Teaching Oral Skills Prof.:Ms. Mirian Rufini Galvo. Pronunciation 1) Questions and statements for discussion.

(adapted from Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin, 1996 and Ur, P, 1996)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Do we need to teach pronunciation or can it just be picked up? What accent should serve as a model? What difference does the learners age make in learning pronunciation? How important is it to teach intonation, rhythm and stress? Imitating a native-speaker model facilitates the acquisition of target pronunciation. 6. Students need a detailed description of the sound system of English. 7. It is possible to change the wrong fossilized pronunciation of a learner. 8. Some students have a better ear for languages, and are, consequently more gifted in the area of pronunciation. The English Phonetic System: Photocopy Some Examples of pronunciation models: American, British, Australian, Irish, Foreigner Teaching Speaking: The most important skill: (Ur, 1996) People who know the language are referred to as speakers of the language. Included in all other kinds of learning. Learners are more interested in learning to speak. More difficult to design and administer activities: Characteristics of a successful speaking activity: 1. Learners talk a lot, with little or no teachers interference. 2. Participation is even: no one dominates the discussion. 3. Motivation is high: learners are eager to speak, because they are interested or because they wish to contribute to achieving a task objective. 4. Language is of an acceptable level of accuracy. Problems with speaking activities. 1. Inhibition. Speaking requires some real time exposure to an audience and learners might be worried about making mistakes, being criticized or being the center of attention. 2. Nothing to say. They cannot think of a way of contributing and they have no motive to express themselves. 3. Low or uneven participation. Little participation derived from the large number of participants in the lesson. 4. Mother-tongue use: because it is easier, because they it feels unnatural to speak with each other in a foreign language.

What can we do to overcome these problems? 1. Use group work in order to increase speaking time and lower learners inhibition. 2. Base the activity on easy language. Language needed for discussion should be easily recalled and produced by participants and it might be a good idea to revise vocabulary items before the activity starts. 3. Make a careful selection of the topic and task to stimulate interest. 4. Give some instruction or training on discussion skills. 5. Keep students speaking the target language by appointing someone as a monitor and by being there yourself most of the time. Types of oral fluency activities: Topic- and task-based activities. Which is better? The first simply asks participants to talk about a controversial topic, the main objective being clearly the discussion process itself. The second asks them actually to perform something, where the discussion process is a means to an end.

Different kinds of interaction: 1. Interactional talk (getting to know each other, caring and sharing games, Wright, Betteridge & Buckby, 2000). 2. transactional talk (jigsaw activities, info-gap). 3. Long turns (Explanations, Ur, 1996; Puzzle stories, Rinvolucri, ). 4. Role-plays, simulations (Heirs, Ur,1996). Testing spoken language. Criteria: Fluency 0-5 Accuracy 0-5 Vocabulary 0-5 Interaction 0-5 Pronunciation 0-5 Task completion 0-5 Evaluating a coursebook. Observe the coursebook the teacher gave you and evaluate some speaking activities it contains. Are they ideal? What adaptations can you suggest to them?

References: Brown, D.H. Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. Prentice Hall Regents, 1994. Rinvolucri, M. Challenge to think. OUP, 1984. Ur, P. A course in language teaching: practice and theory. CUP, 1996. Ur, P Discussions that work: task-centred fluency practice. CUP, 1996. Wright, A; Betteridge, D; Buckby, M. Games for language learning, CUP, 2000.