Speaking Skills

What is “Speaking Skill”? How can we develop these skills?

• It is an act of generating words that can be understood by listeners • A good speaker should be clear & informative

Importance of Speaking Skill

• Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns. • Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting, audience, situation and subject matter. • Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.

Speaking Situations

• Interactive speaking situation
• Partially Interactive speaking situation

Developing speaking skills:
• Listen and observe
• The more we speak, the better we will be.
• Making eye contact is also essential

Objectives of speaking skills:
• To recognize that talking is an important tool for communication
• To use talk to explore ideas and express understanding
• To use volume appropriate to the purpose
• To choose an appropriate format
• To adjust the level of language and tone that suits purpose and situation

Types of tone:
• Falling tone
• Rising tone
• Fall-rises
• Rise-fall
• Voice quality
Experiment with speaking in formal situations (e.g. debates, meetings, presentations etc)

Organs of Speech:
The organs which help in speech production are called organs of speech.

Functions of organs of speech:

• Respiratory System- Lungs, The muscles of the chest, The trachea (Windpipe) • Phonatory System- Larynx, vocal cords, Glottis
• Articulatory System- The Lips, Teeth, Alveolar Ridge, Hard palate, Soft palate, Uvula, Tongue, Pharynx, Glottis. Components of speaking skill:

• Logical component: The speaker must have good content/matter knowledge. It should be logical.
• Mechanical component: It is the art of public speaking attained with practice. Requires fluency, content knowledge and good presence of mind
• Emotional component: Emotions affect speech. Correct intonations make a difference (pauses, stress, pitch etc)
• Expressions with rhyme, rhythm, pauses

• Speech mechanism
• Stress: word and sentence
Word stress: PHOtograph, phoTOgrapher, photographic
Sentence stress: We WANT to GO.
We WANT to GO to WORK.
We DON’T WANT to GO to WORK.

Drills to develop speaking skills:

• Mechanical drills: Requires repetition. Simple repetition, substitution, transformation are the 3 types. • Meaningful drills: Meaningful exercises to teach structure and rules of language. Application of students by thinking and producing • Communicative drills: No structure or rules required, just basic communication in the form of role-play, story telling, discussion, debate etc

Barriers:
• Some of the barriers are:
• Use of jargon
• Disability
• Cultural differences
• Complicated messages
• Poor listening skills
• Use of mother tongue

Activities to promote Speaking Skills:

Oral skills are divided into four distinctive types:
• Drills or Linguistically structured activities
• Performance activities
• Participation activities
• Observation activities
Some commonly used activities:
1. Short Speeches
2. Gap activities
3. Role Play
4. Discussions

Different ways of developing correct speech habits/oral work: • Speech habits can be developed through class room conversation exercises- seeking and giving information. • Practice in speech sounds.

• Taking parts in plays and role plays.
• Dramatization of activities.
• Responding simple questions.
• Story telling.
• Encourage students to make simple presentations.
• Picture composition.
• Participate in debates and discussions.
• The learner to complete the outline story orally.
• Topic based simple discussions can be organized in the class.

Conclusion:

• Teaching speaking skills is very important part of language learning. • Speech habits play an important role in the development of one’s own personality. • The activities can help the learner to get practiced and actively participate in the class room.