Анашева Д.К., Оскенбаева М.Н.

Евразийский национальный университет, Астана, Казахстан

Ways of oral speech activization at the English lessons

Communicative approach of learning foreign languages was originated as a result of scientific researches, which were held in Europe, USA and Canada in the late 1970s – the beginning of the 1980s.

The goal of communicative approach is not merely grammar and lexis acquisition of the learning language, but it aims at the formation of foreign language communication skills. Formal aspect of language: grammar, lexis, phonetics are illustrated in communicative context so that their usage becomes clear to the learners. Furthermore, the learners are offered real exercises and tasks, which tend to enhance and improve speaking skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). In a linguistic field the aim of the foreign language teaching in the communicative methodology is assumed as communicative teaching of a foreign language in oral and written form in the context of a speech situation. It is known, the method of oral communication is speaking. The goal of communicative teaching is the development of students' abilities in accordance with their real needs and interests to perform oral communication in a variety of situations. Teacher’s main task is to create authenticity that would facilitate students’ communication. To do this, the teacher should take into account the specific characteristics of this type of speech activity, such as motivation, focusing, activity, relationship with personality and brain activity, independence, tempo and situation. If goals and motives of communication exist, typical peculiarities of participants’ communication, their age, level of development are taken into account, the act of communication within a speech situation, undoubtedly, will take place. To create conditions in the process of teaching English, the use of diverse techniques will activate oral speech activity. The advantages of these techniques lie in the fact that students actively participating in the learning process, start to ponder over, to remember, to use accurately the studied language material.

This article tackles the ways of the learners’ oral speech activization and some exercises, which are widely used and will be demonstrated further. There are special ways of the learners’ verbal speech activization, which may trigger the learners’ desire to express their own opinion. The main advantage of these ways and methods reside in the fact that they make students speculate, memorize, use the learnt material. This enables a teacher to analyze what students have understood and how they can apply the material in verbal communication.

For instance, the exercise where a teacher prompts students to memorize a new phrase “New program” is demonstrated below.

Teacher: Last night I was watching TV. I saw something very interesting. What do you think it was?

Student: A film?

Teacher: No, it wasn’t a film. It’s on every night.

Student: Adverts?

Teacher: No, not adverts! More interesting than that!

Student: A program…

Teacher: Yes, a program. What kind of program?

Student: News?

Teacher: Yes, good! Put it together. What do we call it in English? A n-…?

 Student: A news program!

Teacher: Very good, yes – a news program.

While some students are trying to guess what the program was, the others are listening, pondering over, remembering words and preparing for their own version, in other words, they are permeated into the learning process and they are to use the known vocabulary.

The following exercises are oriented to express their opinions using appropriate vocabulary and warm-up logical thinking.

You announce to the class that you have come from the planet Mars and you would like to get a chair, but before you would like to hear its description.

For instance:

Student 1: It’s made of wood (Teacher picks up a pencil. “Is this a chair?”)

Student 2: It’s got four legs (Teacher touches the table. “Is this a chair?”)

Usually students propose various descriptions and the activity becomes more attention-grabbing when the objects they depict are drawn on the blackboard.

Communicative oriented approach is accentuated in the times of new grammatical material introduction and consolidation. If students become informed of the meaning and communicative function of the learning structure, then this enables students not only to learn the model but to use them thoroughly in verbal speech as well. Various methods might be used to work out the material: from mechanical, training drills to individually oriented tasks.

For instance, the exercise “Dinner with the famous” is used to train Degrees of comparison.

Each student decides what famous people they would like to invite for lunch, persuading others on their importance. Students should use as much as possible structures in comparative and superlative degrees. For example: Woody Allen is much more interesting than Madonna. But Madonna is the best singer.

The admirable training exercise for modal verbs used to express supposition and speculation is expected to be the logical exercise, namely deal with crimes.

Students are offered to hear and read people’s testimonies, which are somehow correlated with a crime. Then all the alibis are analyzed and students surmise suppositions and justify them, using constructions with modal verbs. They must be well-grounded and reasonable: Susan could not be a murderer. She could not have killed her husband.

Speaking activities vary: from those which are controlled by a teacher (reiteration of words, phrases, songs, etc.) to the independent forms of expressions (transformations or individually oriented tasks). Creative exercises can be taken into account as well (role plays, discussions, games, dialogues). These tasks are considered to be a perfect opportunity to motivate students to study and to improve their speaking skills.

Lessons with such tasks as “Balloon debate”, “Train Journey” are successfully conducted.

“Balloon debate” consists of two steps. The first stage includes discussion about the significance of various occupations. Each student represents a profession – teacher, doctor, farmer, etc. A teacher offers a situation when students are on air balloon. Unfortunately, one of them has to abandon the air balloon because of imaginary troubles. The students’ aim is to persuade others on the importance of each profession. Then students have to vote for the best performance. The following stage – to answer the questions of the audience (questions should be related to the theme “Profession”). Then participants vote again. This task can include other steps, if you wish.

Such debates are really beneficial, as they teach students to think logically, to express their opinion, to listen to others. Besides this, tasks teach students to behave accurately during debates. In addition, such exercises favor additional consolidation of grammar and lexis and keep interest in foreign language learning.

Overall, contemporary communicative-oriented learning prepares students to use the learning language in authentic atmosphere. Creating and planning of various situations aimed at speaking and encouraging students to participate in such tasks tend to be a teacher’s objective.

List of literature

1. Harmer, J.: Teaching and learning Grammar. Longman, 1997.

2. Leech, G.: Communicative language teaching, Cambridge University Press, 2000.