3 Practical Ideas to develop Speaking Skills.

                         Many teachers struggle to develop students’ speaking skills. Often students are not able to speak even a few words on the completed topic or story even though they have studied it. Children who have good reading skills also find it difficult to speak about the content. However, since speaking is an active skill, listening should lead to speaking as it is an output of the learning. So that is a key point to keep in mind – that good listening should lead to good speaking. Once students learn to concentrate well on the teacher's voice or other audio resources, they should begin to develop their speaking skills.

                       In countries like India, where English is the second or third language, teachers face lots of problems in developing English language skills among their students. Teachers also face many practical problems in the classroom even though they are aware of different methods. Different learner-centred methods can help to overcome such problems in developing speaking skills.

                      Here I suggest 3 practical ideas that I have found the most successful in developing speaking skills among my students

1. Graphics and Diagrams on the Board:

                         Students at the primary stage do not have the cognitive skills to speak about an imaginary object so pictures and diagrams will help. Teaching through pictures or explaining a concept with a diagram will help students to concentrate and retain concepts. 

                          Teachers can use drawings or diagrams to illustrate the holistic meaning or concept of the lesson. Concentrate on the sentences which you are going to teach the students while drawing the images. Graphics should prompt students to speak those sentences while understanding the topic. While drawing a picture, we need to keep in mind that the image should reflect the dynamic text and inculcate the main idea of the lesson in the students’ brains.

                        Such drawings will help the students to remember the sentences and concepts of the topic and help them to speak and develop their language use.

Learning-Centered Teaching Models:

                        A main difficulty for non-native English teachers is maintaining the English environment in the classroom, which leads to less listening input for the students. And many teachers do not have such proficient language skills to explain the whole lesson or concept in English so children do not understand the topic without switching to their mother tongue. So to fill this gap we need learner-centered models to explain the topic in order to reduce the use of the mother tongue. 

                       Here you can see the House Model, with which we can easily explain the family members by opening the house. 

This is my house.

I am Rajesh.

He is my father.

She is my mother.

She is my sister.

It is my kitten.

And I love my family.

                                  

                     Using this Apple Model, a child can easily learn and say the sentences below. Students may not say these sentences easily without the model.

This is an Apple.

It is round.

It is red.

And it is juicy and sweet.

             This is a model of a school. A student can easily describe the school while looking at the model. Watch the speaking activity on my YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/i5VYlln5BMc

                   This is a model of the places where a train passes. This helps my children to use the prepositions correctly and speak about a train.

                     Models help teachers to create an active and interesting environment in the class and they also help teachers to speak at length on the topic as they can look to the model. The visual models help the children to understand concepts as well as remember the sentences connected with the pictures. This leads to creating an English environment in the classroom and gives scope to learning the language easily and quickly. A teacher who is not proficient in English can easily explain in English by practising the accompanying sentences. This will build confidence and reduce mother tongue usage.

Flash Cards:
                 Flash Cards are a great resource for encouraging children to speak at length. Children easily connect the ideas related to the picture and try to speak on, so preparing the flashcards and choosing the content is very important. Low-performing children need such visual content to learn and speak about the topic easily.
                  A simple picture can create great opportunities for learning so the teacher should think creatively about how to get maximum language output. You can see a speaking activity using the flash cards here.

 https://youtu.be/LMvcpmV4z3s