using effective methods is so important.

Understanding the difference between a “first”, “second” and “foreign” language is useful, according to David Crystal (2003), as fluency and ability should not necessarily be what differentiates these statuses. The author affirms that individuals who are born in countries where English has an official status are not always more competent than those who have been exposed to it at a much smaller scale.

In Crystal’s oppinion, it is not important how many people speak a language that becomes a lingua franca, but who those people are. From his perspective, the language dominance, the ease of learning or teaching or the language structure are not the main reasons why English is a global language, but the political, economic, technologic power of the individuals who speak it.

The fact that the United States and Great Britain have always represented great military powers represent the main reasons why this language has become worldwide known and spoken. Globalization is another important reason why English teaching has become a priority for all of the world’s countries. In Crystal’s view (2003, p.1), English itself is a symbol of globalization, diversification, progress and identity.

The English language has been declared lingua franca decades ago. The exact moment when English became a global language is uncertain, yet what is certain is that it has taken the place of other lingua francas, such as French, Spanish or Russian. According to the European Commission and the Directorate-General for Translation, a global language is necessary whenever different groups come into contact (EC, 2011 p.27).

A global language enables communities with different native languages to communicate. Ever since English has become a lingua franca, the scale of international communication has changed, becoming unprecedentedly enormous. Nowadays, it represents the working language of all international organisations and most countries of the world are promoting its use. Besides the cognitive motivation that clearly shows that language learning enables the brain to create new synapses and helps individuals of all ages have a better understanding of information, the penetration of the work field in an unparalleled way, becomes the main motivation.

Authors of linguistics literature have debated the importance of foreign language learning many times during their careers. William Littlewood (1985), for instance, reminds us of the fact that language learning is not a new topic that characterizes the interests of the modern world. It has been a major interest of the humanity for centuries. His claim is backed by examples from the ancient world, such as the Roman rhetorician Quintilian or St. Augustine. Those who have shown an interest in language learning went beyond explaining the benefits of knowledge and studied the optimal ages for language learning, stating that by nature we retain best what is learned in our tenderest years (Littlewood, 1985, p. 501). Establishing the methods and the optimal age are obviously important topics that deserve our attention. However, agreeing upon the practical purpose of language learning is even more important, as it represents the motivation behind this process.

Language learning in the twenty-first century is looked at from different perspectives comparing to the past decades. The desire and necessity of learning a second language are given by political and economic developments. Younger theoreticians focus on proving that multilingual individuals have the ability to play various roles in the modern society, especially in the academic and cognitive fields.

Going back a few decades, we must be reminded of the goal of a second or foreign language. Littlewood (1985) explains that the goal of second language learning consists of more than grammar and vocabulary, but also of language elements. He then reaches to the conclusion that second language learners must acquire a set of skills that is recognized in the academic field as communicative competence (Littlewood, 1985, p. 503). The skills or competences that he highlights are the following:

• Linguistic competence (vocabulary, grammar, semantics, phonology)

• Discourse competence (idea linking, long spoken turns, interaction, opening and closing conversations)

• Pragmatic competence (the use of linguistic resources with the purpose to interpret meanings)

• Sociolinguistic competence (awareness of the basic knowledge and cultural elements that can affect meanings)

In an attempt to establish the second language learning goals, Littlewood (1985) states that there are several motives that can be taken into consideration. The desire to improve learning and teaching is one of the motives and being able to create contact outside a community is another important goal of language learners.

When looking at the meaning of this global language from a perspective that goes beyond the academic field, today’s reality is the most important element that all language learners and teachers should consider. According to the European Commission, speaking English means being part of a global culture through which local barriers can be overcome (EC, 2011, p.27). It is the main language used in international businesses, in corporations, in fields like technology, science and in the academic world. Therefore, I drew the conclusion that not being able to speak English is probably robbing a large number of people of a long list of opportunities. Also, it makes them “deaf” and “mute” whenever traveling to a foreign country.

In 2011, there were 330 million native English speakers in the world and approximately 500 million speakers who use English as a second language. Also, there are about 1 billion speakers of English as a foreign language (EC, 2011, p.28). In this context, native speakers are a minority in an English speaking world. They are the nucleus if a higher sphere in which the next “layer” is represented by speakers with high proficiency and a third layer of speakers with low proficiency Taking this scheme into consideration, English has been defined as a contact language between individuals who do not share a common native tongue or culture (EC, 2011, p.28).

David Crystal (2003, p.61) proposes a similar scheme through which he aims to offer a clear view over the number of English speakers, as seen below.

Figure 1

The three circles of English, as proposed by David Crystal (2003)

Crystal highlights the fact that a language can be made a priority in a country’s foreign-language teaching, even though this language has no official status. He further explains that this language is usually the one which children are most likely to be taught in school. Also, he claims that English is taught in more than 100 countries in the world nowadays (Crystal, 2003, p. 5), in favour of French, Russian, Spanish and many others.

In spite of the status and popularity of English, not all countries and theoreticians approve its privileged status. In some countries, this status is rejected and criticized. Having its roots in territories that have become colonial powers throughout history, its use is rejected by promoters of indigenous languages. In 1974, Jomo Kenyatta, former president of Kenya stated that the basis of any independent government is a national language and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers (Crystal, 2003, p.124). Such arguments, similar to that of Gandhi in 1958 in which the use of English language is a form of slavery, as millions of people must learn this language in order to gain a position or participate to a trial, refer to a nation’s identity. Such nations’ leaders have a protective attitude towards their native languages. However, in their discourses, these leaders ignore the importance of self-development and access to information that is written or spoken in an international language. They, therefore, also choose to ignore or refuse globalization. As Crystal (2003, p. 127) confirms, there is a need for intelligibility that these countries refuse their people. The author also states that the rejection of English has important consequences for the identity of a nation.

All of the above perspectives show that teaching English as a foreign or second language is highly important in a globalized world, where individuals have better chances at development, understanding of the current world situation and education. However, teaching English as a foreign language must be done strategically, by adapting to the students’ level of knowledge and to their final purpose.

In the following paragraphs, I will bring into discussion some of the most important theories of English language teaching that have shaped today’s techniques and methods used in modern classrooms.

1.1 Theories of English Language Teaching

The analysis of English language teaching theories allows us to comprehend the views and goals of teachers who have taught millions of students using old and new methodologies. When discussing about methodology, understanding the difference between methodology and method is crucial. In this context, I must mention David Nunan’s (1991) view, as he expresses the ideas that he supports from an empirical point of view. Also, the author encourages teachers to use empirical-based approaches when teaching a second or a foreign language. Throughout his work, he tries to answer a few relevant questions related to methodology:

What is methodology?

What does recent research have to say about the nature of language processing and production?

Why is it important to relate theory and research to what actually goes on in the classroom?

Why is `task` an important element in language learning and teaching?

How can teachers and student teachers explore the ideas in this book to their own classroom? (Nunan, 1991, p.3)

While presenting the analysis and research in this thesis, I will try to answer those questions by combining new theories and findings with the older ones.

As previously mentioned, there is a difference between method and methodology in foreign language teaching that is worth defining. Being able to differentiate method from methodology means understanding that first one is just a part of the second one. In language teaching, an example of a method is using a syllabus or making a habit out of giving students reading tasks or interaction tasks. An example of methodology is a set of practices that has been well-organized, structured and put in practice, based on research, experience, experiments and results. Methodology can be changed, altered and completely modified depending on the group of individuals that are attending language classes. Also, the methodology depends on their language level, their prior experience, age and needs.

Nunan (1991, p. 2) uses the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics to quote the definition of language learning methodology: the study of the practices and procedures used in teaching and the principles and beliefs that underlie them. In the same definition it is stated that methodology includes the study of the nature of language skills and procedures for teaching them, the study of the preparation of lesson plans, materials and textbooks for teaching language skills, the evaluation and comparison of language teaching methods.

Another author that focuses on method is J. Harmer. He stresses the difference between method and methodology, affirming that the method is a practical realisation of an approach. He states that the originators of a method have arrived at decisions about types of activities, roles of teachers and learners, the kinds of materials which will be helpful and some model of syllabus organisation (Harmer, 2001, p. 93).

In this context, it is necessary to remind of other elements that comprise methodology. Apart from method, the approach, the procedure and the technique must be defined and should be a part of a teacher’s methodology. In Harmer’s opinion, the approach refers to the way in which knowledge is acquired by people. The approach describes the conditions in which language learning takes place. Also, he describes the concept of procedure as an ordered sequence of techniques and can be compared to a set of step-by-step instructions. As for the technique, the author claims that methods are often confused for techniques, yet a technique is a very specific method, such as “silent viewing”. It refers to very specific activities and not general ones (Harmer, 1991, p. 79). The four mentioned elements are all part of a methodology and should be used together in order for language learning to take place successfully.

According to Nunan, although there are plenty of methods available to teachers, they all have a common purpose and that is the assumption that there is a single set of principles which will determine whether or not learning will take place (Nunan, 1991, p. 3).

Language learning is a complex process that can be fully understood only when both the teachers and the learners become focus points. Learning does not work when looked at unilaterally. A bilateral analysis must be performed in order to understand the strong and weak sides of language skills acquiring. Both Nunan and Harmer analyse the topic using both perspectives. Moreover, most linguists and specialty authors look at language learning through the eyes of the teacher and the learner, analysing their abilities and impact over the learning process. Littlewood (1985) shares the same vision, yet he approaches the topic by emphasizing the role that the conscious and the unconscious play in this process. In his opinion, there are four processes that may occur while learning a second or a foreign language:

Transfer

Generalization

Simplification

Imitation (Littlewood, 1985, p. 509)

Littlewood states that the all four can occur consciously or unconsciously and that usually, in formal learning situations, they are raised to the consciousness, which is why the teacher plays a major roe when choosing their teaching methodology. Another author who studied language teaching, J. Scrivener (2005), analyses teachers and learners by trying to identify the individuals or groups that attend language classes, their needs, their training and their feedback. Also, he focuses on teacher from a management perspective, by highlighting the methods and techniques that they can use in order to achieve good results. Penny Ur (1991) looks has a more practical view, rather than theoretical. She seeks to find the differences between younger and older learners and presents clear information about the learners’ motivation and interests.

When referring to English teaching, Harmer mentions the fact that this language can be taught in many different ways, as it has several varieties. Although it is a lingua franca, it has more than one form, pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as grammar differences (Harmer: 1991, p. 6). In this context, he reminds us of the most basic differences between British and American English. Except for these two main varieties, there are others that must be taken into consideration while putting in place a teaching plan: Australian English, South African, Canadian, Sri Lankan, Nigerian etc. The author quotes Braj Kachru (1958), the creator of the three concentric circles that divide the English speaking world: the inner circle, the outer circle, the expanding circle. According to Kachru, the inner circle is comprised on Englishes of countries like Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Britain and the Unites States. The second circle or the outer circle includes countries like Singapore, India, Malawi, Malaysia, Nigeria or Pakistan, where English is spoken as a second language. The third circle or the expanding circle includes countries in which English has a commercial role, such as China, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Greece, Japan, Israel etc. (Harmer, 1991, p. 8). In the author’s opinion, teachers should be completely aware of the variety that is most appropriate and most helpful for their students.

In an article in the International Journal of Applied Linguistics from 2016, Erin Carrie stated that British is professional, American is urban (Erin, 2016, p. 427) . Although she was referring to a specific community in Spain, the message was clear and successful. Such an affirmation briefly answers the question why do Europeans learn British English instead of American English? Apart from the obvious reason, that being the territorial delimitation, the historical context and the European rules and policies, there is more behind this unwritten rule according to which most Europeans are being taught British English and its accent in schools.

Just like Harmer, Erin (2016), shows that linguists have investigated deeply the attitudes that learners have towards language with the purpose to detect which is the most appropriate language in social circles. Also, she states that the varieties of English merit a great deal of attention and that that today’s global status of this language offers plenty of research opportunities with regards to the linguistic variations that exist across its varieties. More importantly, these varieties have a social-psychological fundament (Erin, 2016, p. 428).

Teaching English as a foreign language should begin, therefore, with determining the variety that should be stressed in a classroom. Harmer’s conclusion regarding this topic has a strong logic behind it: the safest conclusion to draw is that teachers should work with the variety that best reflects their own language use, always provided that this will be understood by most other English speakers in the world and/or the speakers that the students are most likely to come in contact with.

When referring to the Romanian groups that are being taught English as a foreign language, determining this aspect depends on the purpose of learning. If the purpose is to travel to a foreign English-speaking country, such as the Unites States, it becomes obvious that the American accent and the grammar and phonological particularities should be taught. On the contrary, in the case of intermediate and pre-intermediate students in Romanian schools, British English is more likely to be taught by most teachers. However, students with this language level are not necessarily young learners.

Also known as RP English (Received Pronounciation), the British English variety is the Standard English language and it is used in educational environments all over Europe. According to P. Kerswill (2006), this is the language through which they (the populations of the British Isles) are all educated, and which, many of them are persuaded, in both correct and, in an absolute sense, good. In this context, it is also stated that the ideas surrounding Standard English depend on the social and economic relationships between sections of the population in a particular time and place – and on the ideologies that are linked to these social conditions (Kerswill, 2006, p. 4).

In his attempt to foresee the future of global English, Crystal (1985) analyses the linguistic character of New Englishes. He focuses mainly on grammatical and lexical issues, by comparing the American and British varieties. According to his studies, the comparison between the two has to do with vocabulary and phonology, rather than with grammar (Crystal, 1995, p. 147). In his work, it is also mentioned that grammars, especially those motivated by teaching considerations, have traditionally focused on Standard English, and thus essentially on printed English, which provides the foundation of that standard. Except for clarifying this aspect, Crystal affirms that new varieties are mainly associated with speech and therefore, they have attracted less attention. However, he completes his statement by affirming that as English becomes increasingly global, we must expect far more attention to be paid to speech. In order to offer a better understanding over the differences between American and British English, he refers to the adverbial usage, as it can be seen in the below table.

