Teaching speaking for ESL students.

                                           Teaching speaking for ESL students.

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Ататүрік атындағы №17 мектеп-гимназиясы ағылшын тілі пән мұғалімі

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In a short period of time English displaced other languages and became the leading means of communication worldwide. Its domination continues to extend. The modern world of media, mass communication, and Internet demands a good knowledge of English, especially of spoken English. Every person wishing to get the benefits of modern education, research, science, trade, etc., knows that it is impossible without a working knowledge of the English language and good communication skills. A person without oral communication skills will suffer in this era of competition and may find it difficult to achieve a higher position.Thus, the problem of teaching English to students, especially the problem of oral communication has not yet been solved, and one can find much to explore in this field. Because of the significant role of speaking, many researchers like Bailey (2005) and Goh (2007) have proposed methods to enhance speaking skills by means of syllabus design, teaching principles, types of tasks and materials, and speaking assessment.                                                                                                                                      This issue has also been in the focus of the Russian researchers GalskovaN.D., Gez N.I., Passov E.I., Rogova G. V., Shchukin A. N., and Skalkin V. L. Working on it they proposed ways to enhance speaking skills of  students with the help of different methods of teaching, the use of appropriate exercises, and learner-centered approach to studies.Most researchers are sure that, since speaking is one of the four major skills necessary for effective communication in any language, speaking skills should be developed along with the other skills, so that these integrated skills will enhance the students' ability to communicate. Effective communication by means of speaking usually creates a number of benefits for both speakers and business organizations.

         Our work is devoted to the method of teaching the speech. But for the beginning let’s examine what is speech.

Language came into life as a means of communication. It exists and is alive only through speech. When we speak about teaching a foreign language, we first of all have in mind teaching it as a means of communication.

In teaching speech the teacher has to cope with two tasks. They are: to teach his pupils to understand the foreign language and to teach them to speak the language. So, speech is a bilateral process. It includes hearing, on the one hand, and speaking, on the other. When we say "hearing" we mean auding or listening and comprehension.

Speaking exists in two forms: dialogue and monologue.

The aim of our work is:

1.                 to observe the speech as a bilateral process;

2.                 to give the basic notions of the speech;

3.                 to make an examples of exercises in of speaking and hearing.

   Practical value of this paper is determined by the fact that the developed material and proper tasks and exercises make available the use of this work as a manual in teaching a foreign language at classroom or as a given homework, or as a useful material for elective additional courses of foreign language at school.

The paper consists of introduction and two chapters followed by conclusion. The first chapter is about the most common difficulties in teaching speaking a foreign language. Also it consists of speaking activities in the non-english speaking classroom. Further we find differences between prepared and unprepared speech and in this chapter we learn to find mistakes of pupils and how to correct them. In the second chapter are given technologies that we can use  in teaching speech.

Speech and oral exercises. According to Widdowson (1994), speaking is the active production skill and use of oral production. It is the capability of someone to communicate orally with others. In all of four keys language skill, Khamkhien (2010) also believed that, speaking is considered to be the most important in a second language. It is the ability that requires the process of communicative competence, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary improving. Wongsuwana (2006) believed that speaking skills can be trained and it doesn’t depend on the talent. Students’ tension, excitement, lack of confidence during taking a speaking in the class time constraint also are the problems in teaching and learning English ( Poopon, & Honsa, 2007).[9]

 Speech is a process of communication by means of language. For example, (1) a pupil tells the class a story about something which once happened to him; (2) the teacher asks questions on the story read by the pupils at home and starts a discussion; (3) pupils speak on the pictures suggested by the teacher, each tries to say what others have not mentioned; (4) pupils listen to the story and get some new information from the text; (5) they see a sound film and learn about something new from it, etc.[2,7]

Oral exercises are used for the pupils to assimilate phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary. They are mostly drill exercises and the teacher turns to them whenever he works at enriching pupils' knowledge in vocabulary and grammar, at improving pupils' pronunciation, etc. For example, reciting a rhyme or a poem is considered to be an excellent oral exercise for drilling pronunciation and for developing speech habits. Making up sentences following the model is an excellent oral exercise for fixing a sentence pattern and words which fit the pattern in the pupils' mind. Making statements with the words or phrases the teacher gives is another valuable oral exercise which allows the teacher to retain them in his pupils' memory through manifold repetitions.[2,8]

Oral exercises are quite indispensable to developing speech. However, they only prepare pupils for speaking and cannot be considered to be “speech” as some teachers are apt to think and who are often satisfied with oral exercises which pupils perform following the model; they seldom use stimuli for developing pupils' auding and speaking in the target language.[5]

In order to get a better understanding of what speech is we are to consider the psychological and linguistic characteristics of speech.

