A.K.KASYMBEKOVA,
G.A.SATYLKHANOVA
Kh.A.Yassawi
IKTU, Turkistan city, Master of Philology, Senior Teachers
THE IMPORTANCE OF HOW TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’
COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS
Nowadays, to be able to speak fluently in
English is a fond of desire of millions of Kazakhstan, especially as English is
a very important international language for communication and speaking English
language is one of the essential requirements of today´s society. To do this, we would like to represent the importance of
how to improve students’ communicative skills.
Speaking as a skill
For most people, the ability to speak English language is synonymous
with knowing that language because speech is for them the basic means of human
communication. English learners no longer expect the traditional approach of
their teachers based on developing mainly the grammatical competence and using
methodology popular in the past. Today, teachers are expected to provide their
students with useful active knowledge of the English language, not just theory
about the language.
Communicative approach focuses on a balance between fluency and accuracy
and is the most suitable for those students whose aim is to gain confidence in
speaking and conversational abilities. Nevertheless, speaking in a foreign
language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills. “While
listening and reading involve the ability to correctly receive messages and are
therefore referred to as receptive skills, speaking and writing, on the other
hand, involve language production and are referred to as productive skills.”
[1.16.]
Producing spoken language has often meant a difficulty and an obstacle
for English learners. There might arise a question why. The answer is obvious. In the natural spoken language students
are required to be aware of characteristics of fluent speech, such as reduced
forms, use of slang or idioms, fixed phrases, collocations and most importantly
the pace of speech. All of these have to be taken into consideration while
practising conversation in class. Without these, our spoken language would
sound bookish and unnatural. To avoid
this, it is essential to introduce and practise “real” communication with our students within the learning process.
If it is neglected, it may be a reason why students are often shocked and
disappointed when using a foreign language for the first time whilst
interacting in foreign environment. They have not been prepared for spontaneous
communication and could not cope with all of its simultaneous demands.
The embarrassment is usually caused by students’ inability to adjust to
native speakers’ speech. This is natural and adjures patience while learning to
speak or communicate in a foreign language. As we already mentioned, native
speakers are a great support and the opportunity to communicate with them means
even greater encouragement for our students. Although it is quite demanding for
students to keep up in conversation with them, they take it as an advantage in
their studies. Most English learners are actually familiar with the fact that
the best way to advance their speaking skills is adjusting to it in an English
speaking environment.
Although the terms “speaking”
and “conversation” may seem clear,
they often get misunderstood. Speaking as a skill taught at schools presents
the student’s ability to express his or her opinions, thoughts and ideas to a
particular matter. Speaking practice, which is usually based on story telling,
giving speech or presentation, is the necessity for later successful
conversation. Nevertheless, the focus on speaking activities has diminished in
recent years. This has been caused by many factors, especially by realizing the
need of everyday communication.
As we mentioned above, giving speeches or presentations is not what we
concentrate on in our lessons. Even though these are crucial prerequisites for
later conversational practice, the teachers tend to focus on communicative
activities as the main goal of speaking lessons. We have no objection to this, but
it is essential to mention the importance of presentations for our medical
English learners studying for their future work and the consequences of the
lack of speaking skill while giving medicine presentations abroad. For this
reason, it is very important for teachers to think through the purpose of
speaking and communicative activities being prepared for lessons and also the
target group of learners.
Nolasco [2.3.] mentions that being able to speak reasonably correct and
even fluent English is one thing, but being able to engage in on-going,
interactive, mentally satisfying conversation is another. Conversation is such
a natural part of our lives that many people are not conscious of what happens
within it. However, conversation follows certain rules which should be obeyed
in order for participants to feel relaxed and be satisfied with it.
Arthur [2.5.] adds that the main purpose of conversation is the exchange
of information among people. While communicating, our students may find
themselves in different social situations playing various social roles and the
main task for language teachers is to prepare them for these real situations
they might participate in. This also
includes leading students to develop the ability to initiate and sustain
conversation whenever it occurs.
When students learn a foreign language, they very often accumulate a lot
of knowledge (grammatical rules, lists of vocabulary items), but then they find
out that they can not actually use this language to communicate when they want
to. Scrivener [3.147.] claims that there seems to be some difficulty in moving
language from passive knowledge into active usage. Without experience in using
the language, learners may tend to be nervous about trying to say things.