Figure 2

Adverbial usage – David Crystal (1995, p. 150)

Although many theoreticians argue that only Standard English should be taught to students, P. Trudgill (2011) explains thoroughly that it is not a language, but probably the most important variety of English among many. He claims that it is the variety that is spoken by those who are often referred as educated people, as well as the variety that is taught to non-native learners. Trudgill points out that Standard English is not an accent and has nothing to do with pronunciation, as a high number of native British speakers do not have an RP accent (Trudgill, 2011).

The above theories allow today’s teachers to understand the importance of the English variety that they teach. In Romania, Standard English is being taught in schools, which is why I will refer to this variety in the following paragraphs.

As far as English language teaching is concerned, I previously mentioned that this topic focuses on both the teacher and the students. This being said, it is important to define the teacher’s role in the learning process, as well as their responsibilities.

According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, teaching means giving knowledge, instructing or training someone (Harmer, 1991, p. 56). According to Scrivener (2005, p. 15), not all students require a teacher in order to learn language skills, which is why it is essential to determine the teacher’s role. Giving the numerous examples in any individual’s life of traditional teachers whose results are below expectations and whose students do not manage to absorb knowledge with success, it becomes crucial to define the characteristics of a good teacher, in the context of language learning.

Scrivener (2005) emphasizes two main categories of teachers: the traditional and the entertainer. In his opinion, the traditional teacher focuses on explaining various concepts to its class by using the board and asking learners occasional questions. After explaining, a test usually follows, in the form of exercises or interactions, with the purpose to check whether the information has been understood. The entertainer teacher, on the other hand, focuses on amusing the class, by telling stories, using their voice and gestures to make the learning process more interesting. However, the second teaching style is questioned by Scrivener, as he doubts that this method can lead to real learning. This topic is extremely important in the context of teaching speaking skills, which is why I will come back to it in the second chapter of this thesis.

Wallace (1991) has described three main categories of teachers in his attempt to determine the most effective type: the craft model, the applied science model and the reflective model. When taught by a craft model teacher, learners discover a traditional teaching style, in which prior experience and a well-defined apprenticeship system help transfer the knowledge. In this case, the teacher is a master. The applied science model follows the idea of teacher learning, in which the construction of a suitable methodology that will be applied to classroom practice is required. The reflective model is characterized by teaching using past experience recalling and lesson observation, followed by reflections. According to Wallace, this model aims for continuous improvement (Ur, 1991, p. 5).

When teaching English as a foreign language and, as a matter of fact, when teaching any kind of language skills, one must not be tempted to believe that teaching equals learning. Scrivener highlights the fact that teaching does not necessarily equal learning. It was previously mentioned that traditional teaching is mostly characterized by explanations. In this context, it is important to mention that explanations might work in case of some students, but not all of them. Observing the students is crucial, as there are students who listen, follow and take notes, but there are also students who get easily distracted and need more than simple explanation for their attention to be drawn by the teacher. Also, Scrivener affirms that a teacher must choose the right way of explaining, giving the fact that long explanations often do not work in the case of language learning. He argues that the language of the explanation must be carefully chosen. If it will be given in the foreign language that is to be taught, students will have a hard time understanding it. Even when given in the mother tongue of the learner, it usually works in the case of hint, corrections and guidelines (Scrivener, 2005, p. 19).

Ur (1991) suggests that a teacher has three functions: to encourage learners to articulate what they know and to bring forward their own ideas, to provide feedback and to bring sources of relevant information into the classroom, as well as to teach students the habit of processing feedback by using their own experience and critical thinking (Ur, 1991, p. 8).

Scrivener draws a similar conclusion, stating that language learning takes place when students are able to communicate themselves, to interact and to perform language-related tasks for which teachers can provide constructive feedback. He adds that the teacher’s role in the language skill acquiring process is to help learning to happen using clearly defined methodology.

The roles of a teacher are also described by Harmer (1991), who enumerates the following functions:

Controller

Organiser

Assessor

Prompter

Participant

Resource

Tutor

Observer (Harmer, 1991, pp. 61-62)

What Harmer concludes is that a teacher must switch between roles and cannot focus on having just one, isolated role, as they are all necessary in different phases of the language learning process.

With regards to the English language skills, Harmer’s findings show that learning can be split into acquisition and learning. Referring to the work of Stephen Krashen, an American applied linguist, he reinforces the idea that language which we can acquire subconsciously is language we can easily use in spontaneous conversation because it is instantly available when we need it. Language that is learnt, on the other hand, taught and studied as grammar and vocabulary, is not available for spontaneous use (Harmer, 1991, p. 71). Traditional English language learning has been long questioned by linguists in the context of traditional education. One issue that Harmer highlights is represented by traditional techniques such as repetition and drills. The solution that he proposes is the focus towards elements such as exposure, motivation and opportunities for use.

Another important point that Harmer raises targets the techniques that can be used in the case of young children. This topic is particularly important giving the subject of this thesis which focuses on teaching speaking skills to pre-intermediate and intermediate students. According to Harmer, many teachers have stated that grammar teaching is avoided when teaching young learners, as it does not prove to show results. Compared with adults, children learn language skills subconsciously and a focused language study is not helpful for them. Communicative teaching is more effective in this case.

Scrivener exposes his point of view regarding the learning cycle, by creating a simple scheme, as seen below:

Figure 3

Learning cycle proposed by Scrivener (2005)

The learning cycle is divided into five steps, as follows:

Doing something

Recalling

Reflecting

Drawing conclusions

Using the conclusions to inform and prepare for future practical experienced (Scrivener, 2005, p. 20)

The author’s first conclusion is that this learning cycle shows how students learn more by doing things themselves than by listening to theoretical explanations. A second conclusion is that learning is not a one-dimensional intellectual activity and it involves more than the intellectual functions of a person. More importantly, Scrivener adds that new learning is constructed over the foundation of our own earlier learning.

Ur (1991, p. 10) has a logical and clear perception over the process of learning a foreign language, stating that it is a complex one that has to be split into components for purposes of study. The components that Ur mentions are:

The teaching acts of presenting and explaining new materials

Providing practice

Testing

By presenting, practicing and testing, teachers ensure that students perceive and understand new language elements, learn through mental rehearsal and check their knowledge by asking for feedback (Ur, 1991, p. 10). She completes her argument by saying that this is not the only way in which students get to learn a language, but also unconsciously or semi-consciously. Learning in this way can take place through engagement, speech and writing.

Another relevant theory regarding language teaching methods belongs to Nunan (1991), who acknowledges the fact that a perfect method does not exist and that not all methodology works for all learners in all contexts. He confirms that the focus has shifted from traditional methods to classroom talks and other activities that help acquire second or foreign language acquisition. In this context, he brings into discussion the psychological factors that help teachers transfer knowledge to their students and that help students learn effectively, stating that audio-lingualism and cognitive code learning should be taken into consideration by teachers. Audio-lingualism has a great impact on foreign language learning because hearing and perceiving are at the base of the learning process. According to Nunan, language is speech, not writing. Also, he states that a language is a set of habits and teachers should teach the language, not about the language (Nunan, 1991, p. 228-231).

Teaching methodologies that included audio-lingualism are suitable for beginner teachers, as it offers a set of procedures, methods and principles to follow. Nunan explains that there are aspects in a child’s emerging linguistic system which cannot be accounted for in terms of stimulus-response psychology. The best example is that of the use of irregular past tense forms, which children cannot attain simply by imitation. Although young students use correct forms of irregular verbs such as went or ran, they start to use incorrect forms of the verbs in the later stages of learning, such as goed or runned, by creating their own simplified rule on the simple past, by adding ed to the root form of the verb. This theory stands at the base of transformationalism, a set of theories that gave birth to the cognitive code learning method. This method does not undermine the prominence of audio-lingualism, yet it opposes it partially. Nunan’s work described how linguists who work with frameworks of cognitive psychology demonstrated that language development can be characterised by rule governed creativity. They insist on the idea that imitation is simply not enough when learning a foreign language, as an infinite number of sentences can be created using limited grammar rules and vocabulary, yet one could never learn them all through a process of stimulus-response. (Nunan, 1991, pp. 231-233).

Nunan mentions another potential approach and names it the natural approach, which involved affective-humanistic activities that are meant to involve the learners’ feelings, desires, reactions, ideas and experienced. These activities attempt to lower the affective filter and they focus on meaning, not on form (Nunan, 1991, p. 241). Teachers can create problem-solving activities, content activities and games when using this approach.

With regards to the effective teaching of English skills, Penny Ur’s opinion is that offering students effective presentations is crucial. She affirms that it is a teacher’s responsibility to mediate new material by presenting it properly. Although a new language can be perceived and acquired without presentations (the first language that children learn is never presented to them using formal methods), after a certain age, new inputs are almost impossible to be understood by learners. By presenting the elements of a foreign language such as English correctly, teachers can manage to activate and harness the learners’ attention and effort, as well as their intelligence. However, not all elements must be formally introduced, such as sounds, words, structures and texts, as some of them are unconsciously and intuitively absorbed by students. When an effective presentation is given, learners become alert, their perception is reinforced, they begin to understand and their short-term memory is activated (Ur, 1991, p. 11).

Apart from effective presentations, explanations and instructions are essential to learning English as a foreign language. For them to be effective, a few steps must be taken into consideration: the preparation, making sure that the class is paying attention, presenting the information more than once, the illustration of information using examples. Also, teachers should spare time for feedback in every class and ensure that students are comfortable with providing their inputs (Ur, 1991, pp. 15-17).

Giving these theories of language teaching, it becomes easy to conclude that communicative teaching, speech and interaction play a major role in the learning process, especially when teaching young individuals. Therefore, it is worth analysing further the topic of communicative language teaching, to have a better understanding of the reason why teaching speaking skills is highly important in any classroom.

1.2 Communicative Language Teaching

Linguists and specialty authors have long discussed about the various aspects of communicative competence, as it represents the entire set of skills that a student needs in order to communicate effectively and correctly in a foreign language. There are several abilities that a learner requires in order to acquire to gain communicative competence:

Linguistic competence (vocabulary, grammar, semantics, phonology)

Discourse competence (linking ideas, interactions, opening conversation and closing them)

Pragmatic competence (convey and interpret meanings in real situations)

Sociolinguistic competence (the use of correct language in social situations, using suitable degrees of formality, directness etc.)

Sociocultural competence (background knowledge, cultural assumption that affect meanings and can lead to misunderstandings) (Littlewood, 1985, p. 503)

Having known all that is required to gain communicative competence, it is essential to determine how these skills can be taught.

The communicative approach has been described thoroughly by numerous authors (Eg. Harmer, 1991). Being known as CLT, or Communicative Language Teaching, this approach is comprised of a set of beliefs that include a re-examination of aspects that are important to each and the best ways to teach them. The entire approach is based on the motivation and desire of students to communicate something. According to Harmer, students should use a variety of language rather than just a language structure (1991, p. 84). A communication continuum is presented in Harmer’s work, in which the non-communicative and communicative activities are described. These two can be found at opposite ends of the CLT. As opposed to non-communicative activities, when participating to communicative ones, students have a desire to communicate, a communicative purpose, non-form content, a variety of language, no materials control and no teacher intervention.

It is important to note that at the early stages of learning, conscious attention should be devoted to lower-level plans in regards to grammatical structuring and word selection, because this leads to a non-fluent speech that often contains errors, but encourages students to interact in class (Littlewood, 1985, p. 517).

The CLT aims to improve the students’ ability to speak in a foreign language and determining which communicative activities are effective is key to the learning process of English language.

Scrivener (2005) notes that individuals normally communicate when one of them has information that another one does not has, such as facts, opinions, ideas or instructions (Scrivener, 2005, p. 152). As mentioned also by Harmer, this is known as an information gap. The exchange of opinions or information and by creating an interaction between students is the best way to communicate.

Scrivener proposes a few communicative activities that prove to bring results in terms of teaching speaking skills:

Repeating sentences

Doing oral grammar drills

Reading aloud

Giving a speech

Acting out a scripted conversation

Giving instructions for the use of an object or a device

Improvising a conversation

Describing a picture in a textbook (Scrivener, 2005, p. 152)

Enabling and encouraging communication is the main purpose of CTL. In this case, controlling the use of language elements and accurate pronunciation is not essential. Scrivener (2005) proposes more types of communicative activities such as a picture difference task, in which students pairs are given two pictures. Their task is to identify the differences without looking at the other picture. Group planning tasks such as planning a holiday is another example of effective activity. During this exercise, students collect advertisements with the purpose to promote a holiday. Each student of a team must bring arguments and, at the end, the group should agree on a particular holiday that they will present. In Scrivener’s opinion, the ranking tasks or list sequencing tasks should also be part of communicative teaching. During this activity, the teacher should prepare of list of topics and place them in a particular order. Board games or puzzles and problems also encourage communication (Scrivener, 2005, pp. 153-154).

These types of communicative activities are also promoted by Ur (1991), who acknowledges that by doing them in class, they give teachers the ability to study strong and weak points of the classroom. Except for describing pictures, planning an activity or doing a shopping list, there are different other kinds of interaction that may be used to achieve the desired results. Interactional talks, in which students learn how to greet, leave, apologize or thank, as well as the discussions that involve feelings or relationships are often effective (Ur, 1991:129-130).

Another important point regarding speaking tasks is the class organisation and arrangement. For the activity to work as planned, the class arrangement is crucial. Therefore, he claims that it is important for learners to be able to make eye contact when speaking to a colleague, to hear clearly when any other colleague is speaking and to be close to one another (Scrivener, 2005, p. 154).

When teaching English as a foreign language, several challenges arise. One of the most important ones is the students’ tendency to use their native language, especially in monolingual classes. Young learners tend to use their own language for a number of reasons: they think that it is easier to express themselves in their own language, they know that they will be corrected when using wrong English words, they do not want to make mistakes in front of their colleagues, they cannot find their words in English, the teacher cannot hear them etc. (Scrivener, 2005, pp. 100-101).

Although students may bring plenty of arguments for not wanting to speak in English, using this foreign language in class is crucial for learning. When teachers encounter such difficulties, there are a few methods that can help, such as using listening material, placing English-language posters on the walls, discussing the purpose of the activities in class, offering positive feedback when students attempt to speak in English or encouraging fluency without correcting the students in the first learning phases. These methods prove to have better results than prizes and threats, even though many teachers think that competition and bribery are more effective (Scrivener, 2005, p. 101).

