TEACHING MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT: SPEAKING

TEACHING MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT: SPEAKING

·         INTRODUCTION

Speaking is a productive skill. Theoritically, according to O’Grady (1996) , it is a mental process. This means that it is a psychological process by which a speaker puts a mental concept into some linguistic form, such as word, phrases, and sentences used to convey a message to a listener. So the speech production is the process by which the speakers turn their mental concept into their spoken utterences to convey a message to their listeners in the communicative interaction.

Much recent work on optimal conditions for the teaching of speaking in second and foreign language classrooms has been grounded in educational psycholinguistics or in cognitive and social psychology. Theoretical constructs for language pedagogy have been drawn extensively from empirical studies, underpinned by the central notions of second language acquisition: communicative competence (Canale and Swain 1980); comprehensible input (Krashen 1985), negotiated interaction (Ellis 1990, Gass and Varonis 1994, Long 1983, Pica, et al. 1989), input processing (VanPatten and Cadierno 1993), developmental sequences and routes of acquisition (Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann 1981), and communication strategies (Faerch and Kasper 1983). Such constructs are widely taught in teacher preparation programs in second and foreign language teaching and clearly have relevance to oral language instructional practice.

From a communicative view of the language classroom, listening and speaking skills are closely interwined. ESL. Curricula treat oral communication skills will simply be labelled as “Listening/Speaking” course.

The 4 Language Skills

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When we learn a language, there are four skills that we need for complete communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, then to read, and finally to write. These are called the four "language skills":

Skill #1: Listening                                          

Skill #2: Speaking

Skill #3: Reading

Skill #4: Writing

Input is sometimes called "reception" and output is sometimes called "production". Spoken is also known as "oral".

Note that these four language skills are sometimes called the "macro-skills". This is in contrast to the "micro-skills", which are things like grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling.

Why should we teach speaking skills in the classroom?

Motivation
               Many students equate being able to speak a language as knowing the language and therefore view learning the language as learning how to speak the language, or as Nunan (1991) wrote, "success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the (target) language." Therefore, if students do not learn how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in the language classroom they may soon get de-motivated and lose interest in learning. On the other hand, if the right activities are taught in the right way, speaking in class can be a lot of fun, raising general learner motivation and making the English language classroom a fun and dynamic place to be.

Speaking is fundamental to human communication

Just think of all the different conversations you have in one day and compare that with how much written communication you do in one day. Which do you do more of? In our daily lives most of us speak more than we write, yet many English teachers still spend the majority of class time on reading and writing practice almost ignoring speaking and listening skills.

Principles for Teaching Speaking

 • Focus on fluency and accuracy (depending on lesson/activity objective)

 • Use intrinsically motivating techniques based on  student goals and interests

 • Use authentic language in meaningful contexts

 • Provide appropriate feedback and correction

 • Optimize the natural link between listening and  speaking

 • Give students the opportunity to initiate oral communication

 • Develop speaking strategies

Oral communication skills in pedagogical research

1.      Conversational discourse

 • Attention to conversation rules, sociolinguistic

                appropriateness, speech styles, routines, etc.

2.      Teaching pronunciation

            • How to teach, yet understanding that accents  will   remain

3.      Accuracy and fluency

            • How to address these two elements of language usage  and language use

4.      Affective factors

            • Creating a climate that encourages students to speak

               and to accept imperfections as part of the process

5.      Interaction effect

            • Speaking is a collaborative activity which students must  learn to negotiate

6.      Questions about intelligibility

            • Students must learn to be intelligible, not native speakers

7.      The growth of spoken corpora

•         The one of the key development on teaching our production

8.      Genres of spoken language

•         How to teach variations of oral intterection

Types of spoken language

•         Monologue eg lectures, speeches, recitations.

•         Dialogue eg conversations, interviews, debates, meetings.

Functions of Spoken Language

•         Referential     : utterances that provide information.

•         Expressive      : utterances that express the speaker’s feelings.

•         Transactional : utterances where the main purpose is to get something done or    acquire something.

•         Interactional  : utterances where the main emphasis is on the social relationship between the participants.

•         Phatic             : utterances devoid of any serious content ‘small talk’, usually conducted with strangers or people only slightly known.