Partly they may fear seeming foolish in front of others; they may worry about
getting things wrong they may want to avoid teacher’s comments or correction
and so on. It takes quite a long time for some students to express themselves,
which leads to long embarrassing pauses while learners are trying to find out
how to say what they really want to say.
One of the best ways of helping learners to activate their knowledge is
to put them in “safe” situations in
class where they are inspired and encouraged to try to speak a foreign
language. Teachers should try to create such activities in which learners feel
less worried about speaking and less under pressure.
Nevertheless, the teacher is not the only one whom the students’ success
in speaking is based on. There are also motivational factors, differing from
student to student, which influence his progress in the spoken language. Harmer
[1.4-6.] distinguishes extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. He claims that
students´ attitude to speaking the language may be affected by different
factors from the outside, such as people in close surroundings, previous
speaking experience in a foreign language or the job opportunities offered
after mastering foreign language communication. All of these represent
extrinsic motivation. Although extrinsic motivation is nowadays a driving force
for most students, without intrinsic motivation no goal in improving the
speaking skill could be achieved. Success is also based on students´
willingness to learn to speak a foreign language, which may be influenced by
the teacher´s methods used in teaching communication and, above all, his
or her personality. Considering these, teachers should realize how important
role they play in encouraging the students to learn to speak a foreign
language.
Students’ personalities also play an important role in determining how
quickly and correctly they will manage a speaking task. Those students who are
risk-takers, unafraid of making mistakes, are generally more talkative but usually
make many errors. Those who are shy may take a long time to speak confidently,
but when they finally manage it, their English contains fewer errors. The aim
of both types of students is the same, indeed – to use the language correctly
and fluently. To achieve this goal the teachers should try as much as they can
to break the silence in the classroom and get the students speak no matter how
many mistakes they make or how long it takes them to produce sentences. In
order to decrease shyness while speaking in front of the whole class, students
may be offered the opportunity to work in groups or pairs, which is a suitable
approach for enhancing the active language use.
Harmer [1.7-9.] points out different motivational factors depending on
the age and level of the students. Children’s and adolescents’ motivation to
speak a foreign language is irrelevant for the purpose of my thesis because, as
mentioned above, We deal with adult English learners and their motivational
needs for a foreign language communication are substantially different from the
others. We concentrate on intermediate students who represent the majority in
my classes. Their English is good at this stage but they are motivated by a
primary goal of achieving a more advanced level of the language. They already
know a lot and are able to have a conversation about every day matters but
sometimes there might occur some problems. One of them is often the feeling
that they are flooded with the new complexity of the language and cannot cope
with it. Teachers, when having found this out, should focus on building up the
knowledge students already have and assure them they can speak the language
well enough to understand and be understood.
Ur [4.274-280.] declares that “motivation is very strongly related to
achievement in language learning.” This statement results from teaching
practice showing that eager learners willing to invest effort in speaking
activities are likely to make greater progress. On the contrary, those sitting
silently at the desk without desire to be involved in any kind of speaking
activity, may find themselves stuck to be able to improve their speaking skill.
Having noticed this, teachers should encourage low-motivated students to
develop the interest in communicative activities.
Ur [4.281p.] describes some strategies to enhance students’ motivation
to speak in a lesson. The principal one is selecting the topic carefully to
make it as interesting for students as possible. If the teacher’s choice fails
in the class, there should be no panic or embarrassment. The possible solution
to this situation may be asking the students to vote for a topic they would be
interested in talking about.
Varied tasks are also suggested for a successful and efficient speaking
lesson as well as using visuals to enhance students’ motivation to speak.
Average pictures copied from different sorts of textbooks and workbooks do not
encourage adult learners to speak anymore. Based on my teaching experience,
adult learners prefer to be set into real situations, dealing with real and
current news items concerning today’s world and society.
To satisfy students’ expectations, teachers should be supplied with
sufficient amount of authentic materials, such as newspapers and magazines. The
speaking tasks could be based on describing the photos to each other and
guessing the place in the world where the action has happened. Connection
between the picture and reality makes it even more tempting for students to
express their points of view to a particular event and, at the same time, the
teacher’s goal is achieved as well – getting students to speak and communicate
with each other.
