Teaching productive skills (speaking and writing)

Introduction

Learning a second language (L2) is a long and complicated task. “Your whole person
is affected as you struggle to reach beyond the confines of your first language, a new culture,
a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Brown, 2007, p. 1).

To guarantee a successful interaction, L2 students need to develop their oral skills.

They usually appreciate their ability to speak at first glance. It is often considered a
challenging and stressful activity to teach and learn and whereas speech is an important skill,
it is often overlooked (Thornbury, 2007). According to L2 scientists, the most basic part of an
English as foreign language (EFL) course is speaking. For most people, the ability to speak
L2 is linked to learning L2 since language is the most basic means of human communication
(Folse, 2006). Most L2 students participate in L2 classes to foster their ability to talk with
technology development and the desire for communication. (Malmir & Shoorcheh, 2012).

In addition, writing ability is an important component of communication as well as

speaking. However, writing is the most neglected skill in the TEFL world as many teachers
do not like to see the classroom hours being devoted to it. “Competent writing is frequently
accepted as being the last language skill to be acquired for native speakers of the language as
well as for foreign/second language learners.” (Hamp & Heasly, 2006, p. 2). You will
communicate your message clearly and easily to a wider audience than through face-to-face
or telephone conversations with good writing skills. According to Scott (1990), Writing is
interesting and can provide some advantages for students, although writing is fundamentally
difficult, it remains a useful, essential, complete, and pleasant part of a foreign language
course (as cited in Virdyna, 2016). As Gebhard (1996) indicated, writing requires numerous
factors, such as word choice, grammar, syntax, mechanics, and coherent organization of ideas
(as cited in Aspari, 2017).

2. Teaching Speaking Skill

As mentioned above, speaking skill has gained considerable attention among learners
as the goal of the most of the learners for coming to an English class is having command of
speaking the language.
 In fact, a qualified English teacher for introducing communicative activities and
encouraging them to speak, should instill the need and desire into his or her students to
communicate. Otherwise, the learners are less motivated to participate in the activities.
Similarly, there are some students who are reluctant to speak in the class due to lack of
confidence, fear of making mistakes, peer intimidation, previous learning experience, and
cultural reasons.

Therefore, for arousing the interest of the students to take part in speaking activities,
the teacher should create a comfortable atmosphere that they are not afraid of making
mistakes and enjoy speaking with their classmates and the teacher. Some of these techniques
are pairing or grouping the learners, doing plenty of guided or controlled activities before
fluency activities, making speaking activities purposeful, careful planning, and changing the
classroom dynamics.

As an English teacher, as mentioned above, I am always aware of the type of learners

I have in my class. I mean it is essential to notice whether your students are shy or sociable,
visual or auditory. Because, it made the teacher to choose the materials or choose activities
which suit their types and make them more active. For example, if as a teacher, want my shy
students to practice speaking and participate, we should sometimes to pair or group the
students and monitor them but keep our distance and ask the other students in the group to
give feedback.

Actually, the speaking activities are divided into accuracy and fluency activities.
Accuracy activities are concentrated on the language and fluency activities are used to allow
the learners to be creative with the language. The former is used for Study phase and the
latter is for Activate phase. Accuracy activities included controlled activities and guided
activities which are drilling, prompting, modal dialogues, and guided role-play. Additionally,
fluency activities are free role-play, discussions, information gap, debates, simulations, and
communication games.

Teaching Writing Skill

for many L2 students, however, English writing appears to be tough (Harmer, 1992).
According to Nunan (1999), generating a cohesive, fluent, lengthy writing work is arguably
the most difficult thing in language since the reader must understand what has been written
without asking for explanation or depending on the writer's tone of voice or expression.
 Like speaking skill, the responsibility is on the teachers’ shoulders to design a creative
lesson plan which make the writing task more interesting and motivating for the students. For
instance, using typical writing tasks like poetry, stories, and play. Although the task of
writing is usually done individually, the teacher could be creative and put the students into
pair or group to do writing task so the input of ideas from different sources may be helpful or
necessary.
Furthermore, there are some factors which have to be incorporated for effective
writing task. First of all, neat handwriting should be always encouraged by the teacher. If not,
poor handwriting may influence the reader in a negative way. Second, incorrect spelling can
not only create misunderstanding but also can be perceived, by the reader, a lack of
education. As many words which are pronounced the same are written differently, the teacher
has to have them do the exercises to discover spelling rules. Last but not least, punctuation is
a matter of personal style but totally incorrect usage can lead to difficult looking pieces of
writing. Therefore, the students need to be exposed to different writing styles and give them
the sufficient time to practice writing and check it over for grammar, punctuation, vocabulary
usage as well as spelling.
For teaching writing, in Engage phase, it would be better to use appropriate pictures
or videos according to the topic of writing they are going to write. It’s a good idea to
brainstorm some ideas and prepare the students for the writing. In addition, it is kind of
creative and arouse their interest. Then for the study phase, the students could be given some
worksheets or expose them to the language or grammar they are supposed to use in their
writing. In this phase, considerable time is needed to familiar the students with the language,
Finally, for the activate phase, the students are put into pairs or groups and asked to write
their first draft.