Speaking Skills

Teaching Speaking

"One of the major obstacles learners have to overcome in learning to speak is the anxiety generated over the risks of blurting things out that sound ignorant, embarrassing, or incomprehensible."

H. Douglas Brown

Heekyeong Lee

9 Challenges of Speaking English

Clustering

Learning single words help little when trying to speak full sentences.

Redundancy

Fluent English speakers repeat things they say and students can use this fact to help them learn.

Reduced Forms

Speaking English is shortened, but the meaning is the focus. An example is "I am going to" vs. "I am gonna."

Performance variables

Speakers have hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and corrections. An example is how English speakers use "uh, um, well, you know, I mean, or like" when they are thinking about responding.

Colloquial language

English similar to Chinese has phrases and sayings that have deeper meaning, so recognizing words, idioms, and phrases can be hard.

Rate of delivery

How fast learners speak is a something to be recognized. Not too fast and not too slow.

Stress, rhythm, and intonation

These three factors can give a meaning different from what the words mean.

Complexity

The complexity of grammar and conversations are the initial challenges. Another challenge is using words as an action. An example is what to say to accomplish a goal or persuade.

Interaction

Speaking is not just about the words said but also how the listener understands them.

Oral Communication

Microskills

These skills can help students focus on smaller details of speaking English.

Practice saying short and long responses.
Say and hear the differences in English sounds.
Say words with accurate tone and stress, even in statements.
Say the shortened form of words and phrases.
Speak enough to complete a goal or action.
Clearly speak using both quick and slow speeds.
Listen to own speaking and purposely use pauses, fillers, self-corrections, backtracking to improve clarity of message.
Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
Speak in natural chunks, such as phrases and sentences.
Say something in a few ways.

Macroskills

These skills can help students focus on bigger details of speaking English.

Use words in conversations to transition to different topics or connect other topics.
Successfully communicate with others based on places, people, and goals.
Understand the group of people you are talking to and speak with them.
Add implied meaning to speaking.
Speak to accomplish an action or goal in face-to-face situations.
Speak about how events are connected as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and providing examples.
Use your body, face, and other nonverbal cues to help convey meaning in your speaking.
Use speaking strategies such as emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and accurately understanding how well your listener is understanding you.

Types of Classroom Activities

(Sample activities in progress comeback soon)

Drilling Tasks

These tasks are direct drilling. You say a word and your students say the same word. You say a sound and your students say a sound.

Sample Activities

Copying Tasks

These tasks are more comprehensive. You will have students read a sentence out loud or you will have a student answer a question with a scripted answer they wrote or provided.

Sample Activities