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Teaching Speaking

Sharon de Hinojosa, Korea

Sharon holds a BA in Liberal Arts from the USA and an MA in TEFL from Spain. She started teaching while in university and since then she has taught in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Sharon is currently an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Suwon.
E-mail: sharondehinojosa@gmail.com

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Speaking: fluency versus accuracy
Tips for speaking activities

Speaking: fluency versus accuracy

When discussing speaking, there are two major concerns: fluency and accuracy. You need to teach your students both. However, when grading them, you might concentrate on one over the other. Below you will find some things to keep in mind when teaching speaking as well as some test/exam tips. You can grade parts of speech (such as grammar, vocabulary, organisation, and pronunciation) or you can give a mark as a whole.

Speaking can arguably be the most important of the four skills for daily life. Speaking allows you to communicate your ideas to others and get your point across. Students can have fantastic thoughts, but if they have no way of communicating these to other people they will feel frustrated and helpless. Teaching your students speaking adds a humanistic touch to the language learning classroom.

• Solidify grammar. While students may know the grammar, they also have to use it correctly. Raise your hand, make a time out sign, or do something when they make a grammar mistake. This way you're not verbally interrupting them, but they know they're making a mistake and will probably be able to correct it. Only do this for grammar points that you have taught them/that they know.
• Increase vocabulary. Encourage your students to learn vocabulary. Memorisation or vocabulary games can help with this.
• Look online. There are lots of lesson plans and worksheets available. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. Look for activities that you can adjust and use with your students.
• Fillers. Um, ah, y'know, anyways. While these may not make your students sound like rocket scientist, they are a natural part of speech. Make sure that students can use a few, and use them naturally, while speaking.
• Play games. These are ways to make learning fun. They can be done individual, in groups, or as a whole class.
• No long pause. People aren't comfortable with silence. They simply aren't. That's why we use fillers. Tell your students that if they don't know a word, they should describe it, rather than search their memory for one specific word. If it's grammar that's causing them the problem, they should be the sentence in the simplest form possibly.
• I'm thinking of something . . . Don't know a word? Describe it. What's the colour, what is it used for? Is it a person? There are many ways to describe words. Practise with your students. No one's vocabulary is perfect.
• Teach functions. Functions are categories for speaking. Here are just a few of them: Compare/Contrast, Paraphrase, Starting a discussion, Opinions, Preferences, Advantages/Disadvantages, Agreeing/Disagreeing, Responding to an idea, Suggesting, Coming to a conclusion, Summarising, Checking you've understood, Giving yourself time to think, Interrupting politely. With functions, you should think of some set phrases that are used for each one. You could also try brainstorming with your student. Then when you practise, tell them that they have to use X number of phrases in their speech.
• Use rubrics. They making correcting speaking a lot more objective and show students exactly which areas they need to work on.
• Cover each section. If you're preparing your students for an exam, make sure you cover each section. For example, if there's an introduction, describing photos, and then making a decision, you need to practise all three of these in class.
• Forget memorisation. This is for those who are in exam classes. Tell your students not to memorise speeches. Although introductions are pretty straightforward (and often memorised) the possibility of questions that the examiner can ask are endless.
• Know what's expected. Your students need to know what level they are expected to reach, how they will be graded, or what sections will be on the exam.
• Practice makes you perfect. Well, it may not make you perfect, but it will make you better. So make sure that your students have ample speaking time. Not just conversation, but exercises with specific goals.
• Be polite. No one likes to listen to someone talk all the time. Make sure your students are taking turns talking and know how to interrupt politely.
• Think in English. It's hard at first. Students often translate. But somewhere down the line they have to stop. It just gets too confusing to think in one language and have to speak in another.
• Record it. Get out the tape recorder and record your students. They can go into a separate room so that the whole class isn't listening. You can grade your students if you'd like. But you definitely need to have them listen to themselves. While they might not like hearing their own voice, it will let them know how they come across when speaking English.
• Use examples. If possible, have your students listen to other ESL students doing a similar task that they have to do.

Tips for speaking activities

Try giving these tips to your students. They will help them when working on speaking tasks.

• Keep talking. While 30 seconds or 2 minutes may not seem like a long time, it does drag on if you're not doing anything, so talk. When the examiner asks you a question, you should continue talking until they say "thank you". Make sure that what you say make sense. Don't just talk to fill up the time.
• Take turns. When speaking with another student, make sure you take turns. If the other student seems shy, ask them questions to get them involved in the conversation. Don't dominate the conversation.
• Ask for clarification. If you don't understand what is being asked, ask the examiner to repeat or rephrase the question.
• Don't memorise. Don't think that you can memorise answers. There are many questions that the examiner can ask you.
• Variety is the spice of life. When using grammar, make sure you use a variety of the past, present, and future forms.
• General and specific. If asked to describe a photo, talk about the general as well as the specific details. You can imagine what just happened, what will happen, or how the people feel in the photo. There are no correct answers, the examiner wants to see how well you speak English.
• Using your five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch will help you describe photos and make it more interesting for the listener as well.

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