Learners’ difficulties with speaking:

Difficulties

Reasons

Difficulties with construction of speech:

Making phonetic, vocabulary and grammar mistakes in speech.

Poor knowledge of language forms.

Difficulties with production of speech:

- Learners don’t want to say anything

- Learners can’t start the talk.

- Learners can’t finish the talk.

- Learners don’t understand what to say.

- Learners have nothing to say - Low or uneven participation.

- Low interaction. - Learners use L1.

- Learners overuse time

1. Low motivation.

2. Poor organization: no time limits, teacher’s support, clear instructions, variety of forms of work, good atmosphere.

2. Learners’ fears to make mistakes and be criticized.

3. Material is boring or at the wrong level.

4. L1 is easier.

Approaches

Methods

Brief description

Techniques

Traditional (classical) approach

Grammar translation method

It focuses more on presentation and analysis of grammar than teaching fluency, oral production, communication and interaction.

Speaking consists of reading translations or doing grammar exercises orally. Few opportunities for learners to express thoughts, feelings, etc.

Structural approach

Audio-lingual method

They focus on oral production of language forms and structures in sentence patterns and interaction in dialogues and situations.

Learners imitate teacher’s speech, repeat and memorize sentences and practice them automatically in mechanical drills, own dialogues. Very little use of L1.Learners don’t speak fluently, can’t create new sentences and interact outside the classroom.

Oral approach

Situational language teaching

Natural approach

Direct method

They focus on communication and creative interaction to enjoy, reduce stress and overcome psychological barriers in speaking.

Speaking starts from the beginning in natural way: L1 is not used in the class. Communication is taught through question–answer drills. Learners practice speaking skills in communicative situations, own dialogues. Pronunciation is very important.

Humanistic approach

Total Physical Response (TPR)

Teacher gives spoken commands, learners receive, understand them and react physically. Learners repeat the commands afterwards and practice them in drill games and role-plays.

The Silent Way

Teacher speaks as little as possible to give chance to learners to speak more. Teacher uses different visual aids to help learners to speak (teacher shows learners a small red rod and a bigger blue one and says ‘The blue one is bigger than the red one'. The learners repeat this. The teacher then substitutes the rods to produce other models, and finally encourages the learners to produce their own comparisons).

Suggestopedia

Teacher provides new material orally by reading dialogues with right rhythm and intonation with the accompaniment of music. Learners memorize the material, they may repeat after teacher and practice it in dialogues, games, puzzles, etc. There are no cassettes, authentic speech. Memorization is more important than problem solving and decision-making activities.

Cognitive approach

Cognitive method

It focuses on learners’ ability to analyze and evaluate the language that they or others produce.

Teacher gives real-life material to speak on, learners practice and analyze it (learners may analyze examples of how people complain in different situations).

Communicative approach

Communicative language teaching (Task-based language teaching)

It focuses on teaching oral production, fluency, real-life communication and interaction through practice of language in integrated tasks. It is widely-used nowadays in teaching speaking.

It is realized in four steps: Presentation – teacher presents a topic through reading, listening, brainstorming, discussion, explains useful words and phrases, checks if the material is clear to learners (worksheets with tasks). Practice – learners do a lot of mechanical oral exercises to train accurate usage of language forms. Production – learners do a lot of communicative exercises on fluent language usage (information-gap activities, games, interviews, dialogues, problem-solving, etc.) in small groups, in pairs, as a whole class. Feedback – Teacher checks learners’ speaking: draws learners’ attention to lexical, phonetic and grammatical problems and discuss.