I never learnt to speak English at school. I swore to myself early in my teaching career I would never allow this to happen to my students.
Basically learning to speak a foreign language boils down to four things: There has to be a lot of INPUT, ORAL PRACTICE, REPETITION and TIME.
There is no excuse for teachers, if their students dare not speak English when they leave school.
If the use of the target language is not activated orally with quality materials and methods, if it is not done over and over again and if there is not enough time for it, learning is not possible or it is desperately slow. And still, it seems everybody wants to learn to speak English.
Three possible ways to learn to speak a foreign language
- It is taught and learnt in a systematic manner, like we do it in CLT lessons at school.
- It is learnt intuitively in an authentic environment over a long period of time, very much like we learn our mother tongue.
- It is partially learnt at school and activated in free time by talking to English-speaking people or playing interactive games headsets on, for example.
If we have a look at these three ways, we realize that Option 2 is not possible for many of us and the success of Option 3 is too random and dependent on the efforts of the individual.
The only option left is Option 1 and if the majority of students are not given a chance to learn to speak English, for example, at school, they will not learn it properly at all. Unfortunately this is exactly what happened to me and this is why I am writing these articles.
The only language I learnt to speak at school was German even if we never had any speaking tests and studied the language only for 2,5 years. We had six lessons a week, spent two lof them in a language laboratory working on a variety of exercises. And I can still speak German even if I have not studied it since 1973.
The vital lesson I learnt from my German teacher was simple: allow the students to talk between themselves with the language they master and have faith in them learning the spoken language.
Use it or lose it! How can the students learn to speak English if the teacher talks most of the time or makes them work silently on written tasks? NO WAY, spoken language is learnt by speaking a lot.
In this article i will answer the following three questions:
- How does one learn to speak a foreign language?
- What is the best method in teaching the students to speak a foreign language?
- What modern techniques enhancing speaking skills are there to bring variation to foreign language lessons?
Many of the ideas related to teaching speaking have already been discussed under heading ‘The structure of a textbook-based lesson’, ‘Pronunciation’ and ‘Modern CLT group work methods’. Still, Latin ‘Repetition est mater studiorum’ = ‘Repetition is the mother of studies’.
The students start learning to speak English when the teacher stops talking – and gets them working in pairs or groups in English.
How does one learn to speak a foreign language?
- by being exposed to the language not only at school but elsewhere too
- by taking the trouble of learning words, phrases and expressions
- by listening to others speak the language trying to understand the messages
- by learning pronunciation by imitating native level speakers
- by gradually internalizing grammar and social functions of the language
In short, by listening, practising and speaking a lot.
There is no one-way street in language learning. We are different and learn languages in different ways using our senses in our own style.
What all effective language learning methods share is the idea of doing a lot of things with the language. What really goes on in our brains in that process is still a bit of a mystery. Still, practice does it!
We learn to speak ...
- by being brave and by enjoying speaking the target language with other students
- by not being afraid that we are laughed at even if we do not always get our message through or if our pronunciation is not perfect
- by not being afraid of making mistakes
- by challenging ourselves and taking linguistic risks in new situations
- by making utterances of our own and learning from others
What is the best method in teaching the students to speak a foreign language?
The answer depends on the proficiency level of the students and the teacher is the best judge in choosing the method. Provided the teacher is aware of all the possibilities and can apply them well.
Any method that maximizes the time the students use the language and speak in class is good. The most popular approach these days is ‘Communicative Language Learning’ (= CLT) and most of the ideas presented in my articles are based on CLT principles. Speaking can be part of just about anything we do in class, even in learning vocabulary and cultural matters.
In CLT lessons we favour student-centred methods, principles and activities. In practice it means pair and group work in English and the teacher’s job is to organize and facilitate the tasks and assignments so that the teacher remains in the background and it is the students who talk.
If the students speak English 70 – 80 % of the time in lessons, things start happening. I have explained in detail how to do it in my articles under the horizontal main menu heading ‘THE STRUCTURE OF A TEXTBOOK-BASED LESSON’. The articles demonstrate how a teacher can easily turn teacher-oriented lessons to student-oriented ones.
What modern techniques enhancing speaking skills are there to bring variation to foreign language lessons?
First of all, it is vital in language lessons that the students do not always stay with the same people. In addition to regular changing of the composition or pairs and groups, there are methods such as station work, co-operative learning, task- based learning (TBL) and inquiry-based learning (IBL) which bring a lot of variation to the lessons.
All of the techniques have been explained in more detail with examples under heading ‘Modern CLT group methods’. In these lessons English often becomes a tool that is used to find information or solve problems. Learning to speak English becomes an enjoyable BYPRODUCT!
How can the students learn to speak English if the teacher talks most of the time or makes them work silently on written tasks? NO WAY, MOST TASKS HAVE TO BE ORAL!
My next articles in this unit deal with the following questions:
| Speaking | Speaking, teaching beginners |
| Testing speaking skills | |
| How to use speaking criteria in evaluation | |
| N.B. The topic is touched upon in most articles |
Luckily the importance of speaking skills has been recognized in most countries and official speaking tests or exams with clear criteria are becoming part of the final examinations.