What makes speaking difficult ?

The main cause of what makes speaking difficult in the second stage the formulation. The smaller lexicón or a lack of vocabulary can cause the problem, a weak gramatical and phonological encoders deteriorate the accuracy and fluency of the speak.

Others cause can be the lack of:

• Clustering: it’s the fluent speech not word by word, learners can organize their output.

• Redundancy: it’s making the meaning of the speech clear

• Reduced forms: it’s necessary to learn the reduced form to sound like a native speaker because the reduced forms are used in the daily speech.

• Performance variables: it’s the process of thinking as you speak.

• Colloquial language: it’s the acquisition of idioms and phrases of colloquial language.

• Rate of delivery: it’s the acceptable fluency and speeds at the moment of speak.

• Stress, rhythm & intonation: it’s the right intonation and pronunciation of patterns to send important messages

• Interaction: it’s the creativity to produce the component waves of language, the creativity to negotiate the conversation.

Tips for the teacher:

-          Use the authenthic language in meaningful context.

-          Give the feedback and be careful with their corrections

-          Teach in conjunction with listening

-           Allows to the student initiate communication

-          Improve the Motivation using a range of many different techniques.

Tips for the improve of the fluency and Accuracy

Fluency:

-          speak at normal speed

-          self-correction

-          smooth use of speech

Accuracy: Speaking usig the correct form of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.

Micro- and Macroskills of oral communication

The implications of those focusing on both the forms of language and the functions of language. The Forms of language include the types of sentences used (declarative, interrogatory, imperative, exclamatory). Meanwhiie, the functions of language include its purpose and its use.These include the following:

1.  Informative language function: communicating information, such as  facts.

            2.  Expressive language function: reporting feelings or attitudes or evoking

                  these feelings in the reader/listener.

            3.  Directive language function: using language to cause or prevent  actions, such as in

                 commands or requests

6 TYPES OF SPEAKING PERFORMANCE (THE KINDS OF ORAL PRODUCTION THAT THE STUDENTS ARE EXPECTED TO CARRY OUT IN THE CLASSROOM):

1.      IMITATE

A very limited portion of classroom speaking time may legitimately be spent generating “human tape recorder” speech, where, for example, learners practice an intonation contour or try to pinpoint a certain vowel sound. Imitation of this kind is carried out not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for focusing on some particular element of language form.

New teachers in the field always want the answer to this question: Is drilling legitimate part of the communicative language classroom? The answer is a qualifed yes. Drills offer students an opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain string of language that may pose some linguistic difficulty-either phonological or grammatical. Drills are to language teaching what the pitching machine is the baseball. They offer limited practice through repetition. They allow one to focus on one element of language in a controlled activity. They can help to establish certain psychomotor (“to loosen the tongue”) and to associate selected grammatical forms with their appropriate context. Here are some useful guidelines for successful drills:

·         Keep them short (a few minutes of a class hour only)

·         Keep them simple(preferably just one point at a time)

·         Keep them “snappy”

·         Make sure students know why they are doing the drill.

·         Limit them to phonology or grammar points

·         Make sure they ultimately lead to communicative goals

·         Do not overuse them.

2.      INTENSIVE

Intensive speaking goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of language. Intensive speaking can be self-initiated, or it can even form part of some pair work activity, where learners are “going over” certain forms of language.

3.      RESPONSIVE

A good deal of student speech in the classroom is responsive: short replies to teacher or student initiated questions or comments. These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues (#4 and #5). Such speech can be meaningful and authentic:

T: how are you today?

S: pretty good, thanks, and you?

4.      TRANSACTIONAL(DIALOGUE)

Transactional language, carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging specific information, is an extended form of responsive language. Conversations, for example, may have more of a negotiative nature to them than does responsive speech:

T: What is the main idea in this essay?

S: The United Nations should have more authority

T: More authority than what/

S: Than it does right now

T: What do you mean?

S: Well, for example, the UN should have the power to force certain countries to destroy its nuclear weapons.

T: You do not think the UN has the power now?

S: Obviously not. Several countries are currently manufacturing nuclear bombs.

Such conversation could readily be part of group work activity as well.