Communicative language teaching is one of the most important points of focus in an English class, which is why all teachers should take it into consideration when building a teaching plan. Having this information, I will continue discussing about the receptive and productive skills that need to be taught using traditional and modern methods to acquire to a higher language level.

Chapter 2: Receptive and productive skills

Teaching a second language to pre-intermediate and intermediate students requires a well-planned strategy that encompasses knowledge about the four basic language skills that every student needs:

Reading

Listening

Writing

Speaking

A student that is competent in English and has the four above skills is able to speak fluently, to express their ideas and to communicate in casual situations. These basic skills must be taught from the early stages of the class. They have been split into two categories: receptive and productive skills, as the students either receive an input or produce it. These categories must be differentiated, so that students understand what they are learning and what skill are they developing during a specific class. I find it important to analyse the four language skills in these two main categories in order to achieve a better understanding of the language teaching process. Following this study, the third chapter, in which I will practically describe the speaking activities that help intermediate and pre-intermediate students learn, will have a strong foundation.

2.1 Reading and Listening

Reading and listening are considered to be receptive skills. These help an individual comprehend a foreign language at a certain level, depending on the depth of learning. They have to be learned step-by-step, as they do not come naturally. After years of practice, they can be mastered by students who learn a second language.

In his work, Harmer (2001, p. 199) describes receptive skills as being the ways in which people extract meaning from the discourse they see or hear. He affirms that this is a general statement about receptive skill processing that applies to both reading and listening. Also, he mentions that there are many differences between these skills. The author offers a few reasons for which reading and listening should be learned and splits them into two categories:

Instrumental

Pleasurable

According to Harmer (2001, p. 200), the instrumental reasons help learners achieve clear aims, such as reading instructions or understanding audio messages that they hear on the street. The pleasurable reasons help individuals understand more information in a foreign language in relaxing situations, such as reading poetry, listening to the radio, watching a movie or attending a show.

Scrivener (2005, p. 185) has a more practical approach, as opposed to Harmer’s theoretical descriptions. He observes that the main challenge of a teacher is to eliminate the difficulties that students have when reading and listening. With regards to reading, many issues can be encountered. Students may refuse to read or may limit their reading, especially in front of other people, for reasons such as the lack of a poor vocabulary, the need of using a dictionary all the time, slowness in reading, confusion, lack of pleasure.

Gabrielatos (1998) offers a great perspective in regards to receptive skills, affirming that the main objective of a receptive skills programme is not the teaching of more grammar and vocabulary, but the development of the learners' ability to understand and interpret texts using their existing language knowledge. He also mentions that receptive skills development can be combined with language input in the same lesson, but the procedures need to be staged in such a way that the 'language' component does not cancel out the 'skills' one. For example, explaining all unknown lexis before learners read or listen to a text will cancel out training in inferring the meaning of lexis in the text.

Another important aspect that Harmer (2001) mentions is the different skills that are required for reading and listening in various circumstances. He identifies six situations in which different skills might be needed:

Identifying the topic

This ability helps individuals to process texts more easily when they are able to understand the topic

Predicting and guessing

Topic identification is not always enough. Most readers guess the topic even from the first words in a sentence. As they become better and better at reading and listening, they can become more efficient in guessing and predicting a topic immediately.

Reading and listening for general understanding

General understanding is not an in depth understanding. When referring to reading for general understanding, many people think of skimming, this means looking at a text superficially and getting a general idea about it. This type of reading is passive, but not incorrect, depending on the interest of the reader with regards to a specific topic.

Reading and listening for specific information

Obtaining specific information from a text or from a conversation requires in depth understanding and therefore, intense concentration. In this case, readers or listeners scan, as opposed to skimming.

Reading and listening for detailed information

Detailed information can only be obtained if the reader or the listener pays full attention to the text or to the persons that are talking. This means that a high level of concentration is required and that any other topic becomes irrelevant in that particular moment. Procedures, instructions or directions are examples of materials that require focused reading and listening.

Interpreting text

A proficient listener or reader becomes able to understand beyond the literal meaning of words and phrases, which is extremely important when reading complex materials, literature, poetry, jokes or when communicating and receiving messages from interlocutors (Harmer, 2001:201-202).

Scrivener (2005) also brings into discussion the skimming and scanning, affirming that there are many activities that are designed to increase the reading speed. Reading quickly and getting the gist of the passage is called skimming, while reading quickly and finding a specific piece of information is known as scanning, as also mentioned in the previous paragraphs. Although these two might seem to be superficial activities, they are actually top-down skills.

Gabrielatos (1998) emphasizes the fact that usually, learners are asked to read or listen to much longer and complex texts and perform new tasks such as reading selectively or extracting the gist and that this can become a challenge. He highlights the fact that there are a few areas that can be problematic, such as following. Following issues can be solved at early stages, by insisting on systematic receptive skills development. According to the author, there are a few issues that all teachers encounter during their classes: learners read/listen for the words and not for the meaning, learners get easily discouraged by unknown lexis and they do not make conscious use of their background knowledge and experience.

Reading is mostly seen as a passive activity by most people, but in reality it is more than that. According to Mundhe (2015), reading is interactive the reader brings his personal knowledge to the text in front of him. The interactivity is triangular between the reader the text and the message. The goal is specific to engage the thoughts, facts, and viewpoint, bias etc. The writer has to put together on the page in order to arrive at the best personal meaning. Reading is the most favoured and most practiced skills in English classes. Reading should be followed by checking the learners’ understanding of comprehension. In addition, teacher can use specific activities for developing reading, using materials that are authentic. Mundhe (2015) also mentions a few techniques that can be used for teaching reading skills, such as:

The reader need not either seek or find in a text all or only what the writer has put into what the writer. In order to understand a text, each reader brings to it different types of knowledge to make meaning.

The teacher’s main task is to help make students’ reading efficient and effective by intervening differently at different stages in its development.

Equip the school library with plenty of books and journals or magazines at the appropriate levels. This will require the co-operation from teachers belonging to all subjects and every department.

Dictionary – based activities: pages from a good dictionary can be given to the learners and reading activities such alphabetic words or finding out abbreviation may be set.

Harmer (2001) and plenty of other authors identify two types of reading: extensive and intensive. In his opinion, students should be involved in both in order to get maximum benefit from reading. Extensive reading takes place when students read on their own. Intensive reading, on the other hand, takes place when the intervention of the teacher is needed or simply happens without being necessary. The author affirms that one of the fundamental conditions of successful extensive reading is that students should be reading about a topic that they understand in order to read for pleasure. Teacher can, therefore, offer books or materials that are easy to read and that refer to well-known topics. He also suggests that setting up a library is important in this teaching process and that teachers should be actively contributing to it.

Intensive reading, on the other hand, creates enthusiasm among students and teachers should work to create interest in their tasks. Except for being teachers, they also have other roles:

Organiser

Observer

Feedback organiser

Prompter (Harmer, 2001, pp. 211-213)

In the case of intensive reading, a common paradox must be solved while teaching. Although teachers encourage students to read for general understanding, they tend to overlook the fact that they might not understand every single word or passage. In this case, focusing on each word’s meaning can be more productive than reading continuously, without breaks. However, Harmer recommends teachers to set a time limit for vocabulary checking (2001, p. 214).

Scrivener (2005) proposes teaching activities that help students learn how to read fast and efficiently, as it can be seen in Table 1. This is a route map that encompassed top-down reading tasks.

Table 1 – Route map for reading lessons

Source: Scrivener (2005, p. 186)

Some of the tasks proposed by Scrivener (2005) for reading learning in English are very easy to put in practice:

Reading a whole page of classified advertisements in an English newspaper

Asking students to find a specific word in a page of a newspaper

Placing a pile of tourist leaflets and ask students to plan a day out

Asking students to read an extract from a novel and answer five multiple-choice questions about details of the novel

Other tasks can be:

Putting illustrations of a text in a correct order

Putting paragraphs in a correct order

Finding words in a text with the same meaning as the words in a provided list

Finding mistakes in a text

Reading a text and making a list of particular items

Giving a headline to each section of an article

Discussing the missing last paragraph of a text

Put the list of events in a text in the correct order

Extensive reading is extremely important in the language learning process and has a powerful impact on it, according to Scrivener (2005, p. 188). The author states that the more someone reads, the more they pick up items of vocabulary and grammar from texts, without even realising it. Also, extensive reading tends to widen one’s language knowledge and increase their overall linguistic confidence. In order to encourage extensive reading and to make it easier to perform this activity in class, teachers should provide a library of magazines, newspapers and leaflets. Also, they should provide training about suitable reading materials and ways to read it. Creating a book club is another idea that Scrivener recommends for reading skills (Scrivener, 2005, p. 189).

Listening skills are as important as reading skills, as they offer students the ability to understand the messages that are passed on to them, to focus and to filter the information that they need. Although listening activities are often avoided by teachers, they are highly important in the second language learning process. Listening is not the same thing as hearing. Although they both imply the reception of sounds, listening involves understanding what is heard. Listening skills, just like any other language skills, must be developed in class, using certain tasks. Mundhe (2015) proposes some techniques that might help teachers with passing on listening skills to students:

Make it a point to expose the student to a ‘good’ model because the students are required to produce or generate the language.

Learner should bear in mind that listening has the same significance as speaking.

Make listening activities motivating and informative.

Listeners must distinguish that phonic substance the sound patterns in bounded segments related to phrase structure.

Listen and complete the story: Learner should listen to a part of a story from the teacher or from a cassette and complete it individually or in groups.

Understanding intonation patterns and interpreting attitudinal meaning through variation of tone.

Teacher should give more importance to training listening skill and learners must become more aware of their own listening skill.

There are different types of listening that have been identified by linguistics experts. The two main types are intensive and extensive listening, just like in the case of reading. Harmer and Scrivener, as well as Nunan and other authors specify that it is important to make this differentiation as a teacher. Also, there are other types of listening that appear in the form of a dichotomy. Nunan (1991) discusses the reciprocal and non-reciprocal listening. While reciprocal listening refers to listening from both sides. In this situation, a listener not only listens, but responds to a message, participates in a conversation and interacts. Non-reciprocal listening refers to the listening as a sole activity, deprived of any interaction. The students listens in a situation where he is unable to respond, such as during formal lecture, or a radio transmission.

Cook (2008, p. 125) also introduces a dichotomy: bottom-up and bottom-down processing. Bottom up listening implies starting from the sentence as a whole and working down to its smallest parts. Bottom-down listening is starting from the smallest parts and working up. In Cook’s opinion, there are three stages of teaching listening skills:

Pre-listening (serves to activate students' background knowledge and to get the general idea of the listening material)

While-listening (improving their ability to interpret the message)

Post-listening (includes task sheets and possibly a second listening) (Cook, 2008, p. 130)

Another important term that was introduced by Cook (2008, p. 125) is parsing. In the listening teaching context, parsing is the through which the mind works out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentence. Cook’s vision on listening skills is very pragmatic. The author enumerates some of the most important elements of listening:

Access to words

The author states that in order to comprehend a sentence you have to work out what the words mean. The mind has to relate the words that are heard to the information that is stored about them in the mind.

Parsing

Parsing refers to how the mind works out the grammatical structure and meaning of the sentences it hears, that is to say, the term is only loosely connected to its meaning in traditional grammar.

Memory processes and cognition

All comprehension depends on the storing and processing of information by the mind. The extent of the memory restriction in a second language depends on how close the task is to language. Hence getting the students to perform tasks that are not concerned with language may have less influence on their learning than language-related tasks. For example, comprehension activities using maps and diagrams may improve the learners’ problem-solving abilities with maps and diagrams, but may be less successful at improving those aspects of the learners’ mental processes that depend on language (Cook, 2008, p. 129)

2.2 Writing and Speaking

As opposed to receptive skills, writing and speaking are known to be productive skills. They are different in many ways and they are being used to communicate, either verbally, or in writing. According to Harmer (2001), in order for communication to be successful, a discourse has to be structured in such a way that it can be understood clearly by listeners or readers. He states that fewer formulaic phrases are found in writing than in speech, which is why writing has to be coherent and cohesive. On the other hand, speech can often take place in a less organised and chaotic way than writing. Speakers tend to employ a variety of structuring devices that are not used in the same way in writing (Harmer, 2001:246).

The main difficulties that are encountered in writing and speaking are the following:

Improvising

Discarding

Foreignising

Paraphrasing (Harmer, 249)

Scrivener (2005) identifies different kinds of speaking while studying productive skills learning. He reaches to the conclusion that genre definition is extremely important during speech and writing. Also, he comments that in everyday life, people speak in a variety of ways, depending on who they are and the nature of the situation. He defines genre as a variety of speech or writing that one would expect to find in a particular place, with particular people, in a particular context, to achieve a certain result.

According to Harmer (2001), students to learn writing and speaking skills have a chance to rehearse language production in safety. He also states that when students work on their language production, they should be operating towards the communicative end of the communication continuum, such as language drills.

Teaching writing and speaking is more challenging than teaching reading and listening, as these are skills that require the student to be active and productive. In the opinion of most authors, teaching writing is the most challenging part of an English class for second language learning. There are several activities that must be completed in this process, such as:

Classifying writing activities and giving instructions

Choosing the criteria for the evaluation of textbook writing activities

(Supervising the process of composition)

Giving feedback on writing (Ur, 1991 p. 75)

Harmer (2001, p. 254) highlights the fact that there are other differences between writing and speaking than just vocabulary and grammar. He states that there are issues of letter, word and text formation that manifest through handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuation. Also, he emphasizes the fact that in the teaching of writing, teachers can focus on the product of writing or on the writing itself. When focusing on the product, teachers are only interested in the aim of a task. When focusing on the writing itself. They pay attention to various stages of writing and insist on pre-writing phases, editing and drafting. Putting together a piece of writing involves:

Checking the grammar

Checking the vocabulary

Checking the linkers

Checking the punctuation

Checking the writing for unnecessary repetitions

Decide on the information for each paragraph

Decide on the order of paragraphs

Note down ideas

Select the best idea for inclusion

Write a clean copy of the corrected version

Write out a rough version (Harmer, 2001, p. 257)

In Ur’s opinion (1991), there are many differences between writing and speech. In spoken and written discourses, the following differences can be observed:

Permanence

Explicitness

Density

Detachment

Organization

Slowness of production and speed of reception

Standard language

Learnt skills

Sheer amount and importance

Ur (1991) proposes teachers to ask the following questions before starting to apply a specific method in class:

Is the task motivating and engaging enough to the students?

