The theme of our article is “Developing Speaking Skills in the Intermediate Level of Teaching English”. The target group is the Ss of the 7th grade of schools specialized in English who use English Language Course by O.Afanasyeva and I.Mikheeva (VII) at their classes.
This theme was chosen not by chance. In the teaching – learning process we faced the problem that the Ss do not have enough skill in dialogical speech.
When we say a person knows a language we first of all mean he understands the language spoken and can speak it himself. In teaching a foreign language it is necessary to think about what motivates pupils to speak.
Oral speech in the classroom should be always stimulated and encouraged. Sometimes during our lessons we try to develop communicative skills through the exercises directed to memorizing and grinding the words, paradigms and grammar rules but we also should pay attention to training the components of communication, not only by translating some speech patterns from one language to another. There are dialogues offered by the text book which are recommended to be learnt by heart. Students learn them like a poem and then it turns out they can’t use the same models in their spontaneous speech. We don’t give due attention to substitute and transforming exercises. That’s why the students have some difficulties in using the speech items they have learnt in communicative patterns. Such types of activities don’t lead to activating speaking skills.
For developing spontaneous communicative skill students need a series of synthetic exercises which can reproduce communicative model in the required situation or context.
Communication activities give students practice in using the language under controlled conditions. These activities develop fluency. To help students to speak on different topics, teachers may give them topical patterns if it is necessary, so all the students can be involved into conversation, especially in mixed ability groups. Then they can transfer the patterns on their topics.
The problems of meaningful speaking are in asking for information, breaking in, presenting the information in order to define the main problem, expressing negative attitude politely, saying tactfully, changing the subject, guessing, expressing arguments, etc.
To teach dialogical speech is difficult as a dialogue needs alternate use of students’ abilities to understand the speaker and then to express their own thoughts and ideas.
Another difficulty in dialogical speech is that a student should not only react but also give a stimulus in his turn for his companion. Other way it will be only a series of questions and answers, and the dialogue will be far from natural one.
Dialogue plays a central role because it is a medium through which participants are able to share their conceptions, verify or test their understanding, and identify areas of common knowledge or of difference.
A skillful teacher has a repertoire of dialogical strategies from which to draw, and is creative and flexible in shifting from approach to approach with different students, different circumstances, and different subject matters. Dialogical speech as one of the forms of speech communication is the important point while teaching English at school.
Before working on the article we analyzed the works of modern Russian and foreign specialists in English language teaching. The most common notion in the literature studied is that for mastering any language it is necessary to develop speech skills through different training exercises and speech practice.
As a result of the work we expect the students will be able to participate successfully in dialogues and conversations on the topics based on the materials of the text book and be able to pass the final speaking assessment of each unit according to the definite criteria. We analyzed every unit of the text book focused on the types of activities and the time limited. Then we made the exercises given by the authors more communicative by reformulating their tasks or / and by changing the patterns of interaction not to looking for extra curriculum time resource.
We also designed a set of special exercises focused on developing speaking skills. The teacher can include these exercises into every unit. To control students’ speaking skill we made up assessments with certain criteria for evaluation.
As a result of our work we’ve got supplementary materials to be used by teachers if they face the same problem. They can use these materials in whole or partly or vary them. The ideas of our exercises (board games, guided dialogues, lexis games, etc) can be used in any unit and for other textbooks, forms and groups
The more the students speak in the lesson, the better the lesson is organized.
We piloted all the material in our groups. The students had positive reaction on the exercises and the activities suggested and did the tasks willingly. To finish every unit the students were offered the speaking assessment. All of them coped with it successfully. We also asked them to fill in the questionnaires and got positive response. Thus we can consider the product of our work to be helpful in developing speaking skills.
(See Supplement 1. Приложение 1.)