          Storytelling .The English activities are one of opportunities to practice the students’ speaking skill. As Harmer (1984) reports since there were stimulations activities in the classroom for motivating the students, they were increased the self-confidence of being of part in the classroom including answering the question, sharing the idea, and also presentation. Therefore researcher afraid that, if the students do not get enough chances and activities to practice speaking skill in language classroom, they may get discourage soon in learning. Activities and tasks must be designed to expose the students to the aims language and increased students’ motivation to learn the language in class. Harmer (1998) believed that those good speaking activities can motivate students. As Long & Richards (1987) studies that Learner-centered classroom, the study that opens students’ attitude to focus on individual leaning, where students do the talking activities in groups and have to take responsibilities for using communication to complete a task are revealed to be more conductive to language learning than teacher-centered classes, an organization dedicated to the development of teachers. One task used as an English teaching speaking skill activity is storytelling. It is one of activities that is the best choice which researcher see through the abilities of its.

              Storytelling is the original form of teaching (Pederson, 1995). Many researchers believed that story learning plays an important role in students’ language development (Hsu, 2005). All kinds of interesting storytelling are used in different situation which depend on the suitable of students’ age and situation. As Jianing (2007) reported that using storytelling in English classroom is one of good activities to encourage students to study English. Storytelling also can help ESL learners become more self-confident to express themselves spontaneously and creatively (Colon-vila, 1997)[4,5]. Moreover the storytelling is not only assisting to stimulate students’ imagination, but also in developing their language abilities (Koki, 1998). According to Strong & Hoggan (1996), storytelling is a process that offers opportunities to practice organizing, categorizing, and remembering information concurrently with practice in predicting, summarizing, comparing and contrasting information. The process of connection language and though to imagery is the basic element involved in oral and written language comprehension, language expression, critical thinking (Bell, 1991), increased listening and reading comprehension (Applebee, 1978), greater language fluency, and increased vocabulary (Wellhousen, 1993).

        Techniques the teacher uses for teaching speaking.

        There are two forms of speaking: monologue and dialogue. Since each form has its peculiarities we should speak of teaching monologue and teaching dialogue separately.[1,3]

In teaching monologue we can easily distinguish three stages according to the levels which constitute the ability to speak: (1) the statement level; (2) the utterance level; (3) the discourse level.[2,6]

1. No speech is possible until pupils learn how to make up sentences in the foreign language and how to make statements. To develop pupils' skills in making statements the following procedure may be suggested:

Pupils are given sentence patterns to assimilate in connection with situations.

The sentence pattern is filled with different words. Thus pupils can express various thoughts.

Pattern practice, of course, makes no pretence of being communication. However, pattern practice for communication is what playing scales and arpeggios is to a musician. Each pattern will have to be repeated many times with a great variety of changes in its contents until the pattern becomes a habit.[1,2]

Pupils make statements of their own in connection with the situations suggested by the teacher.

When pupils are able to make statements in the foreign language within grammar and vocabulary they have assimilated their speech may be more complicated. They should learn to combine statements of various sentence patterns in a logical sequence.[3,2]

2. Pupils are taught how to use different sentence patterns in an utterance about an object, a subject offered. First they are to follow a model, and then they do it without any help.

Therefore the pupil's utterance involves-2—4 sentences which logically follow one another. At this stage pupils learn to express their thoughts, their attitude to what they say using various sentence patterns. Thus they learn how to put several sentences together in one utterance about a subject, an object, etc.

The modern tools are in addition to the inputs given by the teachers in the classrooms. The magic is real in that it helps the students to enhance their language learning in a fruitful way. In conclusion, the interviews shows us that ESL students believe that using technology,especially using educational technology tools helps them to improve their both language and communication skills. They use the technology tools both outside and inside of the classroom to practice English and learn more about writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. In their

interviews they are all agreed on benefits of using technology while learning a new language and a new culture. According to the interviews, ESL students gave some examples about some technological tools which helped them to practice English and improve their certain skills.

References

1.Applebee, A. (1978). The child’s concept of story. Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

2.Biyaem, Suda. (1997). Learner Training: Changing roles for a Changing World, Educational Innovation for Sustainable Development. 3rd UNESCO-ACEID International Conference, Bangkok.

3.Bernajean, P. (2004). DigiTales. The art

4.Colon-Vila, A. (1997). Storytelling in an ESL classroom. Teaching PreK-8, 27(5), 58-59.

5.Riordan, Daniel. G; Pauley, Steven. E, Technical Report Writing Today (2005).

Ding, Zhao-guo. Application of Blog to English Language Teaching in China, ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4722835