Developing Speaking Skills

Speaking is the delivery of language through the mouth.
To speak, we create sounds using many

parts of our body, including the lungs, vocal tract, vocal cords, tongue, teeth, and lips.
Speaking can be formal or informal:
Informal speaking is typically used with family and friends, or people you know well.
Formal speaking occurs in business or academic situations, or when meeting people for the first
time.
Components of speaking skills
1. Grammar refers to the fundamental principles and structure of the language, including
clear and correct sentence construction and the proper forms of words (Batko, 2004:24).
2. Pronunciation refers to the traditional or customary utterance of words.
3. Vocabulary is a set of lexemes including single words, compound words, and idioms
(Richards and Schmidt, 2002:580).
4. Fluency is defined as the ability to speak communicatively, fluently, and accurately.
Fluency usually refers to expressing oral language freely without interruption
5. Comprehension is an ability to perceive and process stretches of discourse, to formulate
representations of the meaning of sentences.
Simple ways to improve your speaking skills
1. Listen- it allows you to pick up new words, phrases, and ways to respond in
conversations. Secondly, listening provides opportunities to understand pronunciation,
how some words are omitted when speaking, how some are joined together, the rhythm,
the intonation, and the sounds of language.
2. Imitate- Another benefit of imitation is that it will help you become more accurate in
English without having to learn grammar rules. With lots of practice, you will begin to
remember chunks of words and phrases. This helps in remembering word patterns in a
sentence and how certain words go with others.
To effectively improve your speaking skills, you need to follow these steps:
Listen: Pick your favorite video or audio clip from any of the sources provided in the earlier
section of this article. Play the audio and listen to it carefully. Play as many times as you like to
understand how each word is spoken.
Repeat and record: After playing audio, repeat saying the words and conversations exactly as
you heard. Pay special attention to the intonation, stress, and rhythm of language. Record
yourself while repeating the words. A recording will provide you an opportunity to listen to
yourself and self-correct.
Compare: Listen to the audio again and compare it with your recording.
Correct: Repeat the entire process again until you get better and more accurate.
3. Reading aloud also confers several key benefits in a more everyday context. Canadian
researchers have found that reading aloud makes it easier to remember what you’re
reading – which can be great for boosting vocabulary.
4. Reflect- Reflection is a very useful step in improving your speaking skills. Reflection is
nothing but asking questions to think about what you learned, how you learned, what
progress you see, what could be done differently, and how to change the way you learn to
allow progress.
It is important to reflect on your language learning abilities on a daily basis, especially if
you are learning a new language independently. Reflection is another way to provide
yourself with some good feedback in the absence of a teacher.
5. Prepare
6. Speak
7. Practice- Regular and consistent practice is the key to success when it comes to
developing our speaking skills.
Here are some suggestions for English language teachers while teaching oral language:
 Provide a maximum opportunity for students to speak the target language by
providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials
and tasks, and shared knowledge.
 Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practice different
ways of student participation.
 Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student speaking time. Step
back and observe students.
 Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
 Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that
conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
 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…"
 Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking.
Correction should not distract students from their speech.
 Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact parents and
other people who can help.
 Circulate around the classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and see
whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
 Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
 Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty expressing themselves in
the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the spoken language.
Materials to Develop Speaking Skills 18. Road signs
1. Storybooks ACTIVITIES TO PROMOTE
2. Books SPEAKING
3. Magazines
1. Discussion
4. Book on tapes
2. Roleplay
5. text-to-speech software
3. Simulations
6. Tongue twisters
4. Information gap
7. Comics
5. Brainstorming
8. Manuals
6. Storytelling
9. Newspapers
7. Interviews
10. Poetry
8. Story completion
11. Travel brochures
9. Picture narrating
12. Encyclopedias
10. Picture describing
13. Catalog
11. Find the difference
14. Recipes
12. Extemporaneous speaking
15. Dictionaries
13. Declamation
16. Play scripts
14. Reciting poem
17. Atlases
15. Debate
CONCLUSION
Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The ability to
communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of the
learner in school and success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it is essential that
language teachers pay great attention to teaching speaking. Rather than leading students to
pure memorization, providing a rich environment where meaningful communication takes
place is desired. With this aim, various speaking activities such as those listed above can
contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive skills necessary for life.
These activities make students more active in the learning process and at the same time make
their learning more meaningful and fun for them.

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Speaking is the delivery of language through the mouth.

To speak, we create sounds using many

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