Bro. Kevinn Lloyd R.

Sepada, FSF
Michelle M. Soria

Testing the Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Why is it important to teach these productive skills?

Teaching speaking is vital for it develop a real sense of progress among learners and
boosts their confidence.
Teaching writing is important because written communication is a basic life skill.
Writing is an effective way of reinforcing what they have already been studying, and
they benefit greatly from seeing new or unfamiliar language in written form.
What is Speaking?
It is the action of conveying information or expressing one's thoughts and feelings in
spoken language.
Teaching Speaking Skills:
a. Form-focused Speaking
It is an approach to language education in which learners are made aware of the
grammatical form of language feature that they are already able to use
communicatively. (Wikipedia)
It is suitable for beginners.
b. Meaning-focused Speaking
It is that stage of speaking where the focus is on the message being communicated.
Why Activities are Provided in Teaching Speaking?
There are three basic reasons why teachers should provide students with activities:
a. Rehearsal – to organize
b. Feedback
Having students to present what they know, that means, to use all the
language they have learnt provides feedback for the teacher as well as for the
students.
The teachers can see what the students are doing well and what is needed to
be improved.
c. Engagement
All speaking activities are highly motivating and the students find those
interesting to work on and to participate fully.
Types of Speaking Activities
1. Role Play
Students can pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social
roles. In role-play activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who
they are and what they think or feel.
2. Brainstorming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the
context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas
quickly and freely. The good characteristics of brainstorming is that the students are
not criticize for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
3. Storytelling
Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody
beforehand, or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates.
Story telling fosters creative thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the
format of beginning, development, and ending, including the characters and setting a
story has to have. Students also can tell riddles or jokes.
4. Interviews
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good
idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of
questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own
interview questions.
5. Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in
class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news.
Students can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling
their friends in their daily lives before class.

What is Writing?
It is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with
signs and symbols. (Wikipedia)
Pertains to the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing
text.
Aspects of Effective Writing
Before looking at how to teach writing skills, aspects of effective writing should be
considered. Correctness and accuracy are needed in the following areas.
1. Grammar. It is important for writing. In writing every grammar error stands out, which
is why it is important to know the rules.
2. Vocabulary. Being able to choose the most accurate words to express your thoughts
in writing is the key to being understood.
3. Spelling. There are few spelling rules in English, and the connection between how a
word is spell and how it is pronounced is less clear-cut than in many other languages.
Our students need to learn the spelling of each word.
4. Punctuation.This helps us understand written text the way intonation helps us
understand another person’s speech.
5. Layout. Students must be made aware of the conventions of certain forms of writing,
for example, informal letters, formal letters, poems, scientific reports, diaries, faxes,
notes, and postcards.
6. Linking. Learners must consider linking ideas and information across sentences and
paragraphs to develop a topic or argument.
7. Style. Appropriate styles should be taught to the students. For example, our written
English on a postcard to a friend is completely different from a letter to a government
office asking for information.
Types of Writing Activities
1. Letters. Students can write to make complaints, thank, ask for and give information or
advice or prepare job applications.
2. Creative. Writing You can use pictures or begin a story and ask students to finish it.
Or you can use a personal situation where the student was happy, sad, surprised,
shocked, etc.
3. Diary. Ask your students to keep a diary.
4. Discursive essays. Students need to present an argument, state points for and
against in a logical way, and write a conclusive paragraph.
5. Dictation. A dictation can have a calming effect on young learners. It is also useful for
teachers who have limited resources and need to dictate a text for a reading skills
lesson.

Approaches to Teaching Writing

a. Product-oriented Approach
 The concern of this approach is on the correctness of final products of writing.
The product-oriented approach to the teaching of writing focuses more on the
linguistic knowledge, such as the appropriate use of vocabulary, grammar, and
language devices.
Four Stages of Learning Writing under Product-Oriented Approach
1. Familiarization 3. Guided writing
2. Controlled writing 4. Free writing
b. Process-oriented approach
This approach concerns more on the process of how the students develop ideas and
formulate them into effective writing works.
Students are seen as the language creators in which they are given chances to
experience the process of writing, try to organize and express their ideas clearly.
Roles of Teacher in Writing
Teachers are required to have various strategies and great interest when they are
teaching writing to the students.
The success of students in learning writing is also determine by the teacher’s
performance in helping them learn writing.
In the process of teaching writing, the teacher has to help the students to understand
and learn how to write effectively, give clear explanations and instructions and guide the
students in each step of the writing process.
Tasks that the teachers must perform before, during, and after the process of
writing (Harmer, 2004)
a. Demonstrating d. Responding
b. Motivating and Provoking e. Evaluating
c. Supporting

Reference
Mohammed Iqram Hossain, “Teaching Productive Skills to the Students: A Secondary
Level Scenario”, http://dspace. bracu.ac.bd:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10361/7671/
11263001_ENH.pdf?sequence=1
Hayriye Kayi, “Teaching Speaking: Activities to Promote Sp eaking in a Second
Language”, http://iteslj.org/Technique s/Kayi-TeachingSpeaking.html