STRATEGIES AND METHODS IN TEACHING SPEAKING
SKILLS
Achilova Ra`no Tashpulatovna
Toshkent amaliy fanlar universiteti, Gavhar ko’chasi 1uy, Toshkent 100149, O’zbekiston
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10442421
Keywords:
strategies, methods, communication, speaking skills, obstacles, teaching
Abstract:
First and foremost, language is a spoken, not written, medium. Long before there was written literature,
humans were speaking and hearing. For this reason, it is said that the development of writing was a mere
event in the lengthy history of humanity. One of the main communication skills is speaking. This review
article outlines the various activities and tasks related to improving communication skills, the main beliefs
about speaking, the principles of learning and teaching speaking skills, how speaking is taught in
communication classrooms, and, lastly, how pronunciation is taught to communication learners.
1 INTRODUCTION.
Speech is the primary form of language. There are a
great deal of languages in the world that are only
spoken orally and not in writing. Even in languages
with written scripts, the majority of languages utilize
spoken forms more often than written ones. It is
commonly acknowledged that speaking a language
after spending a lot of time listening to words,
phrases, and sentences from the environment is the
best way to learn it. Speaking and listening are the
foundational abilities; an edifice built upon a solid
foundation will endure. Children have a very natural
opportunity to speak and listen in their environment
when they speak in their mother tongue.
They are
then sent to school to acquire writing and reading
skills. However, in a communication classroom, the
learner's immediate environment is his mother
tongue; as a result, the teaching and learning
approaches should be very different. Therefore, there
is an urgent need to change the way that speaking
skills are taught and learned. This can be achieved by
shifting the emphasis to an oral orientation, providing
teachers with training, and creating curricula that are
appropriate.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS.
Teachers can employ an activities approach that
integrates language input and communicative output
to assist students in developing communicative
efficiency when speaking. Reading passages,
listening exercises, teacher speech, and language
heard and read outside of the classroom are examples
of language input. It provides students with the
resources they need to start speaking on their own.
Language input can be either form- or content-
oriented. Whether it's a lengthy academic lecture or a
straightforward weather report, content-oriented
input is information-focused. It might also contain
explanations of various learning techniques and real-
world applications.
Form-oriented input, on the other hand, focuses
on how language is used: explicit instruction on how
to ask questions and correct miscommunication
(strategic competence); guidance on vocabulary,
pronunciation, and grammar (linguistic competence);
appropriate things to say in particular contexts
(discourse competence); expectations for speech rate,
pause length, turn-taking, and other social aspects of
language use (sociolinguistic competence); and
guidance on how to use the language..
A teacher integrates form- and content-oriented
input during the lesson's presentation phase. The
degree of students' proficiency and the circumstances
determine how much input is actually given in the
target language. An explanation in English rather than
the target language might be more appropriate for
students at lower levels or in circumstances where a
brief explanation on a grammar topic is required.
When producing communicative output, language
learners aim to accomplish a goal, like gathering data,
making a travel itinerary, or making a video. In
addition to using the language that the instructor has
just presented, they are free to use any additional
vocabulary, grammar, and communication techniques
that they are familiar with in order to complete the
task. When it comes to communicative output
activities, the learner's ability to convey the message
is what determines success. Spoken exchanges occur
in everyday communication because there is a
knowledge gap between the participants. A
comparable real information gap is present in
communicative output activities. Students need to
close the information gap in order to finish the task.
Language is a tool, not an end in and of itself, in these
activities. As a result, it is critical that educators
understand the techniques for fostering oral
proficiency.
STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING
SPEAKING SKILLS
Language learners who are unconfident in their
capacity to engage in oral communication frequently
watch in silence as others speak. Helping these
students accumulate a repertoire of basic answers for
use in a variety of exchanges is one strategy to get
them to start taking part. These kinds of answers can
be very helpful to novices. Minimal responses are
standard, frequently colloquial expressions that
listeners use to express comprehension, agreement,
skepticism, and other reactions to what someone else
is saying. A learner can concentrate on what the other
participant is saying without having to think of a
response in advance when they have a repertoire of
such responses. Certain communication scenarios are
linked to a script, which is a predetermined series of
spoken
exchanges.
Proposals,
invitations,
compliments, apologies, and other socially and
culturally normative interactions frequently adhere to
patterns or scripts. The transactional exchanges that
take place during actions like getting information and
making a purchase also fall under this category. The
relationship between one speaker's turn and the one
that follows can frequently be predicted in these
scripts. By providing students with scripts for various
scenarios, instructors can aid in their development of
speaking skills by enabling them to anticipate what
will be said and how to respond. Instructors can
practice helping students manage and vary the
language that different scripts contain by using
interactive activities.
When they cannot understand someone else or realize
that their conversation partner is not understanding
them, language learners are frequently too shy or
embarrassed to speak up. Teachers can assist students
in overcoming this reluctance by reassuring them that
regardless of the participants' language proficiency,
misunderstandings and the need for clarification can
arise in any kind of interaction. Teachers can also
provide their students with phrases and strategies to
check their understanding and get clarification.
Teachers can establish a real-world practice setting in
the classroom by encouraging students to ask
clarifying questions in class and by giving them
positive feedback when they do.
