Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 1 Table of content Acknowledgements Index Content Page Part I: Introduction 01 1. Reasons for choosing the subject 01 2. Aims of study 02 3. Scope of study 02 4. Methods of study 03 5. Design of study 03 Part II: Development 04 Chapter I: Theoretical preliminaries 04 1. The communicative language teaching 04 1.1. Leaner - Centered instruction 04 1.2. Cooperative and collaborative learning 04 1.3. Interactive learning 05 1.4. Content - based and task- based instruction 05 2. An integration to speaking skill 06 2.1.The position of speaking skill 06 2.2.The characteristic of speaking classes 07 3.The communication continuum 07 3.1.Communicative activity versus non-communicative activity 07 3.2.Purposes of communicative activities 08 3.2.1.Communicative activities improve motivation 09 3.2.2. Communicative activities allow natural learning 09 3.2.3. Communicative activities can create a context which TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 2 supports learning 09 3.2.4. Communicative activities give whole-task practice“ ” 09 3.3.Types of communicative activities in language teaching 09 3.3.1.Information and motivation stage 10 3.3.2.Input stage 10 3.3.3.Focus stage 11 3.3.4.Application stage 11 Chapter II : Types of Communicative activities used in speaking classes 13 1. Activity 13 2. Types of Communicative activities used in speaking class 14 2.1. Meaningful Drills 14 2.2. Exchanging information 19 2.2.1. Information Gap activities 19 2.2.2. Exchanging personal information 22 2.3.Communicative Games 24 2.3.1. Finding the differences (similarities) 24 2.3.2. Describing and arranging 25 2.3.3. Story reconstruction 26 2.3.4. Guessing Games 27 2.4.Discussion 28 2.4.1. The buzz group 29 2.4.2.Controversial topic 30 2.4.3. The debate 30 2.5.Reaching a consensus activity 31 2.5.1. Going to New York 31 2.5.2. Moral dilemmas 32 2.6.Replaying instruction 33 TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 3 2.6.1. Exercises 33 2.6.2. Making model 33 2.6.3. Describing and drawing 33 2.7.Oral interaction 33 2.7.1. Finding someone who 34 2.7.2.Questionnaires 34 2.8.Role play 35 2.8.1. Simulation 35 2.8.2. Role play 38 Chapter III : Applying communicative activities to develop the 11 th Form Students’ speaking skill 39 1. General characteristics of students at secondary schools 39 2.The state of using communicative activities in teaching speaking at secondary schools 40 3. Some suggested communicative activities to teach the 11 th form Students’ speaking skill 41 4.Techniques to help the 11 th form students correct speaking errors 46 4.1. Common speaking errors made by the 11 th form students 46 4.2. Techniques for correcting speaking errors 48 Part III : Conclusion 52 Reference: 53 TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 4 Part I : INTRODUCTION 1. Reasons for choosing the subject Open-door policy of many countries’ governments has been giving people many chances to learn and practise English. Nowadays, people all over the world learn English; therefore, English has become necessary for a lot of people at different social positions. However, how to learn and how to teach English in general and speaking skills in particular is still a discussing matter. For most people, the ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language since speech is the most basic means of human communication. The Communicative Approach teaching requires to develop language learners’ four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing. Nevertheless “speaking in a second or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills.” (Bailey and Savage,Teach English as a Second Language 1994 _ 449). And again, according to Bailey and Savage “speaking is an activity requiring the integration of many subsystems all these factors continue to make speaking a second or foreign language a formidable task for language learners . Yet for many people, speaking is seen as the central skill”. For that reason, we would like to particularly study how to help teachers to develop their students’ speaking skill. Of course, there are many ways to develop learners’ speaking skill, however, it’s still discussing to choose an appropriate way to teach. Today we’re trying to teach English in a communicative way followed learner-centered instruction; communicative activities are certainly becoming essential part in language teaching, however, to many teachers in secondary schools, communicative activities are still very strange. They only teach their students speaking skill based mainly on the textbooks through mechanical drills. Therefore, we found it interesting and useful to have a specific research into the communicative activities, we think that we can make use of TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 5 communicative activities to teach speaking skill because communicative activities can somehow involve students in and give them both a desire to communicate and a purpose which involves them in a varied use of language. They improve learners’ motivation to learn in a natural learning, they can create a context which support learning process, finally, they give a “whole-task” practice…for this reason, they’re useful and helpful for teachers in secondary schools to teach their students speaking skills. For the reasons above, we decided to choose the topic ’Applying Communicative activities to teach speaking skill to 11 th form students’ as the study of our graduation thesis. 2. Aims of study The aims of our study are: - To systematize communicative activities that can be used in a speaking class. - To distinguish between communicative activities and non-communicative activities. - To suggest some typical communicative activities to teach speaking skill in some lessons in 11 th form textbook. - To investigate common speaking errors that students often make when using communicative activities and techniques to correct students’ speaking errors. 3. Scope of study The study covers speaking skill and communicative activities. However, we just concentrate on types of communicative activities which can be used in speaking classes, i.e., we try to divide them into different groups according to their characteristics and the level of difficulty. The study also suggests some typical communicative activities to teach speaking skills in some lessons of 11 th form textbook and techniques to correct students’ speaking errors. TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 6 4. Method of study A lot of methods were used while we were doing this research but the main ones are descriptive method, collecting method, analytic method, synthetic method, observing, doing survey, etc 5. Design of study The study includes three parts: Part 1: Introduction Part 2 : Development Part3 : Conclusion The Development consists of three chapters: Chapter I : Theoretical preliminaries. Chapter II : Types of communicative activities used in speaking classes. Chapter III : Applying communicative activities to develop the 11 th form students’ speaking skill. References TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 7 Part II : development Chapter I: theoretical preliminaries 1. The communicative language teaching Closely allied to communicative language teaching are a number of concepts that have, like communicative language, become bandwagon terms without the endorsement of which teachers can’t be decent human beings and textbooks cannot sell, so in the communicative language teaching we have to be aware of giving lip service to principles of communicative language teaching. Hence a brief summary is appropriate. 