Principles for Teaching Speaking

1 Elements Needed for Successful Language Learning in Classrooms There are three elements needed for successful language learning in classrooms proposed by Harmer. The first one is engage. It is the point in a teaching sequence where the teachers try to arouse the students’ interest, thus involving their emotions. Activities and materials that frequently engage the students include: games, music, discussions, stimulating pictures, dramatic stories, and amusing anecdotes. The second one is study. It includes any activities where the students are asked to focus on language or information and how it is constructed. An example of study activity in speaking class is the study and practice of inviting patterns ‘Would you like to come to the cinemato a concert?’. The last one is activate. This element describes exercises and activities which are designed to get the students using language as freely and ‘communicatively’ as they can. The objectives for the students is not to focus on language construction andor specific bits of language grammar patterns, particular vocabulary items or functions but for them to use all and any language which may be appropriate for a given situation or topic. Some examples of activate exercise are role-plays, debates, and discussions. 2 Type of Speaking Activity Students Should Do It should be clear what kind of speaking activity the students are supposed to do. In this study, the main focus is not to make the students say a lot of sentences 17 using a particular piece of grammar or a particular function, because that kind of speaking belongs to study. Here, the kind of speaking the students are expected to do is almost always an activate exercise, where they use any and all the language at their command to perform some kind of oral task. The important thing is that there should be a task to complete and that the students should want to complete it. 3 Encouraging Students to Do Speaking Tasks There are three basic reasons why it is a good idea to give the students speaking tasks which provoke them to use all and any language at their command. The first one is rehearsal. Getting the students to have free discussion gives them a chance to rehearse having discussions outside the classroom. It is important for the students to ‘get the feel’ of what communicating in the foreign language really feels like. The second one is feedback. Speaking tasks where the students are trying to use all and any language they know provide feedback for both the teachers and students. The teachers can see how well their classes are doing and what language problems they are having, while the students can see how easy they find a particular kind of speaking and what they need to do to improve. The last one is engagement. Good speaking activities can and should be highly motivating. If all the students are participating fully and if the teacher has set up the activity properly and can then give sympathetic and useful feedback, they will obtain tremendous satisfaction from it. 18 4 Teachers’ Corrections in Speaking In correcting mistakes made in speaking activities, the teacher should consider the appropriate ways and time to do that in order not to destroy the purpose of speaking activity. Many teachers watch and listen while speaking activities are taking place. They note down things that would be useful to discuss later after the activity has been finished, such as the impressive way the students use in expressing their agreedisagreement or the important mistakes they make. The teachers then can discuss those things with the students. One important thing is they should not single students out for particular criticism. Many teachers even deal with the mistakes they have heard without saying who have made them. 5 Other Considerations for Teachers In conducting a speaking activity, teachers should be careful in placing themselves and making decisions. They should not get too involved with the students during the speaking activity. It is better to stand back so that they can watch and listen to what is going on. They also should be sensitive with the condition of the class. They should know when the speaking activity should be stopped or be pushed forward. 19

c. Speaking Activities 1 Characteristics of A Successful Speaking Activity

Ur 1999 mentions characteristics used to measure whether a speaking activity can be regarded to be successful or not. First, learners talk a lot. As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in fact occupied by learner talk. This may seem obvious, but often most time is taken up with teacher talk or pauses. Second, participation is even. Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative participations: all get chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed. Third, motivation is high. Learners are eager to speak because they are interested in the topic and have something new to say about, or because they want to contribute to achieve a task objective. Fourth, language is of an acceptable level. Learners express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language accuracy. 2 Problems with Speaking Activities Ur also mentions problems that may appear in speaking activities. The first problem is inhibition. Unlike reading, writing, and listening activities, speaking requires some degrees of real-time exposure to an audience. Learners are often inhibited about trying to say things in a foreign language in the classroom: worried 20 about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or simply shy of the attention that their speech attracts. The second one is there is nothing to say. Even if they are not inhibited, often learners complain that they cannot think of anything to say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should be speaking. The third one is low or uneven participation. Only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be heard; and in a large group this means that each one will have only very little talking time. This problem is compounded by the tendency of some learners to dominate, while others speak very little or not at all. The last one is mother-tongue use. In classes where all, or a number of, the learners share the same mother tongue, they may tend to use it because it is easier, it feels unnatural to speak to one another in a foreign language, and they feel less ‘exposed’ if they are speaking their mother tongue. 3 Solutions There are some solutions the teachers can apply to solve problems that often appear in speaking classes. First, use group work. Using group work gives many benefits for both the teacher and the students. It increases participation, improves the students’ motivation, allows the teacher to wander freely to give help, encourage and correct the students’ mistakes, and gives the students chances to learn from each other. 21