Now Say It
Teaching Spoken English
Of the four language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—speaking is the most difficult to teach to large groups. Twenty-five students can listen to one teacher, but only one can speak to the teacher at one time. Students learn to speak by speaking. If classes are large, it is difficult to provide them opportunities to do so. The ideal situation for teaching speaking skills is one-on-one tutoring. Of course, few language teachers have that luxury.
THE DIRECT METHOD
For those with small classes or lots of volunteer help, some techniques from the direct method work very well. Variations of the direct method have worked very well for private language companies, many of which claim this method as their own, calling it the (add company name here) method. Business people and travelers who need a command of a new language quickly will pay handsomely for this sort of instruction delivered in a one-on-one setting. The direct method shares much with the natural approach. Both stress extensive use of the target language in the classroom, although the direct method calls for earlier speech and greater attention paid to structure.
The direct method includes controlled conversation. With this technique, students can do most of the talking while teachers guide conversation so that students practice appropriate structures and vocabulary. It is easy for teachers or tutors to learn this technique, so it is an appropriate method to use with volunteer peers or adult tutors.
After you demonstrate an action, describe it. As you jump, say “I am jumping.” Then ask the student to jump and say, “You are jumping.” Then repeat the action and ask the student to describe it. If you ask, “What am I doing?” the student can respond, “You are jumping.” If the student responds incorrectly, provide the correct response and ask again.
When the student is comfortable giving a descriptive response, go on to yes-and-no questions. Begin with the affirmative: “Is he jumping?” “Is she jumping?” while pointing to students who are jumping. After the student is comfortable giving affirmative answers, model the negative: “Is she jumping?” “No, she is not jumping. She is sitting.” Then ask the student a question that calls for a negative response.
When students are comfortable responding in the negative, direct them to ask the questions. This technique also works well with small groups. You can ask student A to tell student B to open the door. Then tell student C to ask student D what student B is doing, and so on.
It is a good idea to have controlled-conversation parallel listening activities or memorized pattern practice, although not necessarily at the same time. Even after students pass the silent period, some, but not all, do better if a week or two passes between listening activities and similar speaking activities based on a given structure or set of vocabulary. If students can learn to produce a structure orally as soon as they can understand it, by all means do nothing to hold them back. Those who require an incubation period between listening and speaking, however, should be allowed one.
If your textbook presents grammatical structures sequentially, have your students practice them with controlled conversation. This technique also works well with Carolyn Graham’s Jazz Chants. After students memorize a chant, or any pattern exercise, controlled conversation will help lead them toward applying that structure actively.
ROLE PLAYING
Role playing is a good way to help your students acquire survival-level English speaking skills. You can role play trips to the doctor, shopping trips, going through customs, and so forth. You can preview key words for the role play with Total Physical Response (TPR), word lists, or demonstrations. Once students pass the survival level, you can make role playing more challenging by changing the hypothetical situations. Intermediate students could take the roles of a police officer and a driver who tries to talk his way out of a traffic ticket, or a department store clerk and a customer who wants to return defective merchandise. Advanced students could take the parts of a company executive and a union representative negotiating a new contract or a helpdesk technician and a computer user whose system has just crashed.
STUDENT-TO-STUDENT TEACHING
If your classes are large you might want to have your students break up into groups and practice speaking with one another. Be warned, however, that unless your students are self-motivated and self-directed, such sessions might become a waste of time. They might revert to a lot of repetition of what the students already know or even become gossip sessions in the students’ native language. If you teach ESL to a linguistically heterogeneous group, you can avoid the latter problem by matching students with partners with different native languages. In any event, monitor the conversations and nudge them toward challenging levels.
One way to monitor such classes is to require the students to produce something. You can give one student a picture or object to describe and then require the other student or students to draw it from the English description. Or you can have a student explain how to put together a puzzle, assemble a model, set up a computer program, or do a magic trick, and then ask listeners to do the task based only on their classmate’s oral directions.
RECITALS
Allow your students the opportunity to show what they know in front of the class. A recital can be something as simple as a dialogue or a role play, or as complicated as a soliloquy from a Shakespeare play. With advanced students, you might even have students stage a one-act play in English. In the case of extremely shy students, use your best judgment before demanding recitals.
USING MEDIA AND THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY
Thirty years ago language laboratories were standard equipment in high school language classes. As the audiolingual method fell out of fashion, these labs disappeared. The labs could not match a good human teacher working with a small group, but they were good for large class instruction or for independent study. Students would listen to the target language and repeat or respond into a microphone. Usually the material matched the lessons in the textbook. Students could hear their own words through headphones as they said them and later hear them played back alongside the words of a native speaker. The teacher or a monitor could cut in to listen to individual students as they spoke or check tapes of a student’s speech later.
Like the language labs, a great many computer-based language programs, even some of the inexpensive ones, allow students to record their voices and compare their words to those of native speakers. Some of these programs include voice recognition software that will rate the quality of the speaker’s accent, but, at the time of this writing, such software is still imperfect.
