THE IMPORTANCE OF SPEAKING

It´s important that teachers help students to develop speaking and oral interaction skill. The goal is students can communicate in simple and routines tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar topics and activities. They must be able to maintain a simple conversation.

To facilitate the development of these skills teachers should pre-syntactic conversation structure rather than grammar sentence structure; a conversational mode both provides interactive examples and exchange models of FL. Moreover, teachers can provide visual (and general non verbal) support (pictures, gestures, facial expressions, etc.); they are crucial to help comprehension of the new language and possibilities to interact.

How to organise a speaking/oral interaction activity

1.      Contextualise the activity and engage the learners

2.      Revise (/Teach) the language the learners will need to produce in the activity

-          By modelling the language

-          By drilling the language (words, phrases, sentences)

3.      Give instructions for the activity

4.      Distribute hand-outs

5.      Organise groups/pairs

6.      Let the activity start

7.      Monitor the activity

8.      Provide feedback

9.      Get learners to reflect on the activity