Developing General Speaking Skills
- It is important to do regular speaking activities in class to develop general speaking skills.
- If your students are reluctant speakers, get them involved in pairs or groups in a very short discussion at the beginning or end of every lesson, e.g. just to share information about what they’re doing that evening. When they are used to doing this, you can slowly introduce other longer and more directed speaking activities and tasks.
- Most coursebooks have sections on speaking skills which are especially useful if your students don't give due importance to their speaking ability.
- For pronunciation, coursebooks are also particularly useful – if your students are not very strong in this area, it is worth spending time doing the activities in them, which are usually both fun and useful in raising students' awareness of common difficulties and in giving them practice. Accompanying cassettes provide good models for sounds, stress and intonation patterns, which contribute to intelligibility.
- Be aware yourself of how much and how often your students are speaking to each other in the classroom, especially when this is not a specific 'speaking activity'. Where appropriate, give feedback or pick up on any good or weak aspects you notice. This will help your students to recognise the value of speaking in class.
- Remember that students can also practise speaking on their own even though there is no response or feedback; simply speaking gives the opportunity to try different ways of saying things, which can help to increase confidence. This is particularly useful for Phase 1b where the ability to speak at length on a topic is difficult for students to acquire and needs a lot of practice.
Factors Affecting Learners’ Speaking Ability
A language learner's ability to speak in the target language is dependent on a number of factors which are not solely related to their knowledge of the language systems (grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation). Personality factors such as self-confidence play an important part, as do attitudinal factors such as perception of the importance of speaking or dislike of making mistakes. While these aren't assessed in the Speaking test, they can affect students' progress and improvement in developing their speaking skills, and so it is important for teachers to be aware of them and possibly address them in class.
Helping with the test
- Give your students roles to play during speaking activities, such as "You are very confident and don't care about making mistakes" to someone who is very aware of being correct. They could even pretend to be another student whose speaking ability they admire.
- Encourage students to be sensitive and responsible for including all members of the group in their discussions. For example you could put one member of the group in charge of making sure that everyone contributes equally to a discussion. It can be a good idea to choose a quieter member of the group for this task and so build their confidence as they see that they are able to manage the discussion effectively.
- Teach students the importance of listening and reacting to what has been said in a discussion as well as contributing new ideas to the discussion. Following a group discussion you could, for example, ask students to form pairs and note down as many points as they can remember about what was said during the discussion.
- Play games like ‘Just a Minute’ where students play in teams and have to talk for as long as they can without e.g. hesitating, repeating themselves. You can make up your own rules to focus on the needs of a particular group. This will help with the long turn.
- Encourage students to question each other in order to continue the interaction. Students could be given rules for the discussion, for example, they must always ask a question about what has been said before going on to introduce a new idea.