5.      INTERPERSONAL(DIALOGUE)

The other form of conversation mentioned in the previous chapter was interpersonal dialogue, carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information. These conversation are a little trickier for learners because they can involve some or all of the following factors:

·         A casual register

·         Colloquial language

·         Emotionally charged language

·         Slang

·         Ellipsis

·         Sarcasm

·         A covert “agenda”

For example:

Amy: Hi, Bob. How is it going?

Bob: Oh, so-so

Amy: Not a great weekend, huh?

Bob: Well, far be it from me to criticize, but I am pretty miffed about last week

Amy: What are you talking about?

Bob; I think you know perfectly well what I am talking about.

Amy: Oh, that …. How come you get so bent out of shape over something like that?

Bob: Well, whose fault was it, huh?

Amy: Oh, wow, this is great. Wonderful. Back to square one. For crying out loud, Bob, I thought we’d settled this before. Well, what more can I say?

Learners would need to learn how such features as the relationship between interlocutors, casual style, and sarcasm are coded linguistically in this conversation.

6.      EXTENSIVE (MONOLOGUE)

Finally, students at intermediate to advanced levels are called on to give extended monologues in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short speeches. Here the register is more formal deliberative. These monologue can be planned or impromptu.

PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING SPEAKING SKILLS:

1.      Focus on both fluency and accuracy, depending on your objectives

      Accuracy  is  the  extent  to  which  students’  speech  matches  what  peopleactually  say  when  they  use  the  target  language.  Fluency is the extent towhich speakers use the language quickly and confidently, with few hesitations or unnatural pauses, false starts, word searches, etc.

In our current interactive language teaching, we can easily slip into interactive activities that don’t capitalize on grammatical pointers or pronunciation tips. We need to bear in mind a spectrum of learner needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning and fluency. When you do a jigsaw group technique, play a game, or discuss solutions to the environmental crisis, make sure that your tasks have a linguistic (language-based) objective, and seize the opportunity to help students to perceive and use the building blocks of language. At the same time, don’t bore your students to death with lifeless, repetitious drills. As noted above, make any drilling you do as meaningful as possible. The student can not develop fluency if the teacher is constantly interrupting them to correct their oral errors. Teachers must provide students with fluency building practice and realize that making mistakes is a natural part of learning a new language. 

2.      Provide intrinsically motivating techniques

Try at all times to appeal to students’ ultimate goals and interests, to their need for knowledge, for status, for achieving competence and autonomy, and for “being all that they can be”. Even in those techniques that

don’t send students into ecstasy, help them to see how the activity will benefit them. Often students don’t know why we ask them to do certain things, it usually pays to tell them.

3.      Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts

This theme has been played time and again. It is not easy to keep coming up with meaningful interaction. We all succumb to the temptation to do, say, disconnected little grammar exercises where we go around the room calling on students one by one to pick the right answer. It takes energy and creativity to devise authentic contexts and meaningful interaction, but with the help of a storehouse of teacher resource material, it can be done.

4.      Provide appropriate feedback and correction

In most EFL situations, students are totally dependent on the teacher for useful linguistic feedback. In ESL situations, they may get such feedback “out there” beyond the classroom, but even then you are in a position to be of great benefit. It is important that you take advantage of your knowledge of English to inject the kinds of corrective feedback that are appropriate for the moment.

5.      Capitalize on the natural link between speaking and listening

Many interactive techniques that involve speaking will also of course include listening. Don’t lose out on opportunities to integrate these two skills. As you are perhaps focusing on speaking goals, listening goals may naturally coincide, and the two skills can reinforce each other. Skills in producing language are often initiated through comprehension.

6.      Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication

A good deal of typical classroom interaction is characterized by teacher initiation of language. We ask questions, give directions, and provide information and students have been conditioned only to “speak when spoken to.” Part of oral communication competence is the ability to initiate conversation, to nominate topics, to ask questions, to control conversations, and to change the subject. As you design and use speaking technique, ask yourself if you have allowed students to initiate language. 

7.      Encourage the development of speaking strategies.

The concept of strategic competence (see Chapter 16:PLLT, chapters 5 and 8) is one that few beginning language students are aware of. They simply have not thought about developing their own personal strategies for accomplishing oral communicative purposes. Your classroom can be done in which students become aware of, and have a chance to practice, such strategies as:

·         asking for clarification (what?)

