Speaking - more than grammatical correctness
In his forthcoming book called How to Teach Speaking , the author Scott Thornbury writes that 'research - and common sense - suggests that there is a lot more to speaking than the ability to form grammatically correct sentences and then pronounce them'. He goes on to say that we need to train students in speaking-as-skill - that is the ability to be good speakers in a variety of communicative situations where our ability to achieve our communicative purpose is even more important (but does not exclude) the need for grammatical accuracy for example. Just as there is a marked difference between writing for language practice, and writing to achieve a writing purpose, so the same is true of speaking.
SPEAKING ACTIVITIES
Teachers are constantly on the lookout for activities that provoke speaking-as-skill and there are many types to choose from, including role-play, student presentation, communication games etc. Clearly we need to look at all of these and see how and why they may be successful. What do we, as teachers, need to do to try and ensure that they will help students become better at speaking?
Because it's not always easy! Students are sometimes shy and don't want to take part. And even if they do, just speaking on its own, without any analysis or chance to try that speaking again, may not help students to improve at all.
PRESENTATIONS AND TESTS
And what of the kind of formal oral presentation that many of our students will be called upon to excel at in their professional lives? There should be guidelines to help us organise such events properly.
And then, of course, students get extremely nervous about the kind of speaking they are called upon to do in tests. It's one thing to speak happily in a lesson, but quite another when an assessor is watching you and listening to you.
All of these issues are taken up in the extracts and articles in this current module development pack, including quite a long piece on training students for speaking tests from a new book called How to Teach for Exams by Sally Burgess and Katie Head, offering clear advice to those of us who have struggled to get our students 'up to speed' by the appointed time!
I hope that you find something that will both entertain you and help you as a teacher of speaking in this new module.
Jeremy Harmer
