Teaching Speaking Skill Summary:

How to teach English, Jeremy Harmer.

Natalia Licona Pérez, Sara Daniela Restrepo Rada

and María José Torres Martínez

Licenciatura en Bilingüismo con Énfasis en Inglés

Teaching English to Young Adults and Adults.

María Angélica Herrera.

August 26th, 2021

 How to teach English, Jeremy Harmer
Teaching speaking

In the following summary, the chapter 9 teaching speaking by Jeremy Harmer in the book How to
teach English will be presented in a sum-up way. The summary will be divided into some subtitles
to become the text more understandable.

 Reasons for teaching speaking

Activities based on speaking give the opportunities to practice real-life speaking in the classroom.
In addition, speaking task provide feedback for both students and teachers. Allowing them to
identify strengths and weaknesses in the process. And finally, most of the students can activate
different elements of language that they have save in their brains. Therefore, those are the three
principal reasons for making students to speak in the classroom. Adequate speaking activities
motivate students to participate, giving them a sympathetic and useful feedback. The students are
using the language to get some kind of purpose that is not just linguistic. Using what Scott
Thornbury calls speaking-as-skill, being the speaking the way to complete a task. He also suggests
that the classroom become in a ‘talking classrooms’, in order to students will be confident speakers.
The activities in this chapter are designed to promote better speaking not just focus on specific
language constructions.

 Speaking sequences
In this section, three example activities will be presented to practice speaking, in which the three
reasons for using them in speaking tasks are presented.
2.1 Decision-making, Photographic competition (upper intermediate to advanced)
Aim of the activity: SWBT develops the ability to discuss and defend criteria through speaking
activities.
 Stage 1, this activity consists of presenting certain images of men, the students will work
in groups, and they will take 4 photos that will be the finalists.
 Stage 2, having the finalists, will put together the criteria that will explain the reason for
their choice.
  Stage 3, of the 4 finalists will choose the winner, presenting the same criteria in which they
had agreed, before; allowing argumentation and interaction between students to present and
defend ideas.
 Stage 4, after listening to the criteria of each student, the teacher reviews the mistakes
presented and presents options for improvement.
2.2 Role-play (intermediate to upper-intermediate)
Aim of the activity: SWBT acts and simulates the role of a task or job as if they were in a real-life
situation.
 Stage 1, the teacher presents a situation and assigns the role cards to each student, who
must act keeping the characteristics of the person or profession, in its entirety.
 Stage 2, the students prepare what they are going to present, to begin with, the teacher
invents a story to give context to the role of each boy.
 Stage 3, at the end of the performance of each one, the teacher tells the mistakes presented
in the role-play.
An activity similar to this is Alibi, where the teacher presents a crime, three students plan the crime,
and then they are questioned by the rest of the class until they know everything about the crime.
The main aim, is that students express themselves more freely, shouting their opinions and feelings.
2.3 Interview game, the portrait interview (almost any level)
Aim of the activity: SWBT creates and answers questions, based on portraits presented, even
generating elaborate conversations.
 Stage 1, the class will be divided into 3 groups, and they will be shown a famous painting.
 Stage 2, they will select a character from the painting and observe it in detail, creating
questions around the chosen character.
 Stage 3, the 3 groups with different participants are reorganized, one student of the group
takes the identity of the characters of the rest, he did not prepare questions, one student
conducts the interview and the others must also ask questions in a row.
 Stage 4, three students are chosen to represent the characters in front of the class and are
questioned. The teacher can even answer interview questions

 Discussions
Spontaneous or planned discussion can have a great advantage in promoting the use of the language
in a fluent way. Therefore, teachers like to organize sessions of discussion however, in some case
teacher find planned discussion unsuccessful. In order to have a victorious discussion session is
essential to provide students pre-discussion practice time. Through putting to them in small buzz
groups or opposing groups to explore the discussion topic and place them in a side according to
their arguments. Other ways to helps students could be through giving cards with statements of
arguments according to the topics or suggesting things that are appropriate to say during the
discussion.

 More speaking suggestions

It is important that students have opportunities to practice speaking skills in their new language.
The activities proposed below meet this goal regardless of the current level of the students.
Information gap activities: These types of activities promote interaction between students
through the use of the second language since they must share the fragmented information they have
in order to create single information among all.
Describe and draw: A student will have an image in their possession and must describe it in detail
so that their partner can draw the picture without looking at the original image.
Find the differences: Each student has a similar one to that of their partner and through
descriptions, both must find the difference between their images without seeing them.
Telling stories: Students create a story through images, which when ordered they use as a guide
to creating an original and fun story.
Favorite objects: Students describe their favorite objects and tell their stories.
Meeting and greeting: This activity is a role play in which students carry out conversations in
formal and informal contexts.
Surveys: Students conduct surveys among themselves with questions related to the given topics.
Find someone who: Students choose activities and their classmates must guess them through
questions.
Famous People: In this activity, students talk about the perfect gifts for some famous people.
Student Presentations: Each student should prepare a talk on a certain topic and present it in front
of the class.
Balloon discussion: Students choose a character and must explain why it must survive.
Moral dilemmas: Students must decide how to solve a moral dilemma.

 Correcting speaking

During the activities students can make mistakes, the teacher must decide whether to correct them
immediately or wait for the completion of the activity in order not to interrupt it, avoiding the loss
of student participation.

 What teachers do during a speaking activity?

Teachers must be spectators of the speaking activities carried out by the students, intervening in
these if necessary, guiding the students, and contributing important points so that they can continue
the conversation.

In conclusion, teaching a second language is a complex process that requires the development of
different skills. Speaking could be demanding for both teachers who are teaching it and students
who are learning it. In order to obtain a successful teaching-learning speaking process, it is
necessary to follow a guide that provides useful and relevant techniques, methodologies, and tools.
Therefore, this text is essential to comprehend the process of teaching speaking skill.
 Reference

Harmer, J. (2007) How to teach English. Second edition. Longman.