·         asking someone to repeat something (pardon me?, Huh?Excuse me?)

·         using fillers (uh, I mean, Well) in order to gain (to get) time to process

·         using conversation maintenance cues (Uh-huh, Right, Yeah, OK, Hmm)

·         getting someone’s attention (Hey, Say, So)

·         using paraphrasing for structures one can’t produce

·         appealing for assistance from the interlocutor (to get a word or phrase, for example)

·         using formulaic expressions (at the survival-stage) (How much does____cost?How do you get to the____?)

·         using mime and non-verbal expressions to convey meaning

TEACHING CONVERSATION

According to Richard (1990: 76 – 77) thera are two major approaches characterize current teaching of conversation :

1.      An Indirect approach in which learners are more or less set loose to engage in interaction

2.      A direct approach that involves planning a conversation program around the specific microskills, strategies, and process that are involved in fluent conversation.

Richard (p. 79) was somewhat critical of task based instruction, which he labeled an indirect approach, because in the task the focus is on using language to complete task, rather than on practicing language.

Richard (1990:78-80) offered the following list of features of conversation that can receive specific focus in classroom instruction :

1.      How to use conversation for both transactional and interactional purposes

2.      How to produce both short and long turn in conversation

3.      Strategies in managing turn-taking in conversation, including taking a turn, holding a turn, and relinguishing a turn.

4.      Strategies for opening and closing conversation

5.      How to initiate and respond to talk on a broad range of tropics, and how to develop and maintain talk on these topics.

6.      How to use both a casuals type of speaking and a neutral or more formal social gathering

7.      Strategies for repairing trouble spots in conversation including communication breakdown and comprehension problems

8.      How to maintain fluency in conversation  through avoiding excessive pausing, breakdowns, errors of grammar or pronounciation.

9.      How to produce talk in a conversation mode, using a conversational lister and syntax

10.  How to use conversational fillers and small talk

11.  How to use conversational routines.

A.      Conversation-Indirect (strategy consciounsness-raising)

Plan your time

Level        : Intermediate or above

Time         : 30-35 minutes

Aim          : for students to consider ways in which they can learn English outside the classroom.

Preparation: Make fhotocopies of the task sheet for your class.

Procedure :

1.   Arouse student interest in the planning task.

2.      Set up the initial pair work and give the students five to ten minutes to discuss, add to, or modify the list of  suggestions.

3.      When the initial discussion is over, you should facilitate the  setting up of the groups. Allow the groups a maximum of twenty minutes to complete the planning task.

4.      Chair the report-back session in which each group presents its suggestion. Make posters available to help the groups present their ideas.

Task sheet :

Here is the a of techniques that people use to help them learn English outside the classroom :

1.      Memorizing a list of words

2.      Reading a grammar book

3.      Doing a grammar exercises

4.      Reading a book or a magazine in Engish

5.      Re-copying things  from their class notebook

6.      Correcting  mistakes made in written work

7.      Preparing the next  unit of the coursebook

·         Work with your partner and  add any others of your own. Tell each other which ones in the list you find helpfull, if any, then tell the class about the new one you have added.

·         Arrange yourselves in groups and take a time period from this list :

·         Thirty minutes per day for six days in a week

·         One hour per day for five days a week

·         Two hours per day for four days a week

·         In a group plan a program to show how you could make use of the time to do extra work on your English. Use the ideas from the earliest list, as well as any other you can think of. Choose one person to present your plan to the rest of the class.

Remark

If student aggree to experiment with a study plan, some time should be allowed in classroom for them to discuss how they are getting on.

B.       Conversation-Direct (gambits)

Is that right ?

Level                     : Elementary and above

Time                      : 10 – 15 minutes

Aim                                   : To help students recognize gambits

Preparation                        : Find a short cassette or radio recording of two or three people chatting naturally. Identify examples of short responses being used and put them in random order on a task sheet, chalkboard, or OHT, along the following lines. You can add distractors if you wish. The task sheet might look like this :

Task sheet             : Read the following list of  expression, listen to the tape. Tick (   ) any of the expression  you hear. You may hear some expressions more than once :

Is that right                       : _____________                    That’s great ! __________________

Really ......             : _____________                    Oh dear                     __________________

How interesting    : _____________                    What a shame _________________

Er... hum....                       : _______________                Oh, no             __________________

Fine                       :  _______________               You’re joking  __________________

I see                       :  ______________

PROCEDURE

1.      Give a task sheet to each student and ask them to tick off the examples they hear on the tape.

2.      When they heve done this, choose two or three examples to focus on and if the students can recall the utterances that precede or follow them  on the tape.