Students will gain confidence in their ability to
manage various communication situations outside of
the classroom as they gain control of various
clarification strategies. Many language learners
consider speaking ability to be a measure of language
knowledge. Fluency is defined by these students as
the ability to converse with others, rather than the
ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language.
They consider speaking to be the most important skill
they can learn, and they measure their progress in
terms of their spoken communication abilities.
Similarly, instructors must assist their students in
developing this div of knowledge by providing
authentic practice that prepares them for real-life
communication situations. They assist their students
in developing the ability to produce grammatically
correct, logically connected sentences that are
appropriate to specific contexts while using
acceptablepronunciation.
SPEAKING ACTIVITIES
Drills in which one person asks a question and
another responds are common forms of traditional
classroom speaking practice. The question and
answer are structured and predictable, and there is
frequently only one correct, predetermined answer.
The purpose of asking and answering the question is
to demonstrate the ability to do so. Real
communication, on the other hand, is intended to
accomplish a task, such as conveying a phone
message, obtaining information, or expressing an
opinion. Participants in real communication must deal
with uncertainty about what the other person will say.
There is an information gap in authentic
communication; each participant has information that
the other does not. Furthermore, in order to achieve
their goal, participants may need to clarify their
meaning or seek confirmation of their own
understanding. To design classroom speaking
activities that foster communicative competence,
instructors must include a purpose, an information
gap, and multiple forms of expression.
Information gap and jigsaw activities are two types of
structured output activities. In both of these activities,
students complete a task by obtaining missing
information, which is a feature shared by real
communication. However, information gap and
jigsaw activities provide opportunities for specific
language practice. In this regard, they are more akin
to drills than to communication. These activities can
be designed so that participants must practice more
than just grammatical and lexical features. For
example, when one partner assumes the role of a
student attempting to schedule an appointment with
another partner who assumes the role of a professor,
the timetable activity takes on a social dimension.
Each partner has pages from an appointment book
with specific dates and times already filled in and
other times available for an appointment. Of course,
the open times do not exactly coincide, so some polite
negotiation is required to arrive at a mutually
convenient time for a meeting or conference. Jigsaw
activities are more complex information gap activities
that can be completed with multiple partners. Each
partner in a jigsaw activity has one or a few pieces of
the "puzzle," and the partners must work together to
fit all of the pieces into a complete picture. The puzzle
piece can take several different shapes.
When using
information gap and jigsaw activities, teachers must
be mindful of the language demands they place on
their students. If an activity requires language that
your students have not previously practiced, you can
brainstorm with them when planning the activity to
preview the language they will need, eliciting what
they already know and supplementing what they are
able to produce. Because they are both authentic and
artificial, structured output activities can serve as an
effective bridge between instructor modeling and
communicative
output.
They,
like
authentic
communication, have information gaps that must be
filled in order for the task to be completed
successfully.
Whereas authentic communication
allows speakers to use all of the language they know,
structured output activities require students to
practice specific language features in brief sentences
rather than extended discourse. Furthermore,
structured output situations are contrived and more
akin to games than real communication, and the
participants' social roles are irrelevant to the activity's
performance. This structure limits the number of
variables that students must deal with when they are
introduced to new material for the first time. They can
progress to true communicative output activities as
they gain confidence.
Communicative output
activities allow students to practice using all of the
language they know in realistic situations. Students
must collaborate to develop a plan, solve a problem,
or complete a task in these activities. Role plays and
discussions are the most common types of
communicative output activity. Students are assigned
roles and placed in situations that they may encounter
outside of the classroom during role plays. Because
role plays mimic life, the range of language functions
available expands significantly. Furthermore, the
students' role relationships as they play their parts
necessitate practice and development of their
sociolinguistic
competence.
They
must
use
appropriate language for the situation and the
characters.
CONCLUSION
More than simply exposing language learners to a
pool of vocabulary or grammar descriptions is
required
to
develop
speaking
proficiency.
Unfortunately, the majority of language teachers who
are supposed to run conversation courses still spend
the majority of the class time immersing the students
in non-communicative activities. The language
learners themselves show little interest in speaking.
These are just a few of the issues that large-class
teachers face when teaching speaking activities in the
classroom. These issues are not new, nor are the
solutions proposed above.
Given the foregoing, the
purpose of this paper is to serve as a guide for those
who want to have a large class of energetic students
talking and working in English in groups together. In
a nutshell, instructors can use an activities approach
that combines language input and communicative
output
to
help
language
learners
develop
communicative efficiency in speaking.
REFERENCES
[1]
Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning
and Teaching. Pearson Education.
[2]
Bygate, M. (1987). "Speaking." Oxford University
Press ELT Journal, 41(3), 179-187.
[3]
Nation, I. S. P., & Newton, J. (2009). Teaching
ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking. Routledge.
[4]
This book focuses specifically on teaching listening
and speaking skills, providing practical strategies for
language educators.
[5]
This comprehensive book covers various aspects of
language
teaching,
including
techniques
for
developing speaking skills.
[6]
Thornbury, S. (2005). How to Teach Speaking.
Pearson Longman.
