Learning to speak a new language is no doubt a difficult skill to learn. From reduced forms (contractions, vowel reduction) slang and idioms, to the stress, rhythm and intonation of English, oral proficiency is challenging. It requires multitasking; understanding what is being said, thinking of how to respond, and producing that response.
The article quotes Hymes theory of communicative competence, which is the ability to communicate in a language, requires four areas of competences: Grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse (rules of cohesion/coherence), and strategic competence (“a repertoire of compensatory strategies that help with a variety of communication difficulties). Additionally, there must balance the focus on accuracy and fluency. Thus, multiple skills should be taught whenever possible, by constantly practicing speaking, listening, pronunciation.
Like we discussed in class, it is important to state the objectives of a class; what, why, and what outcome is expected. In an oral skills class we should do the same. It is important to consider what level the students are at with their foreign language skills (with a test, student info. Sheet, self assessment). Just as important is the purpose of their learning. Do they need to learn English to survive day to day? Or is academically driven. This difference will navigate the course. For academic adult language learners, group discussions and oral presentations are often used. But for nonacademic adult language learners, simple exercises such as greetings, and appropriate jargon for a certain situation (such as speaking with a salesperson at the mall) is practiced.
There are many activities that can be used to enhance oral skills. Discussions are the most common way to promote oral skills. For the best results, the instructor should focus on structure. This can be done by assigning students to specific groups by considering the type of people, ie; are they talkative, are they leaders etc. The people in these groups should all be assigned designated roles. Also, the teacher should make sure to identify the objectives of the lesson.
Another activity is speech, be it prepared or impromptu. Prepared speeches can be tricky because it requires the speaker to be motivated to speak about something they find interesting, as well be able to captivate the audience. Impromptu is also difficult because it requires students to be able to think on their feet, without being able to rehearse or memorize. It allows them to apply their knowledge in full. Besides peer-evaluation, videotaping is also a valuable technique for self-evaluation.
Role Play is a good method to practice Sociocultural variations. It allows learners to integrate certain expressions or idioms for instance, which they otherwise would not use in a classroom setting.
Conversation is similar to discussion, except it is more individualized. This can be done using a tape recorder to interview a native speaker, providing a sample of “spontaneous production” for the learner to analyze. They can then identify errors and room for improvement.
Similarly, audiotaped oral dialogue journals can provide simultaneous practices of both fluency and accuracy. One exercise is the following; the teacher can begin by giving instructions on the tape. Then, students listen to this, respond, and the two can switch back and forth, with the teacher leaving messages of criticism and possible improvement. It is a good method because it allows teachers a chance to connect with their students on a personal level. Students can also trade tapes with one another, allowing for peer evaluation.
I believe the most efficient technique of the ones discussed in the article is conversation. It allows students to incorporate some of the other methods such as role-play, and speech/monologue. Oral communication is in my opinion the most important component of a language. Conversation allows for people to communicate with one another, trading ideas and information. It is great for the classroom setting because it integrates Hyme’s theory of communicative competence as well as many common themes we discussed in class, such as the importance of structure and stating objectives, which was commonly referred to in the article.
TASK:
Discuss two activities or “games” that will benefit the students’ oral language proficiency. They should incorporate listening, speaking, and pronunciation. These can either be ones you yourself have done, or ones that you create. Explain why and how these techniques benefit ELLs.
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A game I think would really benefit the learning and oral language of ELs would be "I'm Going on Vacation." Here students must pay close attention to their peers by clearly listening to their speaking and pronunciation. This is because they must listen to what is being brought on vacation (especially since students cannot repeat what has already been said), listen to how it is pronouced and then orally relay it back to their peers as their turn approaches. As one student may say "I'm going on vacation and I'm bringing sunglasses," the next student must be able to "produce" exactly what was just said. Therefore they need to know how it sounds, how it is said and how to copy it. As a result, the next student would say "I'm going on vacation and I'm bringing sunglasses and a beach ball." This game is very beneficial in all three areas of listening, speaking and pronunciation, as all students have to duplicate the continual growing list of "bringings."
ReplyDeleteAnother activity I believe would be very benefical would be a song with visual aids such as hand movements. For example, if learning directions (up, down, right, left, front, back, etc), creating a song would definetly help. As I have learned in an L2 class, visual aids combined with oral skills have helped me more than anything in learning complicated and difficult tasks. I have done this "singing and hand movement" activity in one of my language classes and it really helped in learning by pointing and repeating. This is beause as a L1 learner, you know what direction you are really pointing, so when you hear it in your L2, you can "translate" or understand clearly what you are trying to learn. I beleive this activity would help students learn their directions because they have to listen to what is being said so they can repeat it. Then they would need to know how to say it so they could speak it and pronouce it the correct way. As we've read and by personal experience, I know that songs have a way of catching students attention and sticking in the minds of learners. Students find this to be a fun way to learn as they are being active in their learning, instead of sitting in their desk reading the book.
I believe Oral Skills are more difficult to obtain than writing and reading skills in a L2. It is a challenge to learn the language grammar rules and form sentences on paper and read them, but it is even more difficult to speak the language at ease. Two games to practice this would be a skit, where they perform a short skit in front of the class. They will be accostomed to speaking in front of people. The second would be an assignment to go to a restaurant that is their L2 and order in the language.
ReplyDeleteAn activity that I think incorporates all language skills but specifically targets oral skills is information gap activities. This is when you work in partners and each person has different information they need to obtain each other. This kind of activity could be used for any type of unit or lesson you are planning. Students have a great opportunity to speak the language but also listen to each other. Also after the activity you can check for comprehension and pronunciation when you go over the worksheet.
