Speaking

Teaching speaking
Activity
• Discuss in group of three on how do you teach

speaking skills?
• Do your students use English for

communication after teaching them? How
and/why not/
Teaching speaking
• Speaking is an interactive process of constructing

meaning that involves producing and receiving and
processing information (Brown,1994; Burns & Joyce,
1997).
• The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of current English

(2009) defines speaking as “the action of conveying
information or expressing one’s thoughts and feelings
in spoken language”.
• According to Nunan (20030) , speaking is a productive
oral skill which consists of constructing systematic
verbal utterances to convey meaning.
• Patel and Jain (2008, p. 29) state that “the primary

functions of language are communication, self-
expression, and thinking”. Hence, it is obvious that
language is a means of communication. For a learner to
master a language well, she/he must be able to speak that
language.
• In our daily lives most of us speak more than we write,
yet many English teachers still spend the majority of
class time on reading and writing practice almost
ignoring speaking skill.
• However, if the goal of your language course is truly
to enable your students to communicate in English,
then speaking skill should be taught and practiced in
the language classroom.
• But, speaking in a foreign language is not an easy skill
to be mastered by learners. Learners consider speaking
as the most difficult skill since it needs great courage as
well as preparation to speak well in the new language.
• Regarding this, Brown (2004, p. 172) says speaking has

five components namely: grammar, vocabulary,
comprehension, fluency and pronunciation.
Approaches to Teaching of Speaking
• Researchers indicate that there are two major

approaches that can be applied in the teaching of
speaking skills: an indirect approach and a direct
approach.
The indirect approach
• An indirect approach assumes that learners can acquire

conversational competence simply by doing it. This
means that learners can develop their spoken skill via
their participation in communicative activities.
 An indirect approach to the teaching of speaking is
based on the notion laid out by Krashen and Second
Language Acquisition theorists which states that
language “can be unconsciously acquired through
conversation and exposure to comprehensible input”
(Richards, 1990: 77).
 SLA researchers have argued that learners gradually

acquire the rules underlying language through
conversation.
• However, the indirect approach is unacceptable because
of the absence of a clear model to follow when designing
a course for indirect intervention.
• It is also impracticable in EFL context because the

students may not get opportunity to communicate in the
target language since English is confined to only
classroom situation.
The direct approach
• Advocates of the direct approach argue that speaking
skills should be taught explicitly via consciousness-
raising activities (Hedge, 2000; Richards, 1990;
Thornbury & Slade, 2006).
• Richards (1990: 77) also asserts that the direct approach

“involves planning a conversation program around the
specific micro-skills, strategies, and processes that are
involved in fluent conversation”.
 The direct approach to teaching speaking raises learners’
awareness of the nature, systems and patterns
implemented in conversation as it focuses on techniques
introduced in casual conversations.
• Therefore, the direct approach to teaching speaking skills
is a common approach to teaching English speaking skills
in EFL context because the learners get awareness on
aspects of strategies for turn-taking, topic control, and
repair, conversational routines; fluency; pronunciation;
and differences between formal and casual conversational
styles.
Language input and communicative output
• To help students develop communicative efficiency in
speaking, teachers can use activities that combine
language input and communicative output.
• Language input comes in the form of teacher talk,

listening activities, reading passages, and the language
heard and read outside of class. It gives learners
resource they need to begin producing the target
language.
PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS
 The following are the principles of teaching speaking skills

suggested by Anuradha et al (2014).
 Encourage students to speak right from the first day. If not, as early
as possible and not to wait till she teaches them a stock of words,
phrases or sentences.
 Tolerate the students if some of them simply repeat what they say.
 Let the learners speak actively with whatever English knowledge

they have.
 Propose structures/phrases/words and let the learners use it in

different situation and drill as much as possible.
• Organize role play and pair-work as much as
possible and supervise the learners to correct the
active ones and activate the passive ones.
• Be well prepared in advance in terms of lesson

planning, activities and tasks.
• Let the learners commit errors and mistakes at the

primary stage. Interruption and correction hinder
fluency and discourage the learner
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS IN TEACHING SPEAKING:
Ryan (2001)
1-Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak

the target language by providing a rich environment that
contains collaborative work, authentic materials and
tasks.
2-Try to involve each student in every speaking activity.

3- Reduce teacher speaking time in class while
increasing student speaking time.
4- Indicate positive signs when commenting on a

student's response.
5-Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean?

How did you reach that conclusion?" in order to prompt
students to speak more.
6- Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was
really great. It was a good job. I really appreciated your
efforts in preparing the materials and efficient use of your
voice…“
7- Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very

often while they are speaking. Correction should not
hinder students from their speech.

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Teaching speaking

• Discuss in group of three on how do you teach

• Do your students use English for

• Speaking is an interactive process of constructing

• The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of current English

• Patel and Jain (2008, p. 29) state that “the primary

• Regarding this, Brown (2004, p. 172) says speaking has

• Researchers indicate that there are two major

• An indirect approach assumes that learners can acquire

 SLA researchers have argued that learners gradually

• It is also impracticable in EFL context because the

• Richards (1990: 77) also asserts that the direct approach

• Language input comes in the form of teacher talk,

 The following are the principles of teaching speaking skills

 Let the learners speak actively with whatever English knowledge

 Propose structures/phrases/words and let the learners use it in

• Be well prepared in advance in terms of lesson

• Let the learners commit errors and mistakes at the

1-Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak

2-Try to involve each student in every speaking activity.

4- Indicate positive signs when commenting on a

5-Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean?

7- Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very

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