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about what they are to discuss, why they are discussing it, and what outcome is expected.
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When a material focuses on producing and recognizing signals for turn-taking in a group discussion, the teacher needs assessment to his
students’ progress. The assessment tool might be a checklist to be a complete by the teacher or students in the course of the students’
participation in the discussion.
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Finally, criteria should be clearly defined and understandable to both the teacher and the learners.
In order to manage a good discussion activity, the writer concludes that the steps above are really important to do because most teachers
hope that they will be able to organize discussion session in their classroom, particularly if
the exchanges of opinions provoke spontaneous fluent language use.
b. Information GapProblem Solving
One type of speaking activity involves the so-called “information gap” where two speakers have different parts of information making up a
whole. Because they have different information, there is a “gap” between them.
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In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner does not
have and the partners will share their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting
information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the
others need. An example of an information gap principle is using the ‘jigsaw’ material. Jo McDonough and Christopher Shaw said that:
In a jigsaw activity, each partner has one or a few pieces of the puzzle and the partners must cooperate to fit all the pieces into a
whole picture. The puzzle piece may take one of several forms. It may be one panel from a comic strip or one photo from a set that
35
Ibid., p.107.
36
Florez, MaryAnn Cunningham, Improving Adult English Language Learners’ Speaking Skill, http:www.ericdigests.org2000-3adult.htm, It was retrieved on June 10, 2012.
37
Celce-Murcia, loc. cit.
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tells a story. It may be one sentence from a written narrative. It may be a tape recording of a conversation, in which case no two partners
hear exactly the same conversation.
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From the statement above, the writer can say that information gap and jigsaw activity are effective because everybody has the opportunity
to talk extensively in the target language and they can exchange information each others because of the gap between them.
c. Speech
Another common activity in the oral skills class is the prepared speech. Topics for speeches will vary depending on the level of the students and
the focus of the class, but in any case, students should be given some leeway in determining the content of their talks.
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In order words, the teacher can provide the structure for the speech-its theoretical genre and
its time restrictions. For example asking students to “tell us about an unforgettable experience you had”. Allow them to talk about something
that is personally meaningful while at the same time encourages narration and description. Speeches can be frightening for the speaker
and after while boring for the listeners, so it is a good idea to assign the listeners some responsibilities during the speeches. It is an excellent
time to require peer evaluation of classmate’s speech. Steve Allen has a suggestion to the sequence of speech as follow.
When choosing the content, people should organize the remark to these sequence; the opening, the middle, and the third part the closing, after
that they need to compose the speech by generating ideas, researching a topic, writing the speech, editing the speech, and finally typing the
speech.
40
38
Jo McDonough and Christopher Shaw, Material and methods in ELT; a Teacher’s Guide, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1993, p.165.
39
Celce-Murcia, loc. cit.
40
Steve Allen, How to Make a Speech New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986, p. 16-31.
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d. Drama and Role Play