C.      Conversation (Transactional (ordering from a catalog)

Informational Gap Activity

You are a telephone salesperson  for the Best Wear Company. Your partner is a customer.  Your partner is a costomer. Your partner calls to order some items from your company’s catalog. Take the order and fill out the order form. Make sure you have written the order correctly by asking your partner to confirm it. Don’t look at your partner’s page !

D.   Individual practice         : Oral dialog journals

Written dialogue journals where students records thoughts, ideas, and/or reactions, and the teacher reads and responds with written comments.

E.       Other Interactive techniques

Of course, many other task and techniques can be applied to the teaching of conversation. They are almost impossible to categorize, but here are a few possible types, gleaned simply from the  table of contents of Friederike Klippel’s (1984) practically  litte resource book :

·         Interviews                                                      

·         Guessing games

·         Jigsaw tasks

·         Ranking exercises

·         Discussion

·         Values clarification

·         Problem solving activities

·         Role play

·         Simulations

  

Teaching Pronunciation

Advice for Teaching Pronunciation: How to Help Your Students Excel
Pronunciation is an extremely important part of the teaching of English. Regardless of how good a students reading, writing and vocabulary skills are, if they can’t pronounce words correctly, then listeners will not be able to understand them.
Teaching pronunciation can seem quite intimidating to some teachers, particularly if you are a new ESL teacher. However, if you break your task down into step-by-step chunks, it becomes much more simple than it may seem at first.
People from different parts of the world have various difficulties when it comes to pronouncing English words and sounds. For example, there is no ‘R” sound in some languages, and these people tend to use an ‘L’ sound instead.
How To Teach Pronunciation
Start With Sounds
Before you get on with teaching your students how to pronounce words, you should focus on sounds. Begin by teaching your students phonemes. This will pay off in the long run and will prevent your students from making lots of pronunciation mistakes.
Move on to Words
After the students have mastered basic phonemes, including short and long vowels, you can move on to pronunciation of words.
When teaching work pronunciation, teach your students spelling patterns , and associate the phonemes they have already learned with the right spelling patterns. This helps the students to internalize the rules of English spelling and will make it easier for them to pronounce written words correctly.
It’s also helpful to separate words into one-syllable and multi-syllable words. This way they can start with basic words and move onto more complicated ones. Make sure you teach them how to count syllables.
 Getting More Advanced: Sentences, Intonation, Rhythm
After getting to grips with phonemes and words, your students can move on to the more difficult part.
Learning sentences and conversation structures can be very complicated for foreign students. There are several factors such as stress, intonation, and rhythm that need to be learned. This part is not easy to teach as it can only really develop naturally over time.
Practice makes perfect, so encourage your students to practice as much as they can at home, and suggest that they watch English TV programs so they can get a feel how people converse in the English language.
One of the main obstacles in teaching pronunciation is the nervousness and lack of confidence that students have. Remember that your role as teacher is to encourage students constantly and praise even their smallest developments. If you can keep your students positive and focused, their development will enhance no doubt.

Practice Stress and Intonation

Students can quickly improve their English pronunciation skills by focusing on stress and intonation. This lesson helps students recognize which words to focus on to improve their pronunciation skills.

Descriptions of the sound and mouth position can help students increase their awareness of subtle sound differences.

a.       a. Voicing
Voiced sounds will make the throat vibrate.

b.     b. Aspiration
Aspiration refers to a puff of air when a sound is produced. Many languages have far fewer aspirated sounds than English, and students may have trouble hearing the aspiration. The English /p/, /t/, /k/, and /ch/ are some of the more commonly aspirated sounds.

c.       c. Mouth Position
Draw simple diagrams of tongue and lip positions. Make sure all students can clearly see your mouth while you model sounds. Have students use a mirror to see their mouth, lips, and tongue while they imitate you.

