Question

Article on spelling skills are dead long live text speak

Answer 1

The ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language because speaking is the most basic ways of human communication. Bailey and Savage (1994) said that speaking in second language has often been viewed as that most demanding of the four skills. Speaking skill is the second skill: (1) listening (2) speaking (3) reading (4) writing. Speaking conveys thought, understanding and feeling to listeners. Moreover, it can help listener understands objectives of speaker. Thus, speaking skill is important for communication in every day life. Second language learning, speaking skill is necessary because a person who can speak able to understand other. Also, it helps reading and writing skill to be easy. However, this skill is the complicate skill that speaker has to practice for long time. It does not occur to understanding or remembrance. So, Roger Scott (1981) purposes the steps of teaching and activities as below:

Informing objectives - teacher should tell learners what do we learn.

Presentation - teacher should present contents with context. Teacher does not present without context because some contexts are different in another context.

Practising and conveying - learners will practice suddenly after teacher present contents. Teacher should provide a variety of expressions and native speaker accent. Teacher also encourages learner to learn freely and similar real situations.

Moreover, Mary Finocchiaro and Christopher Brumfit (1983) explained that there are many activities for speaking teaching that teachers can choose appropriately an activity for students in each level as below:

Answering questions that teachers or friends ask.

Telling friends to act with order.

Letting students ask or answer friends' questions related to classroom or outside experiences.

Telling characters of objects from the pictures.

Telling experiences by providing key words.

Reporting stories from assigned topics.

Setting classroom as scenes of some situations like restaurant, bank, and grocery.

Debating, discussing, and expressing your ideas.

Playing language games.

Practising to telephone.

Reading Thai newspapers and reporting in English

Role playing.

Speaking is divided into two main areas which are monologue and dialogue.

Monologue is a person who speaks without interaction with other people (one person show) such as speech. Another one is dialogue that has at least 2 people talking together such as conversation. Moreover, people have to know some important means (managing interaction) to speak such as openings and closings, responding appropriately in fixed routine, taking turns, and topic management.

There are several activities for developing speaking skills.

Discussion

Discussion is probably the most used activity in the oral skill class. Learners are assigned to discuss about provided topic. This activity usually does in a group because discussion is an activity for sharing information and knowledge to each other. Furthermore, learners are necessary to take the prior knowledge for discussion. For example, the topic is "Living together before marriage". The learners should find some evidences to support your ideas. The evidence is maybe findings of research, statistic, or real experience. Besides, learners have to realize the managing interaction as above. The first step is teacher have to do a warm-up activity to introduce in the topic by discussing in the similar topic. This activity will add some ideas for students. The discussion does not have right or wrong, but it is sharing your own thoughts and feeling to each other