British Council: Problems Encountered in Teaching Speaking

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British Council

John Kay: Teacher Trainer

Problems encountered in Teaching Speaking

1. Fluency

The more you involve the student the more motivated they'll be. And this will have a positive effect on
their fluency. One of the fears of the teacher, if you are not involve, you're not doing your job properly.
But sometimes, doing your job properly means taking a back seat.

2. Pronunciation

By introducing a student to a visual representation of the mouth we clearly show the position of the
tongue when forming the sound like the unvoiced /t/.

3. Rapport

You need to reassure your student that making mistake is okay. Quite often they are doing something
that quite often is challenging so praise them for their effort, encourage them, if a smile will help, smile

PRONUNCIATION

Your student will be basing their production of English sounds on the sounds they already have from their
language. So it's your job to make them more aware of the sounds that they have to produce in order to
sound more fluent in English.

1. Forming Sounds- students will have different problem sound according to their language.

By introducing the student to a visual representation of the mouth when clearly show the position of the
tongue like the unvoiced /t/ and we can also show that this is approximately the same position for forming
the voiced sound /d/. Sometimes the sound /t/ and /d/ are quite difficult for the students to produce
because the can't actually hear the difference. It's very important for the teacher to make sure that they
are saying /t/ or /d/. If the students can't hear it they have to feel it by putting their hand over their throat
to feel /d/ or /t/ they can't feel it.
2. Difficult sounds

Two sounds that are often confused in English are the long sound /ee/ and the short sound /i/. There's a
nice way to practice this with the students (hand gesture) (/ow/ two sounds combined together /uh/ and
/ooh/.) In the stream of speech, if we often don't hear the words which are set because the words glide
together. For example: He and is, How can we make this more immediate for the student, use the finger
technique.

3. Weak and Strong Sounds

English has the alteration of stronger forms and weaker forms. Obviously for some languages you
pronounce letters how you see it. If you see the letter E, you pronounce the letter E, /eh/. This is not the
case in English; it can be /eh/ or /uh/. So if you want to bring a natural spoken model, it's not such a good
idea to give them the written model first, because the written model will obviously influence the way that
they pronounce. Remember the listening comes first and then you reinforce it with the written form.

FLUENCY

Fluency is about communication. Communicating ideas, about the person you are communicating with,
picking up the right messages. If you say it accurately or inaccurately but it's effective then this is fluency.

1. Effective communication

If you are communicating effectively with somebody else that means that they are receiving the right
messages and they are responding to those right messages. If you are watching native speakers
communicating, they use far more than words, they use body language, facial expressions, intonation. A
piece of successful communication, can just be a raise of an eyebrow. To help the students to become
aware of this, you can use the mirror game. Sit the student facing each other one person is the mirror,
the person looking into the mirror moves his hand. And the mirror has to reproduce the same
movements. You may find that the students are looking at their hands. It's not what you want. Once they
catch the eye contact of the other student. The task can become much easier.
2. Useful practice

One of the most popular activity with teachers is reading aloud. If the idea of the lesson is to make the
student more aware of pronunciation and phrasing then maybe there is justification for reading aloud.
However, with fluency you need to look at the person you are speaking to and also listen for the
intonation. The body language, the facial expression, the intonation, don't forget to include this in any
practice you do with fluency in the classroom.

3. Freer practice

Encourage fluency. Give them opportunity to express themselves, maintain the interests of the listener.
And make them feel relax enough to say what they want to say. Remember every student is an
individual. Individuals express themselves in different ways. Some speak quickly and some slowly.
Some like to think about what they are going to say without fear of being interrupted or corrected by the
teacher. It's more important for them to be interesting than it is for them to be accurate. They worried
about what you are going to say as a teacher all the time. Then they are going to feel a little bit more
inhibited. And they are not going to say what they would otherwise want to say.

4. Change of focus

In an activity which focuses on accuracy. There's a set target language on which the teacher has to
focus. Once the activity moves from accuracy onto fluency, the teacher has to allow other language, use
anything they've got in order to communicate what they want to say successfully. When looking into
fluency activity it's much more important to consider how successful the communication has been rather
than looking at how accurate the language was.