Is the task on the appropriate level of difficulty (not to easy, not to hard)?

Will the students benefit from this type of writing activity?

Will it be necessary give additional instructions for this type of activity?

Is it part of my teaching style?

Harmer (2001) states that the teacher’s role in the process of teaching writing skills is the following:

Motivator

Resource

Feedback provider

Speaking skills are also challenging to teach to students, as the ability to speak in a second language implies being able to interact and produce speech. Also, it implies being able to listen, understand and interpret the message, as well as to produce a response that the interlocutor can understand and process. There are many elements of speech that must be taken into consideration when teaching speaking skills to second language learners. According to Harmer (2001), the ability to speak fluently involves not only knowledge of language features, but also the ability to process information and language immediately.

The most important language features that Harmer (2001, p. 269) identifies are the following:

Connected speech

Expressive devices

Lexis and grammar

Negotiation language

Productive skill learning also involves mental or social processing, especially when it comes to speaking. Harmer identifies a few important processing types:

Language processing

Interaction with others

On the spot information processing

Also, he proposes a few activities that he considers to be the most effective in this learning process. Acting from a script, using communication games, creating discussion groups or prepared talks, as well as using questionnaires and simulation games can prove to be very effective.

Scrivener (2005) takes into consideration a few aspects that make speaking skill teaching easier, such as structuring the talks, avoiding the talk-talk loop or using open questions. He believes that the following activities can enhance the students’ confidence while speaking:

Students repeat the sentences that the teacher says

Students chat with the teacher about weekend plans

Students look at a list of tips for a business presentation

Students listen to a recording and repeat words with the same vowel sounds

Students work in pairs and set up a top of best five films

Students prepare a monologue about their hobbies

In Harmer’s opinion, the roles of the teacher in this process are the following:

Prompter

Participant

Feedback provider (Harmer, 2001, p. 276)

In teaching speaking skills, the following activities can also prove to be effective:

Board games

Pyramid discussions

Puzzles and problems

Role play

Simulation

According to Ur (1991), a successful oral fluency practice is achieved when:

Learners talk a lot

Participation is even

Motivation is high

Language is of an acceptable level

The same author suggests that the most frequent problems encountered in speaking activities are inhibition, the fact that students do not have anything to say, low or uneven participation and mother tongue use in English class.

As it can be observed, teaching receptive and productive skills is not an easy task for teacher, yet some skills are easier to teach than others. It is clear that listening and reading are easier to learn, by comparison to productive skills that require active participation. Also, in order for students to learn productive skills, they must already be know how to read and listen. Therefore, it is easily observable that receptive and productive skills are interconnected and English learning cannot take place in lack of one of the two categories.

In the third chapter I will focus on analysing the ways in which speech is taught in secondary school students, how different speaking activities are approached and how these are overtaken by teachers. I will mostly study speaking skills that can be taught to pre-intermediate and intermediate students, in my attempt to demonstrate the hypothesis mentioned in the introduction of this thesis.

Chapter 3: Teaching Speaking Skills to Secondary School Students

3.1 How to Approach Different Speaking Activities

Communicative language teaching can be comprehended as a set of principles about the objectives of language teaching, how students take in a language, the sorts of classroom exercises that best encourage learning, and the parts of instructors and students in the classroom. Communicative language teaching sets as its objective the teaching of communicative capability.

Communicative ability incorporates the accompanying parts of language learning:

knowing how to utilize language for a scope of various purposes and capacities;

knowing how to shift our utilization of language as per the setting and the members (e.g., knowing when to utilize formal and casual discourse or when to utilize language suitably for composed instead of talked correspondence);

knowing how to deliver and comprehend diverse sorts of writings (e.g., accounts, reports, interviews, discussions);

knowing how to keep up correspondence in spite of having constraints in a single's language learning (e.g., through utilizing various types of correspondence methodologies).

In the 1970s, a response to customary language teaching approaches started and soon spread the world over as more seasoned strategies, for example, audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching dropped out of form.

Communicative language teaching can be perceived from a multidisciplinary point of view that incorporates, at any rate, etymology, brain research, logic, human science, and instructive research.

The multifaceted nature of figuring out how to talk in another language is reflected in the range and kind of sub-abilities that are involved in L2 oral creation. Students should all the while take care of substance, morpho-punctuation and lexis, talk and data organizing, and the sound framework and prosody, and in addition fitting register and pragma-phonetic highlights. In a cooperation that commonly includes talking and understanding in the meantime, L2 speakers need to self-screen with the goal that they can recognize and rectify creation issues at the quick pace of a genuine conversational trade. Research on the attributes and

Improvement of L2 oral abilities has indicated convincingly that conveying in a L2 is a subjectively requesting endeavour, also that the achievement of an association frequently relies upon creation quality.

Correspondence between individuals is an extremely mind boggling and regularly evolving thing. In any case, there are speculations that we can make which have specific significance for the teaching and learning of languages.

Whenever at least two individuals are speaking with each other, we can make certain they are doing as such for they have some communicative reason, they need to state something, they need to tune in to something, they are keen on what is being said.

Along these lines, if an instructor wishes to acquaint a communicative action with the students, he or she ought to acquire some of the said factors. The instructor must make the need and want, in the students, to impart. On the off chance that these elements are absent, it is far more improbable that the action will be the achievement the educator had visualized. In the event that the students don't see the point in accomplishing something, they're far less inclined to need to take an interest.

While talking and composing are generously extraordinary from numerous points of view, they both are utilized for a similar reason to convey.

From numerous points of view, composing is the most disregarded ability in the TEFL world, which stands for " teaching English as a foreign language", the same number of instructors don't care to see the classroom hours committed to what is frequently 'calm time'. Composing, along these lines, is regularly consigned to homework, which thus is as often as possible not done as such the aptitude is never created. Beyond any doubt most students like to centre around their talking aptitudes, yet this doesn't imply that composition ought to be overlooked.

From various perspectives, composing and writing are the more troublesome of all aptitudes, requiring a more noteworthy level of precision. When talking, any misconception can be cleared up' on the spot', while this isn't conceivable in composing. Talking, then again, requires a more noteworthy level of familiarity as the speaker will once in a while have room schedule-wise to think and plan an answer.

Correspondence between individuals is an extremely mind boggling and a consistently evolving concept. Yet, there are speculations that we can make which have specific pertinence for the teaching and learning of languages.

When talking, there are various variables that could make the assignment simpler for a foreign language speaker: talking ordinarily happens in a specific setting and other previous learning is frequently expected with the goal that not all data must be clear and exact; prompt criticism is conceivable and speakers can alter as the discussion unfurls. Discussion is frequently casual in regular daily existence and less demanding for an ESL student to wind up associated with and hone.

Composing, nonetheless, is a substantially more formal process. ESL students will in all probability need to utilize their composition aptitudes for formal and expert reasons. This can be exceptionally distressing and out and out incapacitating in the event that they have never learnt to write in English.

Composed writings are settled and should be unequivocal. Criticism is for all intents and purposes outlandish and its absence can be not kidding if the composed content was for a vocation application or assessment form. Composing abilities should be instructed, they can't be learnt through osmosis and drenching like discourse can.

Usually acknowledged points of view on language teaching and learning perceive that, in important correspondence, individuals utilize incremental language abilities not in disconnection but rather pair. For instance, to take part in a discussion, one should be capable talk and appreciate in the meantime. To make language learning as sensible as would be prudent, coordinated direction needs to address a scope of L2 aptitudes all the while, which are all imperative in correspondence. For example, teaching perusing can be effortlessly fixing to guideline on composing and vocabulary, and oral abilities promptly loan themselves to teaching elocution, tuning in, and diverse pragmatics.

The four language abilities are infrequently utilized alone in regular daily existence. The scholars, in this manner, expect to assemble them in joining for teaching perusing which is for the most part dismissed in course readings, course books and additionally perusing classes and want to maintain a strategic distance from the customary classroom models of perusing direction whereby educators rule classroom talk and students react amid content driven inquiry and-answer sessions.

Of the 'four aptitudes,' listening is by a wide margin the most as often as possible utilized. Tuning in and talking are frequently educated together, yet apprentices, particularly non-proficient ones, ought to be given more tuning in than talking practice.

Talking lessons regularly tie in articulation and language structure (examined somewhere else in this guide), which are vital for viable oral correspondence. Or then again a sentence structure or perusing exercise may join a talking movement. In any case, students will require some planning before the talking undertaking. This incorporates presenting the subject and giving a model of the discourse they are to deliver.

Finding bona fide perusing material may not be troublesome, but rather discovering materials suitable for the level of your students can be a test. Particularly with amateurs, you may need to altogether alter writings to rearrange language and vocabulary.

Great written work passes on a significant message and uses English well, however the message is more vital than remedy introduction. In the event that you can comprehend the message or even piece of it, your student has prevailing with regards to imparting on paper and ought to be commended for that. Sentence structure is frequently named as a subject hard to instruct. Its specialized language and complex principles can be scary. Teaching a decent sentence structure exercise would one say one is thing, however consider the possibility that you're amidst a perusing or talking movement and an student has a punctuation question.

Elocution includes much more than singular sounds. Word pressure, sentence pressure, pitch, and word connecting all impact the sound of communicated in English, also the way we regularly slur words and expressions together in easygoing discourse. English articulation includes an excessive number of complexities for students to take a stab at an entire disposal of emphasize, however enhancing elocution will support confidence, encourage correspondence, and potentially prompt a superior employment or a slightest more regard in the working environment. Successful correspondence is of most noteworthy significance, so pick initially to take a shot at issues that essentially ruin correspondence and let the rest go.

Notwithstanding, the scholars trust that the coordination of aptitudes isn't the main sort of joining instructors should go for.

They trust that there exist three territories, which ought to be coordinated with each other amid course book composing and keeping in mind that creating different materials.

These regions can be entitled as linguistic joining, useful combination and topical mix. It is recommended that each of the three kinds of combination ought to be assembled beyond what many would consider possible.

It is by and large watched that in a valid setting, the utilization of any expertise may lead on normally to the utilization of another.

Teaching incorporated English aptitudes requires an intuitive type of learning between the educators and students to guarantee dominance of both oral and composed abilities.

So as to instruct incorporated aptitudes educators ought to think about the accompanying:

formulate an exercise intend to create familiarity with the language and consolidate exercises in which your students take an interest. Then again, incorporate extra exercises to a prior educational modules that is gone for tending to particular regions. Building up an inviting air in the classroom influences the students to feel good talking with their cohorts;

identify frail regions that require your uncommon consideration or request that students list the different territories they require help;

prepare teaching helps to make the lessons intuitive and intriguing;

distribute exposition points to the students and request that they pick subjects that they are happy with perusing, exploring and expounding on;

conduct an oral introduction session whereby the students convey their papers before their schoolmates.

The measure of consideration given to every expertise territory will depend both on the level of the students and in addition, to their situational needs. Individuals who are not educated in this field, benefit the most from tuning in and talking. As familiarity builds, the measure of perusing and writing in your lessons may likewise increment. With educated students, up to half of your exercise time can be spent on composed abilities, in spite of the fact that your students may wish to maintain their concentration weighted toward oral correspondence if that is a more prominent need.

Dynamic teaching includes the utilization of instructional methods that are meant for important student commitment in the disclosure of learning. Thoughtfully, the approach has a long history, from Socrates to John Dewey to the teaching case technique refined at Harvard University. The cognizant determination of objectives for the classroom and strategies for teaching makes a feeling of reason in the instructive procedure. It likewise speaks to coordinated effort – a dedication with respect to educators and students to breathe life into the instructive condition. Dynamic learning implies that students are cooperating, and with the educator, to accomplish instructive goals.

Dynamic learning is where students are occupied with exercises, for example, perusing, composing, discourse, or critical thinking that advance investigation, amalgamation, and assessment of class content.

The teaching procedures are proposed to make the students dynamic (as opposed to uninvolved) members in learning. Learning imperative wellbeing information and expertise isn't not at all like learning numerous new aptitudes, be it physical ability, mental or social. Numerous people learn best and wind up capable in aptitudes by honing tem instead of only being an observer to the ability, for example, tuning in to educators discuss the expertise, perusing about the aptitude or watching others play out the ability.

Dynamic, hand-on teaching methodologies and learning exercises are intended to make students out of their books, once in a while out of their seats, some of the time out of the classroom and in some cases out of their well-known state of mind. Dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises are planned to make students dynamic members in their own particular learning.

The teaching methodologies allude to structure, framework, strategies, systems, techniques and procedures that an educator uses amid guideline. These are techniques the instructor utilizes to help student learning. Learning exercises allude to the educator guided instructional errands or assignments for students. One of the essential advantages of dynamic learning is the open door for the joining of perusing, composing, tuning in and talking. Some dynamic learning exercises may include every one of the four of these language and relational abilities in a solitary action. Similarly as with numerous teaching procedures, practice and redundancy frequently result in more prominent educator aptitude in conveying the method. Arranging and executing dynamic learning exercises is the same. At an early stage, numerous students frequently require practice to wind up more capable at dynamic learning.

Dynamic learning is any learning knowledge other than autonomously and inactively perusing, finishing a worksheet or tuning in to an address. Amid dynamic student taking in, the part of the instructor changes from pioneer and moderator to mentor and facilitator. Dynamic student learning infers that students are doing the majority of the work and that they assume a more prominent liability for their own particular work and learning.

