Teaching Speaking : What Makes Speaking Difficult?

1. Clustering

Fluent speech is phrasal not word by word. Learners can organize their output both cognitively and physically trough such clustering.

2. Redundancy

The speaker has opportunity to make meaning clearer through redundancy of language. Learners can capitalize on this feature of spoken language.

3. Reduced forms

Contractions, elisions, reduced vowels etc all form special problems in teaching spoken English. Students who don't learn colloquial contractions can sometimes develop a stilted, bookish quality that in turn stigmatizes them.

4. Performance variables.

One of the advantages of spoken language is that the process of thinking as you speak allows you to manifest a certain number of performance hesitations, pauses, backtracking and corrections. Learners can be taught how to pause and hesitate.

5. Colloquial language.

Make sure the students are reasonably well acquainted with the words, idioms and phrases of colloquial language and that they get practise in producing these forms.

6. Rate of delivery

Another salient characteristic of fluency is a rate of delivery. One of the task in teaching spoken English is to help learners achieve an acceptable speed along with other attributes of fluency.

7. Stress, rhythm, and intonation.

The stress timed rhythm of spoken English and its intonation patterns convey important message.

8. Interaction

The creativity of conversational negotiation.

Source :Teaching by Principles by H. Douglas Brown.

future educator.

shikin hasnan.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL?

Functions of Education.

We go to school for :

• Socialization : Learning to be productive members of society through the passing on of culture. At school, we will learn the rights and wrongs, values and role expectations of the society. 
• Transmission of culture. Different groups of students are taught different norms, skills, values and knowledge.
• Social control and personal development. Discipline differs by social class, racial ethnic group and sex.
• Selecting, training and placement of individuals in society. School promotes social mobility.
• Change and innovation.

image from google.

the future educator.

shikin hasnan.

Leisure.

Leisure is one of the selected poem for Form Three students. It is written by William Henry Davies.
The poem is very beautiful and it remind me how I took every little things for granted. The world is such a beautiful place to live if we really appreciate it.

Sometimes we are too busy with our works, responsibilities and with our pack schedule, and we always forget that there is so much more to life to enjoy. Sometimes we have to sit back and relax and just enjoy the nature. Take time to really enjoy our surrounding and appreciate it.

stanza 3:

"No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass."

Have we ever stop to see the trees and appreciate it? I bet no because we are so busy walking or driving to reach to our destination.

stanza 4:

No time to see in broad daylight

Streams full of stars, like stars at night.

One thing that caught me is the stanza 4. When I was a little girl, I used to love to watch stars at night, I even ask my mother to accompany me watching stars because I always wondered how on earth that stars can be so bright yet so far away that I can't reach them. Now that I am so busy, I forgot how beautiful they are and I no longer enjoy watching stars because I have no time to do so.

So, lets start enjoying the nature even though we are so busy with life, make some time to enjoy the very simple things in life and may be we will find such tranquil when doing so.

shikin hasnan.

Teaching Children

Are you interested to become an English teacher? What teacher do you want to be? and Do you prefer to teach children, teenagers or adults?

Well, some prefer teaching children as they like children so much and some thinks that teaching adults would be easier because they are mature enough to make their own decision.

Here are the criteria to be considered when teaching English across age level.

• Intellectual development
• Attention span
• Sensory input
• Affective factors
• Authentic meaningful language.

And now lets look at how to teach children ( age up to 11 )

image from google.

Intellectual development:

image from google

• avoid rules and complex grammar
• give examples and demonstrate certain pattern                                 
• repetition is needed
• do's and donts'

Attention span

• short only for things that are boring, useless or too difficult.
• teachers have to make the lesson interesting, lively and fun by doing variety of activities 
• sense humour will help to keep them intested.

Sensory input

• do a lot of physical activity, role play and total physical response using all the five senses- sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing
• hands on activities help children to internalize language.
• use sensory aids- audiovisual like videos, tapes and music.

image from google

image from google

Affective factors

• non verbal language is very important
• show patience and be supportive                               
• sense of humour is useful

Authentic meaningful language

• focus on language use of here and now
• language should be context embedded
• use the whole language approach.

"It takes a very special person to be able to  teach children effectively" - Teaching by Principles, H. Douglas Brown.

future educator,

shikin hasnan.