Improvement of Speaking Ability through Interrelated Skills

Improvement of Speaking Ability through Interrelated Skills

Guoqiang Liao

Brown & Yule (1983a: 1-3; 1983b: 11-16) mention that language can be seen as having two functions: transferring information (transactional function) and establishing/maintaining social relationships (interactional function). They may use a recorder to provide an authentic accent and some authentic materials like dialogue for students to imitate. They can also make good use of class time for active participation by all their students .

How all four skills are related (Byrne,1991,8)

Spoken Language	Understanding ,Speaking
Receptive Skills	Understanding ,Reading
Productive Skills	Speaking, Writing
Written Language	Reading ,Writing

What l have learned to be my implementation in the future are:

1.    Teach oral English, l should get the students involved in an oral communicative activity to do some writing or reading or listening in order to accomplish the task which the activity asks them to perform.

2.    l should be looking for opportunities to knit skills together, because this is what happens in real life.

3.    Communication Activities

1)   Describing and drawing

2)   Finding the difference between two partially identical pictures

3)   Discussing ideas/views/opinions

4.    Questionnaires

Questionnaires are a simple way of giving the students meaningful question and answer practice. For use they should relate to a topic of some kinds, e.g. like and dislike about food, activities, abilities etc. the answer required should be either yes or no, or one of the frequency adverbs (never, hardly ever, sometimes, quite often, etc.)

5.    Quizzes

Quizzes are similar to questionnaires but the answers are usually factual, which often involve knowledge.