Teaching Speaking Skills

• Aug 20, 2024

প্রাথমিক শিক্ষক প্রশিক্ষণ | Primary Teachers Training

Teaching Speaking Skills

বলার দক্ষতা শিখন-শেখানো কৌশল

Why Speaking is Important?

The importance of Speaking:

✨ Children who speak English can access a wider range of information and resources using online platforms.

✨ Children who speak English will have access to different cultures.

✨ Children who speak English will have access to understand English movies, dramas, news etc.

✨ Children who speak English will have access to learn new vocabulary and improve their listening comprehension.

✨ Children who speak English will have to understand how English is used in real life.

✨ Speaking helps the students to develop listening, reading and writing skills.

✨ Speaking can make students feel that English is an interesting subject that they want to learn.

✨ Speaking English may be very useful in students’ future lives.

✨ Speaking is one of the four skills of the English Primary Curriculum in Bangladesh. One of the main objectives of Classes 1-5.

Make a list of Speaking activities what we do in our primary English classes.

A list of Speaking type activities:

✨ Look, listen and repeat

✨ Say in pairs

✨ Look, listen and say

✨ Look, listen, repeat and say

✨ Listen and say in pairs

✨ Listen and say the missing words

✨ Listen and repeat

✨ Count and say

✨ Repeat after your teacher in pairs           

✨ Recite in pairs

✨ Listen and sing

✨ Listen, say and read

✨ Recite and act out the rhyme

✨ Listen, say and point to the right picture

✨ Ask and answer in pairs

✨ Look and say

✨ Make a dialogue

✨ Describe the picture

✨ Say about your family

✨ Listen, say and read.

How many stages for Speaking skills we do in our primary English classroom?

There are three stages for Speaking skills we do in our primary English classroom. Those are:

✨ Controlled Speaking

✨ Guided Speaking

✨ Free Speaking.

What are the activities that can be used to practice speaking?

Techniques used in Speaking:

✨ Teaching Vocabulary,

✨ Chorus drilling,

✨ Chain drilling,

✨ Open pair work (Demonstrate how to do it),

✨ Pair practice,

✨ Open group work (Demonstrate how to do it in group),

✨ Group Practice, etc.

What are the sub-skills of speaking?

There are two main aspects of the speaking skill. Those are:

1) Accuracy: It means to be correct in terms of different language points e.g. grammatical forms, rules, pronunciation etc.

2) Fluency: It means to speak/write smoothly.

When and how to correct speaking?

1. Finding the mistakes during pair/group work:

When students are working in pairs or groups, teacher can walk around and listen to as many students as possible. He/she can make notes about common mistakes.

2. Controlled practice (chorus drill, chain drill/pronunciation practice): 

Teacher can arrange a controlled activity after the pair/group activity without mentioning which pair/group did the mistakes.  It helps them avoid making similar mistakes next time they use the language, and in this way helps them improve their English.

How and when to assess speaking?

Here are some suggestions for assessing speaking skills. You may have more ideas- add them to the list:

✨ Teachers can regularly ask questions of all students in the class. At the end of the lesson, teachers make notes on the students’ performance. Teachers can do this over time – for example, they can ask 6 different students each time, making sure that they ask all students in the class eventually (and not always the same students, for example, the students having roll no. first, middle, last or the more confident students).

✨ When students are working in pairs or groups, teachers can walk around the room and listen and make notes. It will be impossible for teachers to monitor each pair or group for every activity. Teachers can assess 3 or 4 different groups each time.

✨ Teachers can give oral tests to individuals or small groups of students. Teachers can give oral tests to pairs over a period of time – when other students are doing pair work.