Teach English in Dayang Zhen - Tai'an Shi

Teaching productive skills (speaking and writing) There are four basic skills in any language: receptive skills- reading and listening, and productive skills- speaking and writing. Although speaking and writing are different, they both are used for the same purpose- to communicate. The ultimate goal of language is communication and the aim of speaking a language is to promote communicative efficiency. Speaking skill is required everywhere, from simple conversation to formal public speaking. Ability of speaking English also plays an important role in developing reading and writing skills. Teaching writing is important because written communication is a basic life skill. Writing is a good way to practice grammar structures; it helps students to recycling and look up new vocabulary and to learn English punctuation rules. 1. Teaching Speaking 1.1 How to encourage students to talk Teacher needs to: - Build a rapport, trust at the beginning of the semester. - Reassure the students that making mistakes is OK. - Praise the students for the effort. - Understand the students’ learning styles to make the activities how to be suitable with them. - Establish good eye contact. - Respect and allow students to express themselves. - Participate in activities with students. - Give complements to students. - Be genuine with the students. 1.2 Techniques - Hold the warm-up activities - Using group-work, pair-work - Guided practice before fluency practice: pre-teach vocabulary, grammar and model. - Give students time to think - Planning lessons carefully - Give clear and simple instructions & ask questions to make sure students understand ( teacher should use Wh-question) - Use target language: give words, phrasal verbs, structures - Repetitions help students learn by heart right in the class. - Extension: teacher can ask more opening questions for them to use in their daily living. 1.3 Activities 1.3.1 Controlled activities Language is controlled by the teacher. The activities focuses on developing accuracy than fluency. - Drilling: listen and repeat after teachers say - Prompting: verbal cues, visual cues, demonstration/ modeling, physical guidance 1.3.2 Guided activities - These activities is controlled by the teacher but not the language. They are: model dialogues, guided role-play 1.3.3 Other activities in teaching speaking: debates, discussions, role-play, simulations, communication games. 1.4 Suggestions for teaching speaking - Teachers use 20% of time in the class and 80% of time for students - Teachers need to assure every student involve in each activity. - Teachers do not correct students’ pronunciation mistakes very often - Teachers start from controlled activities, then let students speak freely, after that getting students to public speech - This is the time for students practice, so teachers need to have high participation and motivation - Speaking is the activity which is made fluency a top priority, we keep students talking, make notes the students’ mistake and give feedback after the conversation - We should let students practice real-life tasks, take part in interesting and relevant topics that they’ll naturally want to talk about - Hold the activities in a pair or group - Maintain a calm, relaxed and judgment free atmosphere - Focus on communication and fluency, not correctness - Teach vocabulary and introduce key phrases, word related 1.5 Speaking process There are three stages in speaking process 1.5.1 Engage - Let students discuss about their existent experiences/ knowledge of the given topic - Create activities: games, songs, stories, pictures 1.5.2 Study - Elicit the vocabulary which is relevant with the topic: write new words, phrases, structures on the board - Students complete practice activities to check their understanding of the new vocabulary, participate the activities to practice the new language like complete matching, gap-filled exercises 1.5.3 Activate - We refer to the use and practice of language focus in the study segment. - Activities and exercises use English in communication, rehearsing what they have learnt, such as: role-play, debating, story telling, discussions, find someone who ( whole class activity), pair/group work. 2. Teaching writing There are three stages in writing process 2.1 Planning ( Pre-writing) - You should choose a topic before, which students interested in or is suitable with student’s ability then introducing the topic and asking students to discuss it in small groups, followed by feedback and discussion with the whole class. - Brainstorm ideas in groups, after that the teacher or a student writes them up on the board. - Discuss: discuss with students about your thinking of this topic. - Question: teacher asks opening questions for students. - Prepare pictures (relevant with topics) without any text: students guess what is happening in the picture. 2.2 Study - Teaching vocabulary- conjunction words, adverb of time, frequency, word phrase, verb phrase and grammar. - Draft writing: At this stage, focus is on the fluency of writing. The learners should not be preoccupied too much with accuracy. - Get feedback from the teacher or classmates, teachers can instruct students to fix each other in a pair/ group. - Teacher will write a final draft. 2.3 Activate - Students present in front of class. - Strip story: Cut the conversation into strips and ask the students to reassemble it, working in groups and negotiating as they go. Give each student one piece of the dialogue to read and memorize. Once they have read and memorized their bit, get them to work together to arrive at the correct order of the original conversation. - Role-play - Survey: students work in a pair to complete the survey by asking and answering questions. 2.4 Other activities in writing lessons - Running dictation - Drawing - Introducing each other. 3. Conclusion Speaking and writing skills are significant because they permit learners to perform actively in communicative aspects such as oral presentations, written studies and reports among others. Therefore, these skills need to be taught and learnt properly.