Accuracy and fluency are terms characteristic for a successful and fecund
conversation. Scrivener [3.160-162.] declares that accuracy is the ability to
speak correctly without making serious mistakes and therefore a greater use of
instant teacher's
correction within a speaking activity is appropriate. On the contrary, fluency
is the ability to speak confidently without irrelevant pauses or hesitation,
however, often with making major mistakes. In this case, instant correction may
be inappropriate and could interfere with the aims of the speaking activity.
Teachers should be aware of whether their main goal in a speaking
activity is accuracy or fluency and adapt their role in class eligibly. If the
main aim is to get students to speak, then one way to achieve that would be
reducing teacher´s contribution. It is supposed that the less he or she
speaks the more time and space it will allow the students to. If the main aim
is accuracy, the teacher should concentrate on students´ mistakes and
devote time to their correction.
However important speaking without mistakes is, a promoted trend at
present seems to be to lead students to a fluent conversation in every day
situations. Taking this into consideration, this approach best fits the needs
of today´s society which is based on fast exchanges of information.
Nevertheless, it would be injudicious to qualify accuracy as less important in
communication and underestimate its importance. It is also essential for the
ability to speak a foreign language well.
Fluency activities
In a fluency activity the teacher is expected to monitor the class and
encourage the students to speak with minimum interfering and correction. This
technique is called scaffolding. Scrivener [3.162.] states that “it is a way a
competent language speaker helps a less competent one to communicate by
encouraging and providing possible elements of conversation.” In practice it
means to encourage the weaker one by nodding, eye contact, repeating the last
word in order to encourage the speaker to continue, asking tag questions, etc.
The aim of this encouragement is to make a student speak as much as he or she
is able to.
Considering a fluent activity, correcting the mistakes should be done
after finishing this activity. Suggested techniques are the following:
a)
writing the sentences used during
the activity on the board and discussing them with the whole class;
b)
writing incorrect sentences used
during the activity on the board and encouraging the students to make
correction;
c)
inventing and writing down the story
that includes some errors the teacher overheard during the activity and
students try to find them and correct them;
d)
writing out two lists A and B – each
list contains ten sentences from the activity but some of them are correct,
some of them incorrect. Students work in two groups and their task is to decide
if the sentences are either correct or incorrect and why.
Accuracy activities
In an accuracy based activity the teacher is required to correct
students´ mistakes whenever possible. While practising accuracy, students
become aware of their own mistakes in speaking straight away because the teacher
does not wait until finishing the task. This approach is suitable while
focusing on grammar mainly and enables the students to realize and correct
their mistakes and also prevent their recurrence.
Summing up
In our work we tried to deal with speaking as one of four basic skills
and highlight its importance in every day situations. Our aim was to
distinguish speaking and conversation since these terms are commonly used but
often get mixed up. We pointed out that conversation plays a crucial role in
our lives and without it we would not be able to exchange the information and
share our knowledge.
We also dealt with motivation as an essential factor for language
learners and classified its types – extrinsic and intrinsic, with the emphasis
on the teacher´s personality which influences the students´
willingness to participate actively in the learning process. We mentioned
native speakers as a great source for our teaching practice and described the
ways they may encourage the students to carry on studying a foreign language.
To feel confident while learning to speak a foreign language, the
students are supposed to be put in a „safe environment“. This prevents them
from embarrassment or anxiety when they are asked to express themselves. We
tried to explain this term and suggested possible ways to decrease
students´ concern about speaking. Due to students´ different
personalities and also abilities to speak a foreign language, we dealt with
pair work and group work as the ways of organizing the class. We mentioned the
advantages of this kind of work, especially reducing tension in class, creating
a pleasant atmosphere and building up students´ independence and
confidence. Pair work was evaluated as more useful since it is closer to
real-life situations and dealing with them is the main aim that the students
are heading for.
By means of this work we realized how important it is for the teacher to
have a great amount of information concerning teaching speaking to be able to
provide the students with efficient conversational lessons.
Used
literatures:
1.
HARMER, Jeremy. The Practice of
English Language Teaching. Essex:Longman 1991, 296p.
2.
NOLASCO, Rob & ARTHUR, Lois.
Conversation. Oxford : Oxford University Press 1987, 150p.
3.
SCRIVENER, Jim. Learning
Teaching.Oxford:Macmillan Publishers Lim.2005,431p.
4.
UR, Penny. A Course In Language
Teaching.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press 1991, 375p.
5. Milrud Z.G.Organization of role play at the lesson.-Foreign languages at
a lesson.-1987.¹1.