4. Intonation
   Word or sentence intonation can be mimicked with a kazoo, or alternatively by humming. This will take the students' attention off of the meaning of a word or sentence and help them focus on the intonation.
5. Linking
   We pronounce phrases and even whole sentences as one smooth sound instead of a series of separate words.
6.  Vowel Length
   You can demonstrate varying vowel lengths within a word by stretching rubber bands on the longer vowels and letting them contract on shorter ones. Then let the students try it.
7. Syllable

·         Have students count syllables in a word and hold up the correct number of fingers,

or place objects on table to represent each syllable.             

·         Illustrate syllable stress by clapping softly and loudly corresponding to the syllables of  a word. 

h.      Specific Sounds

·         Minimal pairs, or words such as 'bit/bat' that differ by only one sound, are    useful for helping students distinguish similar sounds. 

·         Tongue twisters are useful for practicing specific target sounds, plus they're fun. Make sure the vocabulary isn't too difficult.

·         The Sounds of English, American Accent Training, and EnglishClub.com websites below offer guidelines for describing how to produce various English sounds.

The factors within learners that affect pronunciation.

•      Native language

The native language is the most influential factor affecting a leaner`s pronunciation.

•      Age

Generally speaking, children under the age of puberty stand an excellent chance of “sounding like native” if they have continued exposure in authentic contexts. 

•      Exposure

It is difficult to define exposure. One can actually live in a foreign country for some time but not take advantage of being”with the people.

•      Innate phonetic ability

Often referred to as having an “ear” for language, some people manifest a phonetic coding ability that others do not.

•      Identity and language ego

Yet another influence is one`s attitude toward speakers of the target language and the extent to which the language ego identifies with those speakers.

•      Motivation and concern for good pronunciation

Some learners are not particularly concerned about their pronunciation, while others are.  

       How to create a pitch word

        Pitch words are created similarly to stressed words. Both kinds of words have some or all of        the following characteristics in their stressed syllable:

• altered pitch
• lengthening
• increase in loudness

§  However, there are differences between stressed words and pitch words, both in their creation and their use. In short, the stressed syllables of pitch words are louder, longer, and have a greater change in pitch than the stressed syllables of stress words. Pitch words also convey more information than stressed words.

           Differences between stressed words and pitch words

Stressed words are:

• the important words of the sentence, the words that comprise the contents of the dialog and help the listener and speaker focus on the same information
• said with a slight pitch change, a little louder, or for more time than surrounding words
• used to create the underlying rhythm of English.

Pitch words are:

• the most valuable and relevant words, the words that allow the interpretation of the dialog.
• said with a greater change in pitch, loudness, or length of time than stressed words.

Focus on form and error treatment

•      Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing is the book many writing teachers have long been looking for: a highly accessible and principled approach to the    theory and practice of error treatment that can guide pedagogical decision-making.

Minimal pair

•      Minimal pairs are pairs of words that only have one sound different.

•      Example
‘But' and ‘bat' are a minimal pair. Only the vowel sound is different.

•      In the classroom
Minimal pairs are a useful way to highlight a sound in a meaningful context and also to show the learner how important correct pronunciation of the sound is. Activities to practise minimal pairs include reverse dictation (the teacher writes what the learners say on the board), tongue twisters and drilling.

Role of Feedback

•      Students need to get feedback as they work. What specific feedback they need depends, of course, on exactly what they are doing and how they are doing it. Take two students who are learning biology by playing the part of a manager of a wildlife park. One might need guidance on how to balance short-term and long-term goals. Another might need details about what habitat herons prefer.

•      Schools tend to not be very good at giving students the feedback they need. Sometimes, the only feedback a student gets is a grade. When students do get feedback that has some content to it, it's typically because they get it during class discussion when all the students are getting the same feedback at the same time.

When and How to treat Errors

When we should threat the error is not easy.  James hendrickson advised teachers to try to discern the difference between global and local errors. Hendrickson recommended that local errors usually need not be corrected since the message is clear and correction might interrupt a learner  in the flow of productive communication. Global errors need to be threated in some way since the massage may otherwies remain garbled. Many utterances are not clearly global or local, and it is difficult to discern nessecity for corrective feedback.

