Speaking

Teaching Speaking to Kids

Kids learn how to listen attentively and observe carefully. They understand and follow simple directions and answer simple questions about auditory or verbal information. Students demonstrate their expanding oral language skills by sharing their own ideas and speaking clearly and distinctly in complete sentences.

Speaking is perhaps the most demanding skill for the teacher to teach. In their own language children are able to express emotions, communicate intentions and reactions, explore the language and make fun of it, so they expect to be able to do the same in English. Part of the magic of teaching young children a foreign language is their unspoken assumption that the foreign language is just another way of expressing what they want to express. 

At the moment to teach speaking to children, teachers need important techniques. Some examples of speaking techniques are:

1) Ask and answer: Children ask and answer questions.

/Ex. With a ball/

2) Describe and draw: In pairs. Child A has a picture, which learner B cannot see. Child A describes the picture to the partner and learner B draws it.

3) Discussion: Children work in pairs or groups to find out each other’s ideas or opinions on a topic.

4) Guessing: The teacher, or some of the learners, has information which the others have to guess by asking questions. Ex (a picture, colors, numbers, etc.)

5) Remembering: Children close their eyes and try to remember, for example, items from a picture or the location of objects in the classroom.

6) Miming: A child mimes, for example, a feeling or action which the others have to identify.

7) Ordering: Children arrange themselves in a particular order (for example alphabetical) by asking questions until they find their correct position.

8) Completing a form/questionnaire: Children ask and answer questions, or provide information, in order to complete a form or questionnaire.

9) Pole play: Children act out an imaginary situation. They either use a dialogue, or the teacher gives them instructions about what to say.

Teaching Strategies for Listening and Speaking

Effective language development strategies incorporate a variety of engaging activities that hold students' interest and avoid straight drill and practice. The following language activities address aspects of both listening and speaking skills and can be incorporated into programs to develop oral language:

1. For students with weak oral language skills, a teacher might collaborate with a speech and language specialist. Such an individual can help students with developing vocabulary, identifying multiple meanings for words, using complex syntax, storing and retrieving words, and using figurative language.

2. Teachers can provide explicit instruction on targeted aspects of language.

3. When modeling listening skills, do not interrupt students or finish spoken thoughts for them; give them your full attention and focus on the meaning rather than on the form of what the child is expressing.

4. To further develop a child's listening skills, read aloud frequently to the student in multiple forums and encourage students to select their own books to read.

5. After teaching learning strategies such as story maps and other organizational tools, encourage students to work together in reading and retelling stories.

6. When modeling good speaking skills:

• Use standard grammar.
• Hold instructional conversations, in which the teacher responds to students' speech by using grammatically correct, longer, and more complex sentence structures.
• Expand upon what the children say and ask them for additional details or provide for them more ideas related to the specific topic about which they are speaking. 

7. Consistently reinforce students for good listening and speaking.

8. Use specific activities and experiences to model different uses of language for different social contexts, such as:

• Using pictures to illustrate new vocabulary, sentence structures, or concepts. 
• Encouraging students to draw pictures about the books they read and to identify the elements of the stories in their pictures. 
• Having students make something, play a game, or participate in an activity, which teaches how to give and follow directions. 
• Having children role play scenes of real life social situations where one needs language skills, such as making a telephone call, greeting or interviewing someone, or ordering food at a restaurant.

Speaking Activities

1. Talking with Puppets

The teacher can use puppets for various subjects in the classroom. The teacher can make brainstorming questions that she or he can ask a puppet. The teacher can split the class into mixed ability pairs and each pair is allowed to choose a finger puppet. The children can take turns to ask questions and to be the puppeteer. This activity is amazing at the moment to develop the speaking skill.

2. What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?

This game is the same format as "grandma's footsteps", but with a wolf in place of grandma.

The wolf stands at the other end of the room, facing the rest of the group. The rest of the group ask, "What's the time, Mr Wolf?". The wolf then says a time between 1 and 12, for example, "Three o'clock."

The group would then take three steps forward. This continues until the group is very close to the wolf. Then the wolf can say "Dinner time!" and has to try and catch as many group members as they can, before they all run back to the other end of the room.

3. Describing pictures

For this activity, one child (the "describer") is given a piece of paper with a picture on. These pictures are not of any particular object, but should be strange, involving lots of shapes, letters and numbers, and they should be hidden from all children apart from the describer. This child then has to describe the picture to the rest of the class, who have to draw that picture by following the instructions given. When the description is finished, the child who most accurately reproduced the picture takes a turn at describing.

4. What´s he/she doing?

The teacher asks children work in pairs, and s/he gives them some pictures. So, children have to say what the person on the picture is doing. A child asks and another child answers. 

Example: Pupil A asks: What´s he/she doing? 

                Pupil B answers: He´s/She´s playing, drawing, etc.

5. Chain work

Chain work uses pictures cards or words cards. Put all the cards face down in a pile. Child 1 picks up a card on which there are some tomatoes. Turning to child 2 he or she says: Do you like tomatoes? Child 2 then picks up the next card on which there are some carrots and answers: No, I don´t like tomatoes, but I like carrots. The activity can continue with the other children. This activity helps students to develop the speaking skill in a funny way. 

6. Role plays

The teacher ask children to make pairs, then s/he gives to each pairs an easy and short dialogue. The pairs of children start to practice the dialogue, and after some minutes, the teacher asks pairs to come to the front and say the dialogue.

Example: Child A: Hi, what is your name?

Child B: My name is Edgar.

Child A: Nice to meet you Edgar.

Child B: Nice to meet you too.

7. Hesitation Game

Students form a circle with a flash card placed in front of them. One student stands in the middle of the circle and shouts out the name of the object on a card. They then change places with the student stood behind that card, who immediately goes to the center and calls out the name of a different flash card item, replacing the student behind it. If there is any hesitation the student is eliminated and a flash card removed. The teacher could feed in new flash cards as required.

8. Topic Game

The teacher makes a circle with the children, and they play a game with the alphabet where every letter has to be the beginning of a word in a theme such as fruit or vegetable. Example: A…apple, B…banana, C…carrot. The teacher starts with the letter A, the second child with the letter B and so on.

Tips for Improving Speaking Skills

*Allot a time limit for each and every speaking activity. Take into consideration those activities that involve either group or pair work.

*Keep the activity fun and simple. Make sure the instructions are also crystal clear.

*Don't overdo speaking activities in one lesson.

*Make sure you aim for a balance between speaking and listening.

*Have a back-up plan for the entire class and for individual students who are withdrawn.

*Always reflect on what can you do as a teacher to help students improve their speaking skills.

Here, a nice video ¨How to get children speaking in English¨