Teaching secondary
school aged students

Speaking

What and Why?

One of the main aims of CES is to give students confidence in expressing themselves orally. The emphasis is therefore, on spoken fluency rather than on spoken accuracy. This should encourage students to be confident and creative in their spoken English.

Practical ideas

• Before correcting a spoken error consider whether it could lead to misunderstanding. If not, there may be little reason to correct it. Too much error correction can inhibit the students desire to speak.
• Encourage students to give their reactions to the pictures and input at the start of a unit. There is no need to insist on whole sentences - they may only manage a phrase or even a word. Try to react to what they have said rather than how they have said it..
• Allow space and time for the students to speak! You can record some of your lessons and calculate how much time you spend talking and how much time the students spend talking. If necessary, see if you can change the situation over the term.
• Students often find it difficult to provide a rapid spoken reply to a question without time to process an answer. Sometimes it may be useful to give the students in advance the questions you will ask them so they can prepare. At the beginning, it may be better to let students volunteer a reply rather than insist that they answer in turn.
• The quieter students may prefer to be given the choice of speaking onto a tape at home. They could then, perhaps, give you the cassette to listen to.
• Try to ensure that different people speak each time. You can suggest that different people do the reporting back after groupwork.
• If you have some students who never say anything, or who participate very little, you need to ask yourself why this is. It may be their preferred learning strategy/style (to listen and absorb, or they may feel shy, they may feel that they don't know enough, or they may feel that the lessons are dominated by other students. If the situation persists, you could talk to the students concerned to find out what they think about the situation. It may not be a problem for them at all!