1.1. Learner- centered Instruction According to H.Douglas Brown, Learner-centered instruction includes:  Techniques that focus on or account for learners’ needs, styles and goals.  Techniques that give some control to the students (group work or strategy training, for example)  Curricula that include the consultation and input of students and that do not presuppose objectives in advance.  Techniques that allow for students creativity and innovation.  Techniques that enhance a student’s sense of competence and self-worth. 1.2. Cooperative and collaborative learning As students work together in pairs and groups, they share information and come to each other’s aid. They are a “team” whose players must work together in order to achieve goals successfully. Research has shown an advantage for cooperative learning (as opposed to individual learning) on such factors as “ promoting intrinsic motivation . heightening self-esteem . creating caring and altruistic relationship and lowering anxiety and prejudice” (Oxford 1997 : 445). Cooperative learning does not merely imply collaboration. To be sure, in a cooperative classroom, the students and teacher work together to persue goals and objectives. But cooperative learning is TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 8 “more structured, more prescriptive to teachers about classroom techniques, more directive to students about how to work together in groups than collaborative learning” (Oxford 1997 - 443). 1.3. Interactive learning At the heart of current theories of communicative competence is the essentially interactive nature of communication when you speak; for example, the extent to which your intended message is received is a factor of both your production and the listener’s reception. Most meaning, in a semantic sense is a product of negotiation of give and take, as interlocutors attempt to communicate. Thus, the communicative purpose of language compels us to create opportunities for genuine interaction in the classroom. An interactive cause or technique will provide for such negotiation. Interactive classes will most likely be found. • Doing a significant amount of pair work and group work. • Receiving authentic language input in real world context • Producing language for genuine, meaningful communication • Performing classroom tasks that prepare for actual language use “out there” • Practising oral communication through the give and take and spontaneity of actual conversation. • Writing to and for real audience, not contrived ones. 1.4. Content based and task based instruction. According to Brinton, Snaw and Wesche – 1989 (Teaching by principles, H.Douglas Brown - 149) “Content-based instruction is the integration of content learning with language teaching aim. More specifically, it refers to the concurrent study of language and subject matter with the form and sequence of language presentation dictated by content material. While there is a good deal of variation among experts on how to describe or TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 9 define task . Brinton’s concept of “task” seems to capture the essentials. He defines task as an activity in which: - Meaning is primary - There is some communication problem to solve. - There is some sort of relationship to comparable real- world activity. - Task completion has some priority. 2. An integration to speaking skill Speaking in second language involves the development of a particular type of communication skills. Oral language, because of its circumstance of production, tends to differ from written language in its typical grammatical, lexical and discourse patterns. In addition, some of the processing skills needed in speaking differ from those involved in reading and writing. 2.1. The position of speaking skill in second language learning For most people, the ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language since speech is the most basic means of human communication. Nevertheless “Speaking in second language or foreign language has often been viewed as the most demanding of the four skills” (Bailey and Savage,Teach English as a Second Language: 1994 ). Speaking skill has not always figured so centrally in second and foreign language pedagogy. In classes that utilize comprehension-based approaches to language teaching, listening skills are stressed before speaking. Even in a production- based approach such as silent way student’s speech is carefully controlled for structure and content. And while audiolingualism stressed speaking skill (evidenced by the amount of time spent in the language laboratory practising skill.), speech production was tightly controlled in order to reinforce correct habit formation of linguistic rules. 2.2. The characteristics of a speaking class TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages Applying communicative activities to teach speaking skills to 11 th form students 10 In deciding how to structure and what to teach in a speaking class, questions such as the following should be considered: who are the students? Why are they there? What do they expect to learn? What am I (the teacher) expected to teach? One basic consideration is the level of the students and their perceived needs; level may be determined by a placement test administered by the institution or by a diagnostic test given by the teacher. Information on learners’ needs can be obtained by means of a student’s information sheet on which they report the amount of time they spend speaking English, their future goals, their goals for course and their overall speaking ability, confidence in speaking English. Nowadays, speaking classes at all levels are often structured around functional uses of language. In low-level contexts, these might involve basic greetings, talking on the telephone, interacting with school personnel, shopping students learn to introduce themselves and greet other people, give and request personal information, direction and prices, talk about family members, tell time, give and accept invitation, describe clothing and give and accept compliments. 3. The communication continuum Where students are working on an output stage with an emphasis on communication, we can use our generalizations about the nature of communication to come to a number of conclusions. 3.1. Communicative activity versus non-communicative activity Whatever activity the students are involved in, if it is to be genuinely communicative and it is really promoting language use, the students should have desire to communicate. If they do not want to be involved in communication then that communication will probably not be effective. The students should have some kinds of communicative purposes. In other words, they should be using language in some ways to achieve an objective. The students, however, will have to deal with a variety of language rather than just one grammatical construction, for example, while the TrÇn Xu©n Hoµ - 40 A2 English _ Department of foreign languages