How to teach speaking?

Importance of Language The importance of language is essential to every aspect and interaction in our everyday lives. We use language to inform the people around us of what we feel, what we desire, and question/understand the world around us. We communicate effectively with our words, gestures, and tone of voice in a multitude of situation. Would you talk to a small child with the same words you would in a business meeting. Being able to communicate with each other, form bonds, teamwork, and its what separates humans from other animal species. Communication drives our lives and better ourselves. Origins of why their are so many different languages as plagued scholars and linguistics for centuries and will continue to puzzle them far beyond our lifetimes to come. In most cultures have myths that there was a common language spoke among the people with a deity getting angry and confusing the people or separating them from each other/segmenting the people to create their own language. Some people believe they cant go to foreign countries without knowing anything of the language or culture of the people in the places they visit. The importance of language is beneficial regardless if you do it for fun or for your career or even just for personal travel. The importance of language isnt much different no matter what your nationality is. Honestly, if you were to study other languages you will find that most of them are actually pretty similar. We should use it to show our understanding of the cultures and lives of our fellow men in other lands. Part where the importance of languages really shines in business with companies trying to reach global audiences and markets. More and more business leaders are recognize to compete you have to have knowledge in many foreign languages. Knowledge of their language as well as their culture shows that you respect the ideas that they bring to the table and you understand their needs and wants better than somebody who does not have this background. Additionally, there is the psychological aspect of direct communication during your business transactions. Your clients will be more likely to trust what you are saying and there will be a more intimate relationship than if you were to conduct all communication through a translator. This could be an important step in building strong and lasting business relationships that help ensure the success of your own business. More and more school are recognizing the importance of language. Some schools begin offering to teach a second language as early as middle school. Many schools and employers are requiring specific language requirements as part of their application process. Through language we can connect with other people and make sense of our experiences. Imagine what it must be like for your child to develop these skills that we take for granted. As a parent, teacher, or other

type of caregiver, you shape a childs language development to reflect the identity, values, and experiences of your family and community. Language is the most important part of culture. It is important to learn other languages because it helps us to learn about other peoples and cultures. The best way to learn a foreign language is to speak it This is probably the most frequently repeated piece of advice for language learners. For most language
teachers, the goal is to have you talking as early as possible and as much as possible. They believe that they should be quiet during their classes, while their students should have the opportunity to speak. Speaking is imitation. When you speak your native language, you dont make up your own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. You use the same grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation as people around you. Similarly, when trying to speak a foreign language, your goal is to imitate the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of native speakers, so that your way of speaking is correct and natural. Its pretty obvious that, in order to talk like the native speakers, you have to listen to the things they say and read the things they write. When you do so, you learn new words and grammar structures that you can use to express your thoughts. As a result, it becomes easier and easier for you to build your own sentences in the foreign language. By contrast, if you follow the popular advice and concentrate on speaking rather than listening and reading, you will learn few new words and structures and, like so many learners, will be stuck with your limited vocabulary and grammar. It will always be hard for you to express your thoughts in the foreign language.

Benefits of speaking
While speaking practice does not develop your vocabulary or grammar, it does offer a few important benefits:

It helps improve your fluency (moves your knowledge of grammar, vocabulary. Communicating in a foreign language is quite exciting and motivates you to keep learning It helps expose gaps in your vocabulary and grammar (shows you what you dont know and encourages you to look it up)

What you should do

If you dont know how to begin your sentence, even after thinking for a while, If you stop in the middle of a sentence, and cant continue because you dont know a word, If you produce awkward-sounding sentences because you dont know how to say something in a natural way, If you often make mistakes and are not aware of it,

...you need more input, not more speaking practice. Such problems show that you simply dont know how to say certain things in the language, and should look at how native speakers say them. More speaking will not improve your vocabulary and grammar; actually, it can make things worse. From the very beginning, you should spend all of your time on reading and listening. For example, you can start by writing an e-mail message to someone who speaks the language. (It doesnt matter how long it takes you to write that message. It may be two hours, if you have that kind of patience.) At the same time, you should study the phonetics of the language, practice pronouncing its sounds, and learn the pronunciations of words. Then, you should continue getting input and writing until you can produce simple and correct sentences without consulting the dictionary or the Web. This is when you should start speaking again, slowly and carefully. However, you should still spend most of your time on reading and listening, because input is the only way to develop your vocabulary and grammar.

What happens in language classes

Sadly, the importance of input has been greatly underestimated in the past years. The monopoly of the Communicative Approach in English language teaching means that students are expected to speak in class and write compositions almost from the first lesson, even though they have had almost no chance to absorb the grammar and vocabulary of English. A typical teacher demands output from his students, but does nothing to ensure they have had enough input. A few hours of

English classes every week, where the teacher tries to speak as little as possible (to give his students the opportunity to speak), are not nearly enough.

Teaching Speaking
Many language learners regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing a language. These learners define fluency as the ability to converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication. Language learners need to recognize that speaking involves three areas of knowledge:

Mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation Functions (transaction and interaction): Knowing when clarity of message is essential and when precise understanding is not required . Social and cultural rules and norms: Understanding how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason.