The matter of how to treat eerors is complex.  Research on error correction methode is not at all conclusive on the most effective method or technique. It seems quite clear that students in the classroom generally want and expect errors to be be corrected. However some method reccomend no direct treatment of

error at  all. The research William shows the best way to help a learner to repair malformed utterances is, first, to assist the learner in noticing an incorrect form ( trough recast, prompts, and other attention-getting divices ) and second, for the learner to initiate repair ( with as little promting as possible from the teacher ). The teacher needs to develop the intuition, trough experience and established theoretical fondation, for ascertaining which option or combination of options is appropriate at given moments. Principles of optimal affective and cognitive feedback, of reinforcement theory, and of communicative language teaching all combine to form those intuitions. There are some information “ A model for treatment of classroom  speech errors “.

DEVIANT UTTERANCE

1.      Type ( lexical, phonological, grammatical,discourse,pragmatic,sociocultural)

2.      Source (L1,L2, teacher induced other ss, outside L2 input,print, electronic media)

3.      Linguistic Complexity (intricate and involved, easy to explain/deal with

4.      Local or Global

5.      Mistake or Error

6.      Learner’s Affective state (Language ego fragility, anexiety, confidence, receptiveness)

7.      Learner’s  Linguistic State  ( emergent, presystematic, systematic, postsystematic.

8.      Pedagogical Focus ( immediate task goals,lesson objectives, course goals/purposes

9.      Communicative context ( conversation flow factors, individual,group, or whole class work.

10.  Teacher Style ( direct or indirect, interventionist, laizzes-faire )

Based on the information above, now we ready to decide wether to treat or ignore the deviation, if you decide to do nothing you simply move on. But if you decide to do something in the way of treatment, you have a number of treatment options, you have to decide when to treat, who will treat, and how to treat. Notice that you,the teacher do not always have to be the person who provides the treatment. Manner of treatment varies according to the input to the students, the directness of the treatment, the students output and the teacher follow up.

ASSESING SPEAKING IN THE CLASSROOM

Assesing speaking skills in the classroom has one clear adventages over assesing listening: speech is observable, recordable, and measureable. However, once the criterion of your assesment moves beyond the phonological level, this advantage quickly dissapear as acceptable responses are more difficult to specify reliably. There are three criteria in speaking assessing in the classroom :

1.      Specify the category of speaking performance ( from imitative to extensive)

2.      Describe micro and macro skills that are to be assessed

3.      The genre of spoken language that being assessed

Item Types and Task for Assessing speaking

There are some options for assessing spoken languange at the various levels of performance :

1.      Imitative speaking tasks

Ø  minimal pair repetition

Ø  word/phrase repetition

Ø  sentence repetition

2.      Intensive speaking tasks

Ø  directed response

Ø  read-aloud

Ø  oral sentence completion

Ø  oral cloze procedure

Ø  dialogue completion

Ø  Picture cued elicitation of grammatical item

Ø  Translation

3.      Responsive speaking tasks

Ø  picture cued elicitation of response or description

Ø  map cued elicitation of directions

Ø  question and answer

Ø  question elicitation

Ø  elicitation of instructions

Ø  paraphrasing

4.      Interactive speaking tasks

Ø  oral interviews

Ø  role plays

Ø  discussions and conversations

Ø  games

5.      Extensive speaking task

Ø  Oral presentations ( in academic or profesional contexts )

Ø  Picture cued ( extensive ) story telling

Ø  Retelling a story or news event

Ø  Translation of an extended text

Evaluating and Scoring Speaking Tasks

            The evaluation of oral pruduction performance can quite complicated.  The first we have to be clear about the level language that our targeting. There are at least six possible criteria that we can use :

1.      Pronunciation

2.      Fluency

3.      Vocabulary

4.      Grammar

5.      Discourse features ( cohesion, sosiolinguistic appropriateness)

6.      Task (accomplishing the objective of the task )

Some scales add “ comprehension “ to account for the extent to which a student has comprehended directions or elicitation. We can use categories such as, beginning, intermediate, and advanced as potential levels.  Whatever category that you use the most important is to describe them as clearly as possible in order to make reliable evaluations.