Dynamic student learning begins with the instructor. It is basic that instructors build up the classroom and instructional tone, condition and energy that give openings and urge students to wind up dynamic learning members. With watchful arranging, educators can make a learning domain that is conductive to dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises. This condition would incorporate a safe physical condition, available asset materials, reasonableness by the instructor to all students, compelling class administration and scholastically strong student affinity.

Dynamic teaching includes the utilization of instructional methods intended for important student commitment in the disclosure of learning. Thoughtfully, the approach has a long history, from Socrates to John Dewey to the teaching case technique refined at Harvard University. The cognizant determination of objectives for the classroom and strategies for teaching makes a feeling of reason in the instructive procedure. It likewise speaks to coordinated effort – a dedication with respect to educators and students to breathe life into the instructive condition. Dynamic learning implies that students are cooperating, and with the educator, to accomplish instructive goals.

Dynamic learning is where students are occupied with exercises, for example, perusing, composing, discourse, or critical thinking that advance investigation, amalgamation, and assessment of class content.

The teaching procedures are proposed to make the students dynamic (as opposed to uninvolved) members in learning. Learning imperative wellbeing information and expertise isn't not at all like learning numerous new aptitudes, be it physical ability, mental or social. Numerous people learn best and wind up capable in aptitudes by honing tem instead of only being an observer to the ability, for example, tuning in to educators discuss the expertise, perusing about the aptitude or watching others play out the ability.

Dynamic, hand-on teaching methodologies and learning exercises are intended to make students out of their books, once in a while out of their seats, some of the time out of the classroom and in some cases out of their well-known state of mind. Dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises are planned to make students dynamic members in their own particular learning.

The teaching methodologies allude to structure, framework, strategies, systems, techniques and procedures that an educator utilizes amid guideline. These are techniques the instructor utilizes to help student learning. Learning exercises allude to the educator guided instructional errands or assignments for students. One of the essential advantages of dynamic learning is the open door for the joining of perusing, composing, tuning in and talking. Some dynamic learning exercises may include every one of the four of these language and relational abilities in a solitary action. Similarly as with numerous teaching procedures, practice and redundancy frequently result in more prominent educator aptitude in conveying the method. Arranging and executing dynamic learning exercises is the same. At an early stage, numerous students frequently require practice to wind up more capable at dynamic learning.

Dynamic learning is any learning knowledge other than autonomously and inactively perusing, finishing a worksheet or tuning in to an address. Amid dynamic student taking in, the part of the instructor changes from pioneer and moderator to mentor and facilitator. Dynamic student learning infers that students are doing the majority of the work and that they assume a more prominent liability for their own particular work and learning. Dynamic student learning begins with the instructor. It is basic that instructors build up the classroom and instructional tone, condition and energy that give openings and urge students to wind up dynamic learning members. With watchful arranging, educators can make a learning domain that is conductive to dynamic teaching techniques and learning exercises. This condition would incorporate a safe physical condition, available asset materials, reasonableness by the instructor to all students, compelling class administration and scholastically strong student affinity.

These days English language ended up one of the fundamental languages in correspondence everywhere throughout the world because of the expanded enthusiasm of individuals in voyaging, work necessities, pen-companions, informal organizations, globalization and not last social mindfulness. Schools in Romania and instructive framework put an accentuation on the need of teaching and learning English language and the new educational module underpins teaching English as the second language beginning from private academy or kindergarten. The fundamental motivation behind teaching English being the gaining and advancement of communicative ability, an exceptional consideration is appeared to the beneficial aptitudes, talking and composing, however, every one of the four aptitudes – tuning in, talking, perusing, composing – are similarly fortified). Among these aptitudes talking stays a standout amongst the most essential parts in learning English language, all students needing to pick up and get capability in correspondence field.

Talking and imparting fluidly remains as the fundamental objective surprisingly who take in a language as this gives them a chance to convey effortlessly in various social and between social circumstances, collaborations and situations. Speaking remains, not constantly but rather regularly, the primary deterrent that forestalls them to get what they need. A considerable lot of the students of English language come to know sentence structure exceptionally well, to deal with vocabulary things, expressions and structures, to compose accurately yet they discovered fairly hard to communicate fluidly and proficiently in English. Relatively few of the students have the likelihood to utilize and rehearse English outside the classroom and to appreciate talking and talking unreservedly and normally utilizing it. Much more, the greater part of them find fairly hard to do this in the classroom as well, before their schoolmates, they turn out to be out of the blue on edge and modest and see the demonstration of talking as a weight and a focusing on circumstance. Padmadewi (1998, p. 12) cited in Widiati and Cahyono (2006), states that, because of the weight from the talking errand students are appointed, they feel on edge when they go to a talking class, predominantly on the grounds that they need to introduce in an individual and suddenly route inside a farthest point of time. Subsequently they keep quiet or to grasp the part of an "onlooker" instead of a dynamic member to the exercise.

It is a known fact that students of any age, kids, youngsters or grown-ups, learn better when they are effectively engaged with the way toward learning and they are getting it done when they appreciate it and have some good times at an indistinguishable measure from gaining information. It is likewise realized that connection widens and develops comprehension of a specific subject since while communicating students share thoughts, musings, sentiments, creative ability and not last, imagination.

In this way, keeping pace with the requirement for utilizing a language as a methods for correspondence, it is a need that talking aptitude ought to be shown utilizing options strategies and procedures that can make for students circumstances and conditions which Supports considering and innovativeness, gives students a chance to create and rehearse new language and social abilities in a generally nonthreatening setting, and can make the inspiration and association important for figuring out how to happen. (Tompkins, 1990, p.1).

For the reasons over this investigation goes for the enhancing students' communicative abilities and improvement of their enthusiasm for talking by methods for pretends and show arranged exercises. By utilizing and applying pretends and dramatization, by making a charming and appealing setting and climate amid talking class students can be initiated and set into a fascinating talking and communicative condition. Elizabeth F. Barkley (2004, p.150) states that pretend as an action to be utilized amid talking classes makes a circumstance in which students carry on or expect characters, personalities or parts deliberately, things that would not regularly happen or be accepted by them with a specific end goal to achieve the learning objective. As indicated by what McDonough and Shaw (1993, p. 165) satiate, pretend is by all accounts the perfect movement in which students can utilize language inventively and the one that goes for empowering discussion giving students a chance to rehearse and build up their talking aptitudes and communicative skill.

In the customary model of ELT, sentence structure assumed a focal part to the drawback of the other language segments. The abrogating significance joined to sentence structure depended on the presumption that exactness (syntactic rightness) secured effective correspondence. The conviction was tested in the mid-1970s with the acknowledgment that language structure learning was just a single segment of the communicative fitness (close by talk ability, sociolinguistic skill and key capability). Therefore, syntax teaching was relatively relinquished; it is just as of late that sentence structure has recovered its legitimate place in a coordinated way to deal with language teaching. The inquiry still remains WHAT to educate (what syntax things) and HOW to show language in a powerful and effective way.

The response to the primary inquiry (determination of language structure structures to be instructed) indicates out consistence with two criteria:

1. Comprehensibility – educators should instruct the practical heap of language structure, i.e. structures which empower significance understanding in a communicative circumstance: fundamental verb frames; certifiable, interrogative and negative examples, tenses and modals, and so on.

2. Acceptability – it is compared to a sufficient level of rightness and instinctive nature of the etymological yield.

With reference to HOW to show sentence structure, we say two lines of approach:

1. form-centred guideline (very esteemed in the conventional model) – students' needs are pre-characterized in the linguistic syllabus. As a matter of fact, syntax teaching mirrors the run of the mill classroom utilization of language, outside of any relevant connection to the subject at hand in a somewhat non-real route; centres around very much shaped sentences (which are not extensive), on language yield as confirmation of language learning; depends vigorously on express information and on controlled practice.

2. "fluency-first" instructional method/which means centred association (contemporary approach) – students' needs are evaluated in view of their execution amid familiarity exercises. It underlies the characteristic utilization of language in genuine like correspondence settings; depends on understood information and on automaticity (disguise of tenets); initiates students' key ability (circumstance administration by summarizing, rearrangement, therapeutic work), and so forth.

The typology of sentence structure exercises falls into three expansive writes:

1. controlled/mechanical practice (for instance, reiteration and substitution drills).

2. semi-controlled/contextualized/important practice: students are urged to relate shape to importance by demonstrating how the syntax structures are utilized as a part of genuine correspondence. For instance, keeping in mind the end goal to rehearse the utilization of relational words to depict areas of spots, students are given a road delineate different structures recognized in various areas. They are likewise given a rundown of relational words, for example, opposite, on the edge of, close, on, beside. They at that point need to answer inquiries, for example, "Where is the book shop? Where is the bistro?, and so on. The training is presently important in light of the fact that they need to react as indicated by the area of spots on the guide.

3. free/communicative practice (students utilize the structures in credible correspondence while focusing on this run represented conduct). For instance, students are solicited to draw a guide from their neighbourhood and answer inquiries concerning the area of better places, for example, the closest transport stop, the closest bistro, and so forth.

Comprehensively, language structure exercises show the accompanying highlights: particular punctuation structures are in centre and students are furnished with express data about the govern; students are requested to utilize the structures in sentences of their own; students need to chance to utilize the structures over and again amid the English classes (there is requirement for support and for working up on earlier information); students are relied upon to comprehend the run (by means of cognizance raising) utilize the syntactic structures effectively; there is criticism on the students' execution (they get a feeling of their execution).

Controlling components in teaching punctuation (principles)

1. constant presentation to language at a proper level of trouble (generally tuned input – the information is marginally over the students' level of capability).

2. building of importance centred communication.

3. opportunities for students to distinguish and guide regard for sentence structure shape, semantics or significance and realistic states of their utilization previously and keeping in mind that really utilizing the language .

To whole up, correspondence can't occur without structure, or sentence structure, a set of shared suspicions about how language functions, alongside an ability of members to participate in the transaction of importance. Consequently, the objective of sentence structure teaching is to empower students to disguise administers to end up effective in correspondence. Besides, communicative familiarity does not infer loss of syntactic precision, rather they are interrelated.

In the customary model, teaching vocabulary was decreased to students' looking words up in the lexicon, compose definitions, and utilize words in pretty much conventionalized sentences. Word records, instructor clarification, dialog, remembrance, vocabulary books, and tests were frequently utilized with a view to encouraging students to learn new words. Generally speaking, the teaching of vocabulary above rudimentary levels was for the most part coincidental, constrained to exhibiting new things experienced in perusing or some of the time listening writings. This aberrant teaching of vocabulary was introduced by the possibility that vocabulary extension would occur through the act of other language aptitudes, which has been demonstrated insufficient to guarantee vocabulary development.

In the current ELT technique, it is broadly acknowledged that vocabulary teaching ought to be a piece of the syllabus and instructed in a very much arranged and customary basis. Vocabulary is a rule supporter of cognizance, familiarity, and accomplishment. Vocabulary advancement is both a result of appreciation and a contribution to it, with word implications making up as much as 70– 80% of understanding.

Strategies for teaching vocabulary

1. utilizing a L1 interpretation;

2. utilizing a known L2 equivalent word or a straightforward definition in the L2;

3. demonstrating a protest (realia) or picture;

4. giving fast showing;

5. drawing a straightforward picture or outline;

6. breaking the word into parts and giving the significance of the parts and the entire word (the word part system);

7. giving a few case sentences with the word in setting to demonstrate the importance.

Controlling components in teaching vocabulary (principles)

1. Depend on students' earlier information and related encounters previously teaching new words to present a topical zone. For instance, before perusing a content on Communication Cyberspace, instruct the word blog, characterize it (an online diary), determine that the word is a mix (blog originates from web log), and demonstrate a photo of somebody situated at a PC forming an exposition or answer to post on their own site. At that point, demonstrate students a genuine blog .

2. Show frame and substance and parts of the idea of significance and vocabulary organizing/word relations:

elocution and spelling: capacity to perceive and duplicate things in the talked and composed structures.

• denotation and meaning: e.g. rose – denotative significance: reference to the bloom; obvious importance: enthusiasm (all-inclusive image), the Royal House (as in The Wars of the Roses).

• Polysemy: recognizing the different significance of a solitary word shape with a few however firmly related implications (foot: of a man, of a mountain, of a page).

• Homonymy: recognizing the different significance of a solitary word shape which has a few implications which are not firmly related (e.g. record: used to place papers in or an apparatus).

• Homophony: understanding words that have a similar articulation however unique spellings and implications (e.g. hold up weight).

• Synonymy: recognizing the distinctive shades of implying that synonymous words have (e.g. little).

• Style, enlist, lingo: Being ready to recognize distinctive levels of convention, the impact of various settings and themes, and in addition contrasts in land variety.

• Translation: consciousness of contrasts (particularly at the connotational level) and similitudes between the local and the foreign language (e.g. false cognates).

• Chunks of language: set expressions (in the act), collocations (migraine, torment in the back, sore throat), maxims (to convey coal to Newcastle).

• Grammar of vocabulary: taking in the standards that empower students to develop diverse types of the word or even unique words from that word (e.g. rest, dozed, dozed; capable, incapable; incapacity).

3. Independent of the students' level of capability, revelation, guided disclosure, relevant mystery (inferencing abilities) and lexicon building aptitudes ought to be energized.

4. Vocabulary choice should meet the accompanying criteria: scope: data ought to be given about the different implications and employments of a word frame (numerous significance words beat monosemantic things); recurrence: the more the quantity of the word events, the more inclined to be chosen.

Assessments go that the rundown incorporates 2,000 words with semantic and recurrence data drawn from a corpus of 2 to 5 million words. It is guaranteed that knowing these words offers access to around 80 for every penny of the words in any composed content and in this way animates inspiration since the words procured can be seen by students to have a certifiably brisk return.

3. comprehensiveness: words valuable in all English-talking nations;

4. utility: empowering talk on as wide a subject range as could be expected under the circumstances.