5. Personalisation

It's essential to get the student to actually feel the confidence to say what they want to say. And to
express their ideas with their interest. If you personalise the langauge in this way, then it makes it more
relevant and more interesting to them. And you want to encourage them use anything that they've
assimilated from previous lessons
6. Achieving Fluency

When thinking about fluency. The most important thing is communicatinng your ideas in a way the
listener will understand and then the communication is successful. It's not about speaking quickly, slowly.
They have to be more creative, to be more imaginative. And in the end they have to be more fluent.

DEVELOPING RAPPORT

We have to empathize with the student. We have to make the situation as authentic as possible. And
really have to respect the student ability to speak. In fact we need empathy, authenticity, and respect. We
need a good ear.

1. Empathy

Empathizing with the student is important to develop a rapport, a trust. The student must trust you, you
must trust the student and you have better chance of successful fluency practice.

2. Encourage speaking

You need to reassure your students that making mistake is okay. Quite often they are doing something
that quite often is challenging so praise them for their effort, encourage them, if a smile will help, smile.

3. Learning Styles

Each individual has a preference for the way they learn, the way they understand information. Some
people like to see things, they are visual learners. Some people like to listen they take in all the
information auditorily. Some people understand better if they do it with their hands. They actually have
hands on.
4. Body language

Eye contact is extremely important. The first thing you do, when you begin to communicate with anybody
is you look at them. So in the class room, remember established good eye contact with your class. Ask
them to look at you. Stand where they can all see you. Place your vision about half way down the class
and by doing this you reach everybody.

5. Authenticity

It's extremely important for the teacher to be genuine with the student. The student gives a good answer,
the teacher say good, fantastic, mean it! Don't do two things at the same time. Don't say, yes-yes or very
good, while you are doing something else because it's obvious you are not listening. And this is lacking
authenticity. Respect your

student allow them to express themselves. Think about whether they can actually contribute more to be
hand out things or move so they feel more involve. The more you involve your student, the more
motivated they will be. It will have a positive effect on their speaking and their fluency.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

It's important, that you choose the topics carefully. Choose something that the students can relate to,
something that they'll be interested in, that they want to talk about.

1. Debate

At the planning stage of a debate, it's very important to decide if you are going to change the look of the
classroom the focal point of the classroom. Also the topic, is it relevant to the student. How do you want
the student to debate it is it gonna be all the class or it's gonna be done in small group. And who controls
the debate is it the teacher or is it somebody from the class. Do you have some people who have to judge
who wins the debate. All these things need to be carefully considered before the lesson starts. It's a good
idea to make them brainstorm on points for and against the debate motion. Then you can introduce useful
language in order that they can express their views coherently in English. The teacher can give them
controlled oral practice before having to argue that point in a debate. If you do have to debate in a whole
class activity and some of the students are the audience, then why not give them a task looking at the
language they use, the vocabulary use, the body language, facial expressions. It's important that the
people involve in the debate have enough to practice what they have to say.

The challenge for the teacher not to influence the debate. Let the student influence the debate
2. Building Dialogues

In exploiting a dialogue and keeping the student motivated and interested, it's very important that you set
the scene. Build up a story in the imagination of the students. Generate interest. Get the students into
groups or into pairs to predict what is going to happen with the conversation. Give them key words and
they can build conversation around this key words. They can compare what they predicted with the
dialogue which comes upon the tape. Then teacher gives the student a chance to practice the language
what they have heard on the tape. When the tape finishes put the students into pairs asking them to
practice the dialogue, give them picture prompts or one word prompts. And then they can and reproduce
the dialogue buying different things.

3. Story telling

If you want to develop speaking thru a story, don't spend to long pre-teaching the words or the lesson will
become a vocabulary lesson and not a speaking lesson. Give them the first part of the story and ask them
in groups to predict what happens next in the story. Another way of exploiting the story for fluency is
givng each group a picture. They decide the order in which the story happens before they here the official
story from the teacher. But while their discussing them themselves, their actually getting more practice in
English. Then give them the next bit of the story or the whole story could then be retold within the groups.
The teacher can check if they get the story right, expressing their ideas fluently enough.

4. Information gap

In order for communication to be realistic and authentic, it's essential that one person has information
which the other person doesn't have therefore you have an information gap. To find out the missing
information, the student needs particular language.This language could be pre-taught by the teacher.
Once the student has this useful language they can question each other and find the information. To
make any information gap activity successful however, it's imperative that your partner doesn't see what
you have on your paper. Because if they do, that defeats the whole objective of information gap. There's
no gap. If you have information gap then you have the makings of real conversation.

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