In the communicative model of language teaching, instructors help their students develop this body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for real-life communication situations. They help their students develop the ability to produce grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific contexts, and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation.

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Speaking

The goal of teaching speaking skills is communicative efficiency. Learners should be able to make themselves understood, using their current proficiency to the fullest. They should try to avoid confusion in the message due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, and to observe the social and cultural rules that apply in each communication situation. To help students develop communicative efficiency in speaking, instructors can use a balanced activities approach that combines language input, structured output, and communicative output. Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material they need to begin producing language themselves. Language input may be content oriented or form oriented.

Content-oriented input focuses on information, whether it is a simple weather report or an extended lecture on an academic topic. Content-oriented input may also include descriptions of learning strategies and examples of their use. Form-oriented input focuses on ways of using the language: guidance from the teacher or another source on vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar (linguistic competence); appropriate things to say in specific contexts (discourse competence); expectations for rate of speech, pause length, turn-taking, and other social aspects of language use (sociolinguistic competence); and explicit instruction in phrases to use to ask for clarification and repair miscommunication (strategic competence).

In the presentation part of a lesson, an instructor combines content-oriented and form-oriented input. The amount of input that is actually provided in the target language depends on students' listening proficiency and also on the situation. For students at lower levels, or in situations where a quick explanation on a grammar topic is needed, an explanation in English may be more appropriate than one in the target language. Structured output focuses on correct form. In structured output, students may have options for responses, but all of the options require them to use the specific form or structure that the teacher has just introduced. Structured output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific language items recently introduced, sometimes in combination with previously learned items. Instructors often use structured output exercises as a transition between the presentation stage and the practice stage of a lesson plan. textbook exercises also often make good structured output practice activities.

In communicative output, the learners' main purpose is to complete a task, such as obtaining information, developing a travel plan, or creating a video. To complete the task, they may use the language that the instructor has just presented, but they also may draw on any other vocabulary, grammar, and communication strategies that they know. In communicative output activities, the criterion of success is whether the learner gets the message across. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it interferes with the message. In everyday communication, spoken exchanges take place because there is some sort of information gap between the participants. Communicative output activities involve a similar real information gap. In order to complete the task, students must reduce or eliminate the information gap. In these activities, language is a tool, not an end in itself. In a balanced activities approach, the teacher uses a variety of activities from these different categories of input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels, including beginners, benefit from this variety; it is more motivating, and it is also more likely to result in effective language learning.

Strategies for Developing Speaking Skills

Students often think that the ability to speak a language is the product of language learning, but speaking is also a crucial part of the language learning process. Effective instructors teach students speaking strategies -- using minimal responses, recognizing scripts, and using language to talk about language -- that they can use to help themselves expand their knowledge of the language and their confidence in using it. These instructors help students learn to speak so that the students can use speaking to learn.

1. Using minimal responses

Language learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of exchanges. Such responses can be especially useful for beginners. Minimal responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is saying. Having a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying, without having to simultaneously plan a response. 2. Recognizing scripts Some communication situations are associated with a predictable set of spoken exchanges -- a script. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patterns or scripts. Instructors can help students develop speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts for different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response. Through interactive activities, instructors can give students practice in managing and varying the language that different scripts contain. 3. Using language to talk about language Language learners are often too embarrassed or shy to say anything when they do not understand another speaker or when they realize that a conversation partner has not understood them. Instructors can help students overcome this reticence by assuring them that misunderstanding and the need for clarification can occur in any type of interaction, whatever the participants' language skill levels. Instructors can also give students strategies and phrases to use for clarification and comprehension check. By encouraging students to use clarification phrases in class when misunderstanding occurs, and by responding positively when they do, instructors can create an authentic practice environment within the classroom itself. As they develop control of various clarification strategies, students will gain confidence in their ability to manage the various communication situations that they may encounter outside the classroom.

How to make learners speak

Before you start teaching English you as a teacher should convince your learners to promise themselves: I promise to try to speak as much as possible. I promise not to be afraid of making mistakes. I promise not to speak any Albanian. I promise to use English to communicate. I promise to ask questions when I do not understand. I promise to try to have fun!

Best way to make learners to speak

Use simple things in the classroom (desk, table, blackboard, chalk..) if teaching beginners. Present pictures which are in their interest. Ask them to make comparasions between things. Tell a story and ask them to tell their opinion about its conclusion. Make them to tell their daily routine, free activities, preferences, hobbies. Insert a positive complexive situations in order to solve it through discussion. Dont interfere in correcting mistakes very often. Change conversations or sentences into songs. Dont interfere in correcting mistakes very often. Write down the words they use in their mother tounge as a punishment.

Before you start speaking activities, prepare your learners before a speaking task: Introduce the topic Provide a model of the speech they are to produce Give clear instructions or a sample Start speaking practice with a good learner Make suggestions Ask effective questions

The ways of making learners speaking English in the classroom arent limited. Ones above-mentioned are some of them. Creative teachers improvise speaking tasks whenever they want. Its enough to bear in mind that speaking is very important to learn a foreign language. And in order to succeed try to find the best techniques.