Proposed action

Movement write: Teaching vocabulary

Level of capability: middle of the road

Timing: 10 minutes

Students' gathering: pairwork

Directions: Students are requested to utilize a lexicon and look into the words in the rundown underneath and aggregate them into unbiased things and words having negative implications:

infamous versus popular strange versus gay

reputation versus promulgation meddlesome versus official

thin versus thin partner versus partner

talk versus chatter single guy versus old maid

immature versus virtuous

Development: students are brought issues to light that implication is rendered by both linguistic means (additions, for example, – like and – ish) and lexical means (diverse lexical things) and they are solicited to think from different sets of nonpartisan versus words which are contrarily or emphatically hinted.

The intuitive, social and contextualized point of view of language learning centres around associated discourse (talk) as opposed to on separated pieces. There is additionally a move from focusing on formal parts of language to substance and significance, to communicative plan (deliberate perusing). Data handling while at the same time tuning in (successive request of information, observation, acknowledgment, and understanding stages) is combined with a constructivist position: perusers effectively develop significance as per their own particular purposes for perusing and additionally their own particular earlier learning (etymological information and additional phonetic/all-encompassing learning) and convention of experience. Earlier learning is recognized to schemata, additionally subdivided into content schemata (theme recognition, social information and past involvement with a specific field) and formal schemata (learning about content sorts – elaborate traditions and additionally the basic association/assortment of organizations). The socio-social setting has picked up ever expanded significance in language learning as the procedure does not happen in a social vacuum. As a matter of fact, uncommon consideration is paid to the writer – peruser relationship in significance development while perusers read powerfully (specifically).

Speech learning is context dependent and it requires interaction, as well as the ability to coordinate distinctive relational and psychomotor perspectives. Levelt (1989) supports a programmed 4-organize model of discourse creation: 1) conceptualization, i.e. choice of the message content based on the situational setting and the specific reason to be accomplished; 2) plan, i.e. getting to, sequencing and picking words and expressions to express the expected message properly; 3) verbalization, which concerns the engine control of the articulatory organs to execute the arranged message; and 4) observing, which enables speakers to effectively distinguish and redress botches if fundamental.

In the CLT, talking positions highest and students are prepared in order to adapt to genuine circumstances. They are worried about frame, i.e. step by step instructions to create phonetically satisfactory expressions in purpose of articulation, sentence structure and vocabulary, and with settlement/appropriacy, i.e. determination of substance and frame given specific socio-social settings and standards. Furthermore, they should be deliberately capable with the goal that they can make modifications amid the continuous procedure of talking (since as a rule there is prompt input) and convey the message over.

The intelligent, social and contextualized point of view of language learning centres around associated discourse (talk) instead of on segregated pieces. There is additionally a move from fixating on formal parts of language to substance and significance, to communicative expectation (intentional talking). Talking improvement supports constructivism: they effectively utilize language as indicated by their own motivations for talking and their own particular earlier information (etymological learning and additional semantic/broad learning) and convention of experience. Earlier learning is recognized to schemata, additionally subdivided into content schemata (theme commonality, social information and past involvement with a specific field) and formal schemata (highlights of the oral method of correspondence: talk, structures, and phonological and prosodic frameworks of talking).

In language classrooms, teachers unfurl a few employments of language and heaps of chances of sentence structure, vocabulary, language examples et cetera. Regardless of whether students understand numerous things about target language, they think that its difficult to create their thoughts through composing and talking. To represent, when instructors need students to talk or compose even about themes that require straightforward tenses and expressions of target language, for example, their youth, main residence or companions, they for the most part say that there is nothing in their psyche to compose, or they don't comprehend what they are to tell. It appears to be likely that this condition doesn't change in students' primary language and it ought to be considered in the differential reasons. It can be accepted that absence of creative ability and imagination capacity may somewhat seem, by all accounts, to be a component of this circumstance of discovering nothing to compose or talk.

Denote that the word spontaneous creation in our test recommends the capacity to make or deliver new things without premeditation on previous learning and that the word innovativeness proposes the capacity to make or deliver new things utilizing the creative ability on prior information. The information ought to be acknowledged as the tall tales here.

In language teaching, it is basic to enhance foreign language students' four fundamental abilities perusing, composing, talking and tuning in target language. In spite of the fact that the course books we utilize for the most part give every one of those fundamental abilities, we require supplementary materials in a few conditions. In the trial composing and talking aptitudes are issued worried with the accompanying viewpoints: Firstly, two abilities composing and talking are beneficial abilities and students may require fairly innovativeness capacity to give them.

Innovativeness enables students to use the learning picked up as they need. Tall tales can be utilized for this point because of their qualities. Secondly, an instructor, who wants to take students' thoughtfulness regarding the exercise and to make it pleasant while teaching those aptitudes, requires thoughts that reinforce students' energy and appropriate materials for this desire. Subsequently, tall tales are valuable from these perspectives and helpful too. We have planned a few exercises, activities and test lessons on exploratory writing and improvisational talking with a specific end goal to exhibit how to use children's stories in EFL classrooms and looked through their impacts on students' learning and change of lessons.

While instructors need students to talk or compose even about straightforward subjects, for example, their adolescence, main residence or companions, they by and large say that there is nothing in their psyche to compose or they don't realize what they will tell. It appears to be likely that this situation doesn't change in students' first language and it ought to be considered in the differential reasons. Furthermore, it is one of the fundamental focuses to be energetic about language figuring out how to succeed. By and by, language students may lose their inspiration quickly. To maintain a strategic distance from this inconvenience teachers by and large need charming course materials. Children's stories are adored by everyone that is the reason it is viewed as that they are really advantageous to give the dependable inspiration to the two instructors and students in language teaching. In the wake of having the students arranged through tall tales in an inventive climate.

Enhancements in the students' composition and talking aptitudes are normal, when they are given additional fable exercises notwithstanding their standard class work.

Improvement in students' inventive self-articulation is not out of the ordinary through experimental writing and improvisational talking exercises.

When learning English as a foreign language, students need to develop the four most important skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. At the same time, they need to think independently, to learn to be creative, to follow their inspiration and interest, to learn what they want to know, to learn how to find that information, to learn how to do research, how to present their ideas to others, how to communicate conclusions and how to develop personal responsibility (Holmes, 2004, p. 5). According to some authors (E.g. Holmes, 2004), this approach is much more effective than the old-school approach that implied:

Memorizing lists of facts

Making ticks on multiple Choice sheets

Following orders like cadets

Showing no independence and

No ability to think for themselves

No ability to share in decision-making and

No experience in sharing responsibility (Holmes, 2004, p. 7).

Another important point of view that Holmes (2004) has expressed is related to the teacher’s attitude during class. In his opinion, the cornerstones of student-centred learning are:

Task-based learning means helping the students choose a job that they want to do and then let them go out and do it, individually, on their own or within peer-learning a group.

Student-centered learning means allowing the students the freedom to work on topics of their own choosing, within reasonable guidelines, in accordance with the body of knowledge.

Self-access learning means letting the students go out and find their own information on their topics from anywhere they can, such as the Internet, books, journals, magazines, newspapers, interviews, and etc.

Group Activities means allowing the students to form groups of four or five in which they will share the responsibility of getting-the-job-done and of doing the planning, preparation and presentation of their accumulated information as a team, each with an assigned task to fulfil, so they can learn from working with others and from the constructive comments the teacher makes in helping them through the steps of the process.

3.2 Speaking Activities at Work

Most of the communication that takes place in real life situation is oral for example either face to face or telephonic. Learners need to develop this skill of speaking for their existence. In the process of acquisition of the mother tongue, listening and speaking come naturally. It is because the child is exposed to the language all through the day. He absorbs the sounds and speaks the language quite naturally. But, while learning second language like English, the learner learns the skills of reading and writing first. He has to put a lot of effort in speaking the language.

Speaking is the skill that seems intuitively the most important because people who know a language are referred to as speakers of the language. Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech are an important component of a language class.

A successful speaking activity in the classroom has the following characteristics: learners talk as much as possible, the participation is even and the classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participants, all students get a chance to speak, students’ motivation is high and they are interested in the topic, language is of an acceptable level and learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant and easily comprehensible to each other. However, teachers always have to face some problems with speaking activities like inhibition or the feeling that the students have nothing to say, low or uneven participation and the greatest difficulty, the problem with the use of mother tongue.

There are a number of things that the teacher can do to help to solve some of these problems. Group work, for instance increases the amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time and also lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the class. One downside of the group work is that the teacher cannot supervise all learners and sometimes utterances will be incorrect and learners may sometimes slip into their native language. Even so, the amount of time remaining for oral practice is likely to be far more than in the full-class set-up. Another thing that teachers can do is to base the activity on easy language.

Generally, the level of language should be lower than that used in intensive language-learning activities. This language should be easily recalled and produced by the participants so that they can speak fluently with the minimum of hesitation. It is a good idea to teach or review vocabulary before the activity starts. The teacher can also make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest. Both the tourism and commerce offer a wide variety of topics that are possibly used at listening and later on can be continued as speaking activities. While working with the topics related to tourism and commerce the teacher can also give some vocabulary together with the instructions and later on ask students to use the target language.

Some discussions are provoked or introduced by short recorded texts or interviews. After a listening exercise, Penny Ur (1991) suggests as a follow up continuing with a speaking exercise. This exercise can be of two types either topic based or task based. The topic based is one to which learners can relate using ideas from their own experience and knowledge. A topic centred discussion can be done as a formal debate where an idea is proposed and opposed by other speakers. A task based exercise is goal-oriented; it requires the group or pair to achieve an objective that is an observable result. This result can be attained only by interaction between participants.

There are a set of different exercises that can be used by teachers at various levels. These exercises might be of great help for students studying in vocational schools, who later on intend to work in the tourism and commerce industry, where they always have to face situations when communication is essential. Analysing the student’s needs, they will have to be able to deal with many situations in which they may find themselves in their work where they have to be effective English speakers, cope with unexpected occurrences, not only the predictable ones. Having these jobs they have to be able to engage in conversations with clients, offer them advice and reassurance, speak to others on their behalf and so on. Anyone who deals with visitors, customers, clients, tourists needs to be able to give directions, recommend products or services, talk about local places and customs, and explain local habits and rules while using English as a lingua franca with foreign people.

Teachers should always encourage students to actively participate in role play activities. In these activities they are asked to play a role in order to simulate the kind of situations in which they may find themselves when dealing with customers or guests. This is an ideal way of preparing for real-life situations in which students might find themselves in their work. The good side of this type of activity is that they have the chance to experience both roles either the member of staff or the guest or client. Students can actually learn a lot from playing both roles. If they play the role of a customer they get an insight into how members of staff ought to behave and speak, and enables them to give useful feedback afterwards to the member of staff about the way he or she has dealt with them. It is good if the role plays also involve telephone conversations. Students should also try to simulate the essential fact that they are not able to see the person they are talking to, therefore they should sit back-to-back and have to communicate with their voice not gestures or eye contact.

Discussions are designed to best work in small groups. Even though this type of exercise has its own disadvantages and it has no direct relevance to dealing with guests or clients, discussion is an ideal way of helping students to develop their confidence and fluency in conversation. Particularly in small groups discussion gives a good chance to use and consolidate the vocabulary that they have encountered.

Most of the course books contain a lot of units with topics that deal with situations related to either tourism or commerce. If we take for example tourism we can easily say that there is no course book that would not have covered speaking activities or questions related to holiday types, dialogues at a travel agent, booking holidays or plane tickets. We often have questions related to students’ last holiday, dealing with complaints at a hotel or a restaurant. In this way these topics can easily be covered even if the teacher does not have a specific course book designed for students learning travel or tourism. The same thing applies to business as we often find topics related to buying or selling products, asking for information or complaining about a certain product. Telephone conversations are also very often present in books with different tasks, like filling in certain lines or finishing the dialogue and acting it out. In this case drama exercises can help students learn better pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure and also reinforce the language that has been learnt. Drama improves oral communication, it provides opportunity for the student to be involved actively. If we analyse it deeply, drama is communication because it concentrates on the predominant language that is present in our daily life. Experiencing different roles, students will be able to understand how language can be either a bond or a barrier between people.

Every opportunity for speaking in the classroom should be taken, right from the arrival of the teacher in the classroom the target language should be used. Students should learn to follow the teacher, understand and use instructions. Speaking is not only limited to this, rather it is a more complex activity and combined with listening exercises can provide variety to the speaking activities and in the same time they raise students’ interest and motivation.

A great deal of the language teacher’s time and attention is devoted to assessing the progress pupils make. In teaching and testing, it is traditional to speak of the four skills and assess them separately. The simplification is intended to make learning and assessment more efficient by focusing on one type of skill at a time. All the skills are often used more or less at the same time and even in teaching and testing learners may be asked to read or listen to something before they start to interact with each other. Speaking skills are an important part of the curriculum in language teaching, and this makes them an important object of the assessment.

Assessing speaking is challenging because there are many factors that influence the teacher’s impression of how well someone can speak a language and because we expect students to be accurate. Many speaking tests clearly concentrate on spoken interaction or spoken production and avoid mixing extended reading, writing or listening activities with the speaking tasks. Other test types, mainly the task-based ones explicitly include tasks that are frequent in the target language-use situation and that involve combinations of reading, listening or writing activities with speaking. These are called integrated tasks and they are used with the motivation to focus on more language use in the test. If the students do well on these tasks, they have shown that they process the skills and abilities required in the situation. On the other hand if they do not, it is not clear whether it is reading or speaking skill that the student failed to acquire.

The most common way of assessing speaking is in live, face-to-face interaction. This can be done in several configurations: one-to-one interview, paired tasks between students and group testing. It is very rare that live interaction is tested through the telephone or through a video conference. This is only done if it is difficult to bring the tester and the student face-to-face for geographical reasons. However, this can be done for a job testing, to see how well the examinee can handle himself or herself on the phone.

The main characteristic of the live test mode is that the interaction in it is two-directional. Each speaker has to react to the other speaker’s affirmation and if there is need for clarification or other modification, these can be done. It is spoken interaction that is assessed.

Oral presentation test is one directional. The examinee is expected to accommodate to the task, which only covers some aspects of interactive speaking and the construct of this is more clearly concerned with spoken production. These tests often include monologist speaking tasks, where one speaker produces a long turn alone without interacting with other speakers.