If language labs or computers are not available, students can use tape recorders or video cameras to achieve the same end. They can simply listen to a taped lesson, record themselves, and then listen to the tapes side by side.
TEACHING PRONUNCIATION
Some students, particularly the young ones, will learn to pronounce English well through mimicry alone. Others will need more help. In the case of pronunciation, it is best to not start at the beginning. Rather, wait until several months into the course when students are communicating orally to determine who needs this sort of instruction. It is not necessary to remove all traces of a foreign accent, but it is important that speech be intelligible.
Teachers who speak their students’ language have an advantage in this matter. Many sounds, called allophones, are not considered phonemes in a language but exist as parts of phonemes or variants of phonemes. Although students in beginning Spanish class learn that there are only five Spanish vowel sounds, this is not strictly true. Actually, the equivalent of the English short i and e exist in Spanish. In polysyllabic words, the unaccented i or e are pronounced like their English counterparts. While the ch sound in English does not exist in Spanish (the Spanish ch is somewhere between the English sh and ch), a Spanish speaker asked to read tch will pronounce the English ch perfectly.
For students who still struggle with sounds that do not exist in their native language, you may need to explain where the points of articulation are so that they can consciously place their tongues or lips where they need to be. Consciously placing the tongue is tedious and can interfere with communication at first. With practice, however, proper placement will become automatic. A good bilingual dictionary will explain where these points of articulation are, as will some textbooks. If you do not speak the students’ language, learn its points of articulation as well. Sometimes a letter may represent sounds that are similar but not exactly the same in the two languages. Your school’s speech therapist could be helpful in this matter.
USING THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be of great help in learning to pronounce English. Most bilingual dictionaries use it, so a student who knows the IPA has the tools necessary to pronounce words without asking an English speaker for help. For those who still have difficulty producing certain English sounds after several months of English study, IPA transcription can be useful. Write transcriptions of your students’ speech in regular script accompanied by a phonetic transcription that exactly mirrors his or her pronunciation. You can then point out which sounds are troublesome and, if need be, drill them.
ERROR CORRECTION: WHEN AND HOW OFTEN
It will not be wise to attempt to correct every error your students make. The nature of language learning is such that your students will make literally hundreds of thousands of errors before fully mastering English. It will prove impossible to correct more than a few of them. Egos can be fragile, and you do not want to dampen the enthusiasm of a child who finally worked up the nerve to ask you a question in English by pointing out that the question contained seven errors. On the other hand, repeated errors may fossilize and become a permanent part of a student’s speech, particularly for beginning students who are in or beyond adolescence, and you want the students to repair those errors before they become permanent, flawed parts of their language.
In the early stages of language learning, new speakers will rely on what linguists call interlanguage. Sometimes interlanguage will be English vocabulary paired with the structure of the student’s native language, or it might be based on structures that the student invents. A student who does not understand how to correctly form the negative in English might say “I no have pencil.” One who does not understand pronoun cases might say “Me no have pencil” or “Me pencil not.” Speaking in interlanguage is better than not speaking at all, so encourage any early efforts to communicate in English, flawed as they might be. After the student has gained a bit of confidence, begin to correct prudently. It is not necessary to say “No, it’s ‘I don’t have a pencil’” over and over. It is better to occasionally remind the student, in private if necessary, of the proper structure. Once the student understands the correct structure, respond to the error by raising your eyebrows and waiting for a self-correction.
LET YOUR STUDENTS CORRECT YOU, TOO
If you speak the students’ native language imperfectly, do not become angry when they correct you. To do so would contradict the message that making and correcting errors is a normal part of the language-learning process. Do, however, insist that they follow the same procedure for correcting your errors that you use for theirs. Do not allow them to interrupt you when you are speaking to the class, but encourage them to note the error and bring it to your attention at an appropriate time.
SPEAKING PRACTICE OUTSIDE OF CLASS
If a community has few speakers of the students’ language, real life will provide your students with both the opportunity and the obligation to speak. If not, the amount of speaking practice that your students get will vary greatly. Some of your students will have English-speaking friends and relatives. The more gregarious ones will strike up conversations even with strangers. Some, however, will speak little English outside of your classroom. All ESL students should spend part of their school day among native speakers, at least for classes like art and physical education, but some will avoid their English-speaking peers, even if they spend a lot of time in the mainstream. For those who haven’t made English-speaking friends by the end of the first semester, try to arrange for assigned “buddies” or tutors who can engage them in conversation before and after school, or between classes. Remember that one learns to speak by speaking, and that speech is only meaningful when there is a listener.
Working With Younger Students
Young children love to play pretend, so the possibilities for role playing are endless. You will not have to worry about showing points of articulation to most young students. Given enough time and exposure to a language, most young children can learn accent-free speech with mimicry alone. Although you may want to correct your students’ errors, keep in mind that small children’s errors are not likely to fossilize as older students’ might.