ReplyDeleteAnother good activity that could be fun is to have the class get in a circle and have a ball or some object that you could throw around. For example if they have just learned how to say "What is your name?" and "My name is....." then the person with the ball says "My name is...." and asks the person they are going to throw the object to what their name is. This is another activity that could be used in any unit or lesson. It incorporates speaking and listening skills. The teacher could also be monitering pronunciation or students that are struggling.
I definitely agree that oral language skills are much harder to learn than writing or reading silently in the language. In order to speak the second language properly, you must pronounce the words correctly, as well as use the proper grammar. I think a good activity to practice this skill would be giving and receiving directions. The students could get into groups of two and ask for directions to a specific place, while the other student gives those directions aloud. This would allow the student to practice asking questions aloud in the second language, as well as practice speaking in a typical oral conversation with someone.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that helped advance my oral language skills was listening to Spanish language podcasts. It helped adapt my brain to the pace and rhythm of the language, so that when I listened to native speakers, I expected to hear words mashed together and everything spoken more quickly than I expected. This could be transposed into an ESL classroom easily. You would just need to look for a television program with an appropriate speaking level of conversation, pre-watch it, and explain to the class that you will be listening to the speech. A worksheet would be necessary to check for comprehension and ensure that the students paid attention. On the worksheet, I would have questions to make sure they understood the basic premise of the story/news piece, as well as a place to list phrases and words they were unfamiliar with. You could then engage them in discussion to help them use the new phrases and vocabulary they learned. I think topically focused discussions are one of the best ways to press vocabulary into a language learner's head, because it leaves them with multiple mental associations they can call upon to recall vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteFor levels that are slightly more advanced than basic levels, having a story time would be a good activity. It's been my experience that students love to tell stories, and it can be good practice for their oral skills! I would have each student come up and share a story with the class. He or she would know that they were being graded on pronunciation so that they would have to ask questions or do research before they got up there to get it right. At the end of their story, I would have a few students ask the story-teller questions about his or her story. This way, the audience has to work on their listening and speaking skills as well. I think this would be fun for the students because it gives them an opportunity to share themselves with the class.
ReplyDeleteAnother good activity would be a "reading competition." The students break into teams. Each student on the team would take turns reading a different paragraph. The rest of the class would listen to the person reading and mark how many pronunciation errors were made. The team with the least amount of pronunciation errors at the end of the reading selection would win. This game would be good because it helps students to be cognizant of their pronunciation (often times when reading in class they don't even realize they make mistakes) and since it's a competition it causes the students to really focus because they want to win. The other students also have to listen too so it helps them to recognize their own mistakes when they see another mistake being corrected. Of course, the teacher would have to be the "judge" so the students don't just make up pronunciation errors. :)
I know that learning a second language is extremely difficult from experience. I believe that a great task to help students would be a spelling bee. Not only do the learners have to understand the intonation of the word but they also need to know the correct spelling of word. This type of learning activity would be beneficial for the students to also acquire new vocabulary. Through learning this new vocabulary they will understand the meaning of the word and how to use the word in context. The content language will be entirely addressed in this activity and, spelling bees are fun.
ReplyDeleteContrast to an oral activity would be a written activity such as a worksheet with fill in the blanks or sentence structure. Or something as simple as a free write were students are allowed to informally reveal their opinions without following a format therefore errors can be appopriately addressed. Free writes are personally my favorite and most successful when learning new Spanish constructions. I am able to use metacognition by re-reading what I wrote and correct any errors. I liked your article by the way.
Elizabeth :-)
It is very important that our future students are exposed to multiple activities to develop oral language, so I have really enjoyed reading everyone's responses to this post. One type of activity students could do is to pair one ELL student with one native speaker and have them work as pairs to develop an explanation to a certain picture given. In other words, the teacher could provide a number of different pictures and to each pair and have them either come up with a scenario for each picture or compare scenarios. Having one ELL student with one native speaker will put less pressure on the teacher that the objective isn't being completed. This activity will also justify the "social" language skills as well that were mentioned in the initial post.
ReplyDeleteOne more activity that could be useful for oral language could be to bring a number of items in and make a few groups within the class. Each group can receive a bag full of items and then have to incorporate each of those items into a skit. This could be useful for two words that are pronounced the same, but are not the same. For example, you could give one group a toy mouse and another group an old mouse from a computer. With this type of exercise you could control some of the words you want to be tackled by the ELL students. It would be wise to analyze the groups you make prior to the lesson.
Great Post!
Kim B.
As mentioned in the article and your blog, prepared and impromptu speeches are popular oral skills tasks. As a native speaker, I, personally, always hated giving speeches, so I can imagine that it is even more uncomfortable for a non-native speaker! I think that one way to lessen the intimidation factor of speeches is to have student give “presentations” on content material – e.g. findings from a science experiment they conducted, a book review or recommendation, class projects, etc. This type of “speech” takes the direct focus away from the student’s oral skills, but still requires the use of those oral skills to present the content. The students in the audience could be practicing listening skills by taking notes or filling out a guided outline on the content presented. This type of presentation not only encourages student speech, but is a way to integrate both content objectives and language objectives for content-area teachers.
ReplyDeleteAnother activity that would encourage oral language proficiency is telling stories. In a language arts classroom, for instance, students could choose a story to read on their own and then relay to a partner. Students could also create their own stories to tell to their peers. Another popular storytelling activity that requires input from all students is beginning a story and having each student add a new sentence. Any of these storytelling situations provide a creative medium through which students can practice their speech. Listening skills are also employed by the students as they listen to their peers’ stories.
I like the variety of activities. Keep in mind that you make it clear when you are citing/summarizing/paraphrasing from the text and when you are describing your own ideas. I know this is a more informal writing situation, but we still need to know whose ideas we are looking at.
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