One question that researchers have tried to answer about the two testing modes is how far they test the same skill. Studies have indicated that there is a considerable overlap, in the sense that people who score high in one mode also score high in the other. However, as discourse events and assessment experiences, the two modes differ. When the examinees sit the oral presentation exam, their language is a little more literate and less oral-like, and many of them feel anxious about the test because everything they say is analysed and the only channel they have for communication is speaking, no gestures or expressions should be used. Nevertheless, many examinees also feel that an oral presentation test can be a good test of their speaking skill, even if they prefer interaction testing.

In a practical sense, a recording tests is unlikely to be used for classroom assessment due to the amount of work that it requires. For formal tests it is a possibility to arrange tape-base testing, especially for the final exams. At the final exam in our testing system it is a requirement to include both modes in order to get the best of both oral presentation and live interaction.

While testing the productive skills of speaking following criteria such as fluency, accuracy, pronunciation, accent, intonation, comprehension and communicative ability should be taken into consideration. To test the ability to produce correct vowels/consonants, the learners should be given minimal pairs such as: tell-tail, major-measure. Words with changing stress such as: 'photograph, pho'tographer, photo'graphic can be given to check the shift. Students should be asked to produce correct intonation of a statement order or a request. In the same time they should be asked to describe pictures, people, place, events or objects. They can also be asked to participate in a role-play to test the ability for natural communication in real life situations or to participate in group discussions to test their communicative abilities following the conventions of turn taking, asking for their opinions, interrupting, agreeing, and disagreeing in a polite way. The teacher must check that they speak intelligibly and confidently. They can also be asked to make announcements, narrate anecdotes and jokes etc.

Speaking scores express how well the examinees can speak the language that is being tested. They usually take the form of numbers, but there may also be categories like excellent, fair, etc. In addition to the plain score is usually a shorter or longer statement that describes what each score means and a series of statements from lowest to highest constitutes. The Common European Framework of Reference (CEF- Council of Europe, 2001) is a resource for language education which is intended to help learners, teachers and assessors set goals for language learning and give them support to reach them. This contains a range of illustrative descriptors of language ability, including some for speaking. These descriptors can be used as a basis for creating test-specific criteria. The CEF has six levels: two are basic – A1 and A2, two are independent – B1 and B2 and two are proficient – C1 and C2. These scales have five criteria and these describe what the learners actually do. These descriptors have been written for general purposes because these focus on language from the perspective of interactive communication. The five criteria of the speaking test is: global achievement; grammar and vocabulary; discourse management; pronunciation; interactive communication.

• Global achievement: the students are expected to handle communication on a range of familiar topics with little hesitation whereas accuracy and appropriate linguistic resources are also tested.

• Grammar and vocabulary or grammatical and lexical resource: in this category students are scored for the accurate and appropriate use of syntactic forms and vocabulary to meet the requirements of the task.

• Discourse management: students are marked for their ability to express ideas and opinions in a coherent and connected way. Students are expected to construct sentences and produce utterances to convey information to express and support opinions. Good marks are awarded for coherent flow of language with an appropriate range of linguistic resources over several utterance.

• Pronunciation: refers to the candidate’s ability to produce comprehensible utterances to meet task requirements.

• Interactive communication: refers to the student’s ability to interact with the interlocutor using appropriate speed and rhythm as well as to use functional language and strategies to maintain and repair interaction.

Thornbury (Thornbury, 2002, p. 129) summarized the marking schemes for the overall oral production according to which the 6 assessment levels have the following requirements:

• C2: Can produce clear, smoothly flowing well-structured speech with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points.

• C1: Can give clear, detailed descriptions and presentations on complex subjects, integrating sub-themes, developing particular points and rounding-off with an appropriate conclusion.

• B2: Can give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations with appropriate highlighting of significant points and relevant supporting detail. Can give clear, detailed descriptions and preservations on a wide range of subjects related to his/her field of interest, expanding and supporting ideas with subsidiary points and relevant examples.

• B1: Can reasonably fluently sustain straightforward description of one of a variety of subjects with his/her field of interest, presenting it as a linear sequence of points.

• A2: Can give a simple description or presentation of people, living or working conditions, daily routines, likes/dislikes etc. as a short series of simple phrases and sentences linked into a list.

• A1: Can produce simple mainly isolated phrases about people and places.

According to Holmes (2004), the warm-up speaking activities are very important in pre-intermediate classrooms, as they can help the teacher and the students to know each other in a rather informal way. In this phase, two types of tasks can be given. The first one consists in interviewing one-another, while the second one implies basic games. An activity that could be put in practice in this case is an interview, during which students can be paired and can conduct interviews in English, asking questions such as:

What is your name?

What is your nickname?

What is your birthdate?

What is your place of birth?

Who are your family members?

Where do you go to school?

What skills do you have?

What are your hobbies?

Where did you travel?

What makes you unique?

The teacher can also be part of the interview in the warm-up phase. The students can gather in a circle and note down 20 different question that will ask the teacher in English. When students start asking the questions, they should not repeat the questions that have already been asked.

Klippel (1984) also proposes a set of activities that can be constructive in the warm-up phase, as seen in Figure 4.

Warming up exercises (Klippel, 1984)

Figure 4

The warm up phase can be followed by a number of creative exercises that determine students to start using more and more English words and put them in a sentence. The game Find someone who is interactive and might also represent a way of learning by having fun. In this exercise, every student must stand up and walk around the room, asking the other students about the information below, asking and answering only in English and using only full sentences. For example, the teacher could say: Find someone who has been to Chicago. Next, the student can ask the question to anyone in the class.

Example:

Question: “Kai, have you been to Chicago?”

Answer: “Yes, I have been to Chicago.”

Or “Nobody has been to Chicago.”

Other examples of questions can be:

Find someone who

Doesn’t like rock music.

Doesn’t smoke.

Never drinks alcohol.

Never tells a lie.

Doesn’t eat beef.

Has never been to Ranong.

Doesn’t have a TV.

Can do Thai dancing.

Cannot cook.

Can drive a motorcycle.

Can understand Chinese.

Wants to learn Japanese.

Can program a computer.

Likes computer games.

Can use Microsoft Word.

Has a bank account.

Never takes a taxi.

Usually takes the bus.

Doesn’t live at home.

Gets up at 4:30 a.m.

When everyone has finished asking questions and has written down the names of which students have done what, then, the teacher can position the students in a circle, ask them questions such as the above and correct their grammar mistakes as they speak.

Simon says… is another game that is suitable for young learners who learn English at a pre-intermediate or intermediate level. During this game, all students must stand in a circle and listen to the commands of the teacher, who could say: Simon says: close your eyes or Simon says: Hold your nose. Everyone in the circle must do whatever Simon says. In order for them to follow the order, they must understand what Simon asks, which is why listening carefully is crucial.

An activity during which students have to make up a story is also creative and puts their skills in practice. During such an exercise, they are forced to speak; otherwise the story cannot be created. When it comes to stories, there are endless possibilities as to how it should begin or end. Holmes (2004) proposes a few plots that should be continued by each student when their turn comes:

Once there was a beautiful young girl of eighteen.

It had always been her dream to study at English at Chula.

She did everything she could to prepare herself.

She knew the entrance exam would be very important.

Her family sent her to the British Council for extra lessons.

They spared no expense when it came to her education.

She often told her friends that she had no time for fun.

The entrance exam was the only thing she thought of.

She never thought about boys or falling in love.

She never took time to listen to music or go dancing.

She never went to the movies or watched TV.

Half the time she even neglected to eat regular meals.

She studied so much that she neglected to exercise.

She was so stressed that she always had trouble sleeping at night.

In the weeks before the entrance exam she was very nervous.

She worried so much that her friends were concerned about her.

Some people even thought that she might go crazy.

Towards the end, she even began to lose weight and look a little strange.

Eventually, however, she did extremely well on the entrance exam.

She was filled with joy when she won a place in the Faculty of Arts at Chula (Holmes, 2004, p. 32)

Can you guess who I am is another exercise that can challenge students and determine them to use words in English that they have recently learned, but are not aware that they know. By playing this game, they could start using them naturally. During this game, one of the students has to pretend to be someone else or something else and the other students have to guess who they are by asking questions such as:

Do you travel in outer space?

Do you live in a big city?

Do you have a family?

Do you like to eat spinach?

Do you wear a mask?

Do you live in an ancient castle?

Do you like to suck people’s blood?

Can you climb up the sides of buildings?

Are you human?

Do you sometimes talk to animals?

Can you blow fire out of your nostrils?

Have you lived for thousands of years?

Do you have horns?

Can you make yourself invisible?

Are you a child?

Are you the leader of a group of warriors?

Can you tell what other people are thinking?

Do you have X ray vision?

Can you fly?

Do you have a girlfriend?

Do you change identity?

Are you strong and muscular?

Are you very handsome?

Do you come from the planet Krypton?

Are you Superman? (Holmes, 2004, p.35)

The Detective game is also recommended in classrooms with pre-intermediate and intermediate students. This is a game where you put three people at the front of the room, who all claim to have had the same unusual experience. Like a girl who once went into the men’s restroom by mistake and felt quite embarrassed. Only one of them has had the true experience and the other two are imposters. The true girl must report the truth. The other two must make up their answers based on their imaginations. This means they are lying. Your job is to question the girls, as though you were detectives, to find out which two are lying and which one is the true person. Every class member asks one question, which all three girls must answer as though they had actually had the experience themselves and could tell the actual details the way they had experienced them. Detectives should be able to ask clever enough questions to catch the two imposters, because they should be able to hear when suspects don’t know what to say because they were not actually at the scene to remember and report on what really happened (Holmes, 2004, p. 39).

These are four examples of speaking activities that a teacher can initiate with her students, in order to develop both their ability to speak and their ability to listen. It becomes interesting for the teacher to observe the evolution of the students’ skills when repeating the games regularly, yet using advanced expressions, complex words and more difficult scenarios. Monitoring the students’ progress and praising them is essential in order to obtain good results.

Except for practical games that prove to be a lot of fun for students, word games and other activities that mostly involve the intellect of the students are very effective. For example, the teacher can ask students to think of related words and give a list of words that have easy synonyms.

Recognizing noises and imitating them is another exercise that stimulates the students’ thinking and that determines them to find their words. For instance, the teacher can ask them to describe sounds produced by traffic, animals, constructions, machines, nature etc. A list of words that can be related to noises can be seen in table 1.

Words for noise recognition games

Table 1 (Holmes, 2004)

Having a dictionary at their disposal during these exercises can be helpful for the students. They can search for the words that they do not understand and write them down.

Guessing games are also very popular in classrooms were the teacher puts an emphasis on teaching speaking skills. Klippel (1984) proposes a few activities that can be adapted according to the class’s needs, as it can be seen in Figure 5.

Examples of guessing games (Klippel, 1984)

Figure 5

Role play is an activity that plays an important part in the teaching process, which is why it is recommended to involve students in such activities that stimulate their creativity, help them learn new words, phrases and expressions. Role plays are great ways of creating dialogues, while pretending to be someone else. For instance, a real-life situation that is often encountered in the daily routine can be the easiest way of introducing students to role play, such as pretending to be a customer and a shop assistant. Roles and dialogues can be read from a piece of paper or can be improvised, depending on the preferences of the teacher and students, on the level of engagement that they are used to and their age.

This type of activity is well-known for its effectiveness in learning English as a second language. Its effects are being described by most specialty authors (E.g. Scott & Ytreberg, 1990), who claim that they are useful because:

Students start speaking in first and second person, while texts are often in the third person

Students learn to ask questions and answer at the same time

They learn to use bits of language and to reply correctly

They use more than words and learn how to adjust their tone of voice, stress, intonation, facial expressions etc.

They are encouraged to chat naturally (Scott & Ytreberg, 1990, p. 42)

Penny Ur (1991) also encourages such activities, but also proposes interactional talk, long turns, the simulation of varied situations, feelings and relationships in order for students to be able to create their spoken discourse. By interactional talk, the author refers specifically to role plays and dialogues. Practising speaking through long turns can be effective when telling stories, jokes, describing a person or a place in detail, recounting the plot of a movie or a book, giving a short lecture of talk, arguing a case and so on. Simulating various situations, feelings and relationships also resumes to dialogues and role play, which is a traditional language-learning technique.

There is an endless list of activities that teachers can bring into the classroom in order to teach pre-intermediate and intermediate students speaking skills, yet not all of them can be practiced during a semester or even a whole year. Giving this fact that depends upon the available time that the teacher has, the frequency of the classes and the school curricula, a well-thought plan must be put in place. The warm-up activities, getting to know each other and the early assessments are extremely important in determining how to conceive the plan. The final strategy will be based on the language level, the frequency of interaction that students have in the English language and the level that they must achieve by the end of the courses.

Throughout the year, monitoring the students’ performance, improvement and evolution is crucial, yet the teacher cannot have a full and unbiased view without assessing them formally. Giving the fact that, in this context, the teacher focuses on speaking skills, the testing should take place orally, as there isn’t any other way of establishing the talking skills of a pupil. To do that, interviewing them in front of the class is the most frequent assessment technique, but role plays, group discussions, monologues, picture descriptions are also effective methods that can help the teacher understand the level of language of a student.

Each and every activity during a language class should have a specific linguistic purpose either to give information in order to express emotions or to extract information from context. The purpose of many language teaching texts is to present language which never occurs outside the language class. For students it is essential to teach language which is studied for a purpose other than language itself. If the student is interested in a certain sport then he or she will be motivated to learn new vocabulary to that type of sport rather than learn a certain grammatical structure. The most effective teaching is to set realistic tasks where they use language for a purpose. Many students who do not succeed in acquiring language are de-motivated by an approach based on learning language and are highly motivated by an approach which is based on realistic tasks.

Students can have difficulties in understanding language if the text is way too long and the task is too complicated for them. Therefore the teachers have to be careful while teaching skills to break down large tasks into smaller ones and to select the correct length of the text. By text we can mean either a printed or a recorded one.

If we analyse traditional and modern language teaching we can realize that traditional language teaching has concentrated too much on understanding the sentence. Modern language teaching has shown that this is not sufficient. The reasons that were brought up demonstrated that if the students understand individual sentences they will not necessarily be able to transfer knowledge to understanding whole printed texts. A good example for this would be the paragraph structure. Paragraphs usually begin with topic sentences which are expanded and explained further in writing. These do not occur in other writings, therefore if the student does not understand structures, linking phrases, functions but can translate a sentence word by word, his or her learning will not be effective for long term. Furthermore, we can apply this theory also to speaking, while some structures are used only for asking information others only for responses. The final aim is that the student can communicate: ask for information and give information. Another difficulty that we encounter at speaking is that people very rarely speak in full sentences. It might happen that the speaker uses only certain phrases, or he or she might be interrupted by the other speaker. In the same time we can say that natural speaking is not a disorganised jumble of phrases, but on the contrary it is very carefully structured which depends on the speakers.

To sum up, natural language is structured at different levels: phrases, sentences, paragraphs and even larger units for instance whole chapters of a book or whole presentations. Traditional language teaching has tended to concentrate on only the sentence and the pronunciation. However, if teachers’ aim is to reflect what language really is and how it is used, they need to be aware of a wider range of skills that students need in order to encode and decode language.

Almost all the language skills, both receptive and productive can be broken down into sub-skills with the use of certain questions. Teachers must be conscious that it is unrealistic to expect from students to go from writing a sentence to writing an essay, or from answering to a question in one sentence to engaging into a natural conversation. Teachers should help students by explaining the specific structure of the paragraph and also by showing how to link what they have said to the previous speaker. Teaching should be built from small units to larger ones focusing on developing both receptive and productive skills.

There cannot be a good rule for the best order of teaching the four skills. However, due to the difficulty of spelling that might be confusing while teaching writing, it is suggested to start with listening, then follow with speaking, reading and finally writing. This sequence is not the only one to employ in most school systems. In many schools teaching starts with writing skills, only later on is it continued with listening and subsequently with speaking.

While we analyse how we started learning our mother tongue we can obviously answer the question that as little children we primarily start with listening. Modern theoreticians make a distinction between language learning which is a conscious activity and language acquisition which is an unconscious activity. Some experiments have shown that it is possible to teach language successfully while we require very little of the productive skills from the students during the early stages of teaching. If we carefully select comprehensible reading and listening texts, we can confirm that the students are motivated and this helps them to be confident in their own ability to manage to learn the foreign language. Later on these students are expected to do better than average in productive skills.

Teaching writing before speaking can cause a series of difficulties. A sound can often be represented by several spellings, therefore if we first start teaching writing the students can easily become confused and have a series of difficulties in differentiating similar sounds. However, teachers are suggested not to be dogmatic with the sequence of language skills and to bear in mind the primacy of listening.

Old-fashioned syllabuses assumed that language learning was linear and thus the structures of the languages were presented in single sequences. Nowadays this assumption is not relevant anymore. The new concept claims that the same language items need to be studied again and again throughout the course. There are three main reasons that support this idea:

All students forget, therefore straightaway revision is necessary from time to time;

Other uses of certain structures need to be studied;

As the learners advance they need to deepen their understanding and teachers must be prepared to return to certain fundamental problems and examine them.

The cyclical nature of language learning is not confined to structure, but it relates to all areas of language learning. As an example we could take speaking and pronunciation. We cannot take for sure that once we practiced a language structure students will not ever misuse certain structures or mispronounce certain words. Therefore, if we come back to practise the same skill over and over again students not only learn to simply answer but they also learn to take more initiative. The result of this practise is reflected not from week to week, but with a short sequence within a single lesson. It is advisable that teachers use the communicative pair work when students have to perform their dialogues in front of the class. A practice of this kind is not finished when it has been done once, it needs to be repeated both on a short term cycle and a longer-term cycle.

Both teachers and students are aware of the fact that doing the same thing over and over again is boring. Therefore teachers have to recognise that they should not repeat exactly the same type of exercise, each exercise should be a development of the previous type of exercise. Along with varying, the exercise skills should also be varied. Due to the fact that receptive and productive skills are so closely linked to each other the practise of the skills should be also cyclical. Teachers should never spend a whole class with developing only one skill with one type of exercise because students can easily get bored and lose interest if they do not understand a certain thing.

Speaking a foreign language is a complex skill, therefore language teachers try to simplify it. Nevertheless, it is not an easy process for teachers. There are very few interesting texts that from a grammatical point of view contain only one language structure. Sometimes teachers isolate a structure in order to practise the skill. There is a danger that occurs in this case, mainly that when the teacher goes through the tricks, which are part of the examination. Unfortunately this has very little to do with the student’s ability to use a foreign language. In order to be effective, teachers should concentrate on developing both receptive and productive skills in such a sequence that facilitates language acquisition.

As mentioned before, speaking skills are some of the most difficult to acquire. In order for a student to become fluent, they need a lot of practice. Theoreticians and experience show that speaking activities that are strategically organised throughout a specific period of time, depending on the type of class that students are attending, lead to the best results. In the paragraphs that follow I will describe a variety of activities that can help students engage in conversations, starting from the most basic level to complex discussions. They are described using the same structure that includes the objectives, the language level, the organization of the class, the timeframe, procedures and variations. These activities might offer teachers the option to choose different activities depending on the purposes and needs of the class.

In the warm-up phase, which plays an important role in making students feel comfortable and getting to know each other, as well as the teacher, I propose the following activities:

Remember the name

Finding the missing part of a story

A variety of activities can be done in the warm-up phase, yet once the teacher notices that the students have become acquainted to each other and are more relaxes, they can move on to a next phase. The next phases are meant to stimulate students’ attention, their concentration, listening skills, their ability to describe one another by using adjectives, expressing their opinion etc.

Spontaneous descriptions

“Interview about myself”

What’s in my suitcase?

Guess the object

Spot the differences

The detective

Where does the teacher live?

Who am I?

How do you spell this word?

Parts of an objects

The meaning of a number

Who are your talented colleagues?

Use the word

Optimists versus pessimists

Finish the sentence

What happens if…?

Finding synonyms

What would you do if…?

The above activities can be used for teaching speaking skills, yet they can be adapted in such a way that they can become useful in teaching reading, speaking and writing skills, too. However, they are meant to develop oral skills, increase the level of confidence, expand the student’s vocabulary and develop the ability to speak fluently during basic conversations.

In order for the exercises and activities to be well-organized, teachers can use worksheets that contain lists of words, questions or statements. There are plenty of reasons why preparation is very important. Time saving is one of the most important factors, yet the strategic planning of the class also represents a priority. For instance, in the case of unfinished sentences, teachers can use stem sentences like the ones below:

My favourite cars are……………………………………………………………….

I like to play with colleagues who……………………………………………………

My favourite food is …………………………………………………………………

I would never…………………………………………………………………………

My dream is to………………………………………………………………………..

The best time of my life was when…………………………………………………..

My favourite class is ……………………………..because………………………….

I would never eat …………………………………………………………………….

When teaching speaking skills, one of the most important purposes that the teacher has is making students feel comfortable with dialogues, expressing their opinions fluently and bringing arguments or asking questions, having a discourse that can be understood easily by their interlocutor. Teaching speaking skills is more effective when certain expressions or words are being presented to students. These can be used in a variety of situations and can help create speech patterns that make communication easier. Having a dialogue vocabulary worksheet is essential for any teacher. For instance, a worksheet such as the one below can be used to teach students what to say or how to begin their statements in most situations:

Dialogue vocabulary worksheet example

Worksheet 1

Personal recommendations

Materials such as Worksheet 1 are useful in class and can be filled in with expressions that have been mentioned in class before. The most important thing while creating such a material is the translation that should be as accurate as possible, eliminating the risk of confusion.

Teachers might find worksheets to be practical during class and help them save time, which is why it is recommended to use them especially in the case of activities like Finding the missing part of a story that was described above. A worksheet that can be used during this exercise is the one below:

Finding the missing part of the story worksheet example

Worksheet 2

Personal recommendations

Questions for The Detective worksheet

Worksheet 3

Personal recommendations

Although worksheets are very useful and represent an important tool that makes working with the class more efficient, most of the exercises and activities above are meant to develop speaking skills and don’t require a lot of written material, as opposed to teaching reading or writing skills. In the above cases, interaction and speech are the most important factors that help students develop oral abilities.

Methodology

Teaching speaking skills is considered to be the most difficult and complex process, as it takes more than simply learning grammar concepts and rules or understanding the words, phrases and expressions. In order for a student to be fluent in a foreign language and to achieve good oral skills, they must show progress in the following:

Pronunciation

Vocabulary

Accuracy

Communication

Interaction

Fluency

Language testing is a common activity, especially when it comes to reading and writing and can show a student’s progress immediately. When it comes to listening and speaking skills, progress is more difficult to track, especially due to the fact that there are psychological factors involved at the moment of testing, such as self-confidence. A student might be able to speak fluently and to understand the foreign language they are studying, but perform poorly when tested, due to intense emotions or anxiety. This is the main reason why teachers should focus on increasing a student’s delivery skills.

This paper’s research focuses on the six factors mentioned above that can help a teacher grade their students accurately. During this process, the observation and analysis methodologies were applied, as well as the questionnaire, in order to reach to a conclusion regarding a class’s results after a period of teaching speaking skills.

The research was conducted over a period of 6 weeks, at the ………………… School, on a group of 15 students. I tested the 20 activities (role-play, dialogue, monologues, descriptions etc.). Giving the fact that students participated to the English class three times a week, each activity was performed once. During each class, after teaching the regular theoretical information, I engaged students in one of the activities, writing down their mistakes, improvement points and strong points. My conclusions and notes regarding the performance of students were based on a weekly comparison. At the end of the six weeks, each student received one of the below grades:

Meets expectations high – 1

Meets expectations low – 2

Slightly underperforms – 3

Does not meet expectations – 4

Based on the 6 language requirements, pronunciation, vocabulary, accuracy, Communication, interaction and fluency, I answered 6 questions organized in a short questionnaire, where I input one of the above grades. To make the data analysable, I have given each grade a number equivalent. The questions were the following:

Does the student have a better pronunciation?

Does the student know and use more words?

Does the student have a better grammar command?

Does the student feel more comfortable to speak using longer phrases?

Is the student more confident when interacting with colleagues?

Is the student more fluent than in the beginning?

The data was centralized and analysed, obtaining the below results:

Student 1 – Final evaluation

Chart 1

Student 2 – Final evaluation

Chart 2

Student 3 – Final evaluation

Chart 3

Student 4 – Final evaluation

Chart 4

Student 5 – Final evaluation

Chart 5

Student 6 – Final evaluation

Chart 6

Student 7 – Final evaluation

Chart 7

Student 8 – Final evaluation

Chart 8

Student 9 – Final evaluation

Chart 9

Student 10 – Final evaluation

Chart 10

Student 11 – Final evaluation

Chart 11

Student 11 – Final evaluation

Chart 11

Student 12 – Final evaluation

Chart 12

Student 13 – Final evaluation

Chart 13

Student 14 – Final evaluation

Chart 14

Student 15 – Final evaluation

The above charts obtained after the data analysis show that most students at pre-intermediate and intermediate level have improved their fluency, vocabulary and pronunciation, but not as much their communication, interaction skills and grammar. This trend might influence more activities that stimulate the students’ delivery skills, their understanding of the grammar mistakes they are making, as well as their desire to interact with others.

Conclusions

The main objective of education is to prepare human beings to the real world. From born to death, we do many things with our own efforts to adapt ourselves to this world that we live in. We watch, analyse, learn, synthesize and then improvise, create on this pre-existing knowledge to cope with the situations. Life has many challenging conditions that require many abilities as Montuori says that (…) life in a complex world, and life which reflects and values the complexity of both self and world, requires the ability to improvise – to deal with, and indeed to create, the unforeseen, the surprise (….) and goes on (…) Life is participation and participation is creation and improvisation, because life doesn’t occur in a vacuum, it occurs always in a network of (…). and of organization, in a constant play of order, disorder and organization and ongoing learning( ….) . To conclude, the question of why we teach or learn a foreign language can be answered in many ways. Language is a precious tool for communication and understanding the world. It seems likely that when it is useful for our own life and only if it is used effectively, it will be meaningful to learn a language.

In a globalized world, there is a pressing need for a common language of communication, which makes possible to overcome interlingual and intercultural barriers. Undoubtedly, due to its wide spread in the world, English became a global language. A basic knowledge of it is almost an obligatory requirement for everyone. It is not only used in the information technology, but it is also required is various branches of the business industry like commerce, economics, travel, tourism etc. In order to keep up with the basic requirements of a job, some control of English is advisable for everyone.

Speaking remains also, not all the time but often, the main obstacle that prevents them to get what they want. Many of the learners of English language come to know grammar very well, to handle vocabulary items, phrases and structures, to write correctly but they found rather difficult to express themselves fluently and efficiently in English. Not many of the learners have the possibility to use and practice English outside the classroom and to enjoy talking and speaking freely and in a natural way using it. Even more, most of them find rather difficult to do this in the classroom too, in front of their classmates, they become all of a sudden anxious and shy and perceive the act of speaking as a pressure and a stressing situation.

This study aimed to show the ways in which students’ communicative skills can be developed. By using and applying role-plays, creative and stimulating game, as well as drama and fun, by creating an enjoyable and attractive setting and atmosphere during speaking class students can be activated and set into an interesting speaking and communicative environment.

Determining why teaching English using modern techniques is highly important, determining the future of English and the importance of learning a second language, all represented objectives of this paper that have been fulfilled, with the help of relevant specialty literature and the support that renowned authors have provided for teachers all over the world. The English language has a global importance nowadays and its role in our society cannot be ignored. The importance of learning a second language, the impact of language learning over a person’s development must be the primary purpose of learning and teaching English as a foreign language. The differences between traditional and modern English teaching methods and the requirements of effective teaching, which is why throughout this thesis, I highlighted the aspects that can lead to high-quality teaching.

In conclusion, teaching speaking skills using the most effective techniques should represent a priority for any teacher that teaches classes of pre-intermediate and intermediate students, as this skill enables them to communicate, understand and be understood, along with the other three main skills: listening, reading and writing.

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