Oral Language: Talking or Speaking

Dr. Kham Khan Khai

Lecturer, Faculty of Education
Asia-Pacific International University
Introduction

• Speaking is "the process of building and sharing

meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal
symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p. 13).
• Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning
and teaching.
• Despite its importance, for many years, teaching
speaking has been undervalued and English language
teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a
repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues.
Teaching Talking or Speaking

• Now many linguistics and English teachers agree that

students learn to speak in the second language by
"interacting".
• Communicative language teaching and collaborative
learning serve best for this aim.
• Communicative language teaching is based on real-life
situations that require communication.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Discussions
• Student participate in both teacher-led and student-led discussions
that support their learning.
• As they learn how to participate in discussions, students develop
talking skills.
• Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the
discussion activity is set by the teacher.
• For efficient group discussions, it is always better not to form large
groups, because quiet students may avoid contributing in large
groups.
• In class or group discussions, students should always be
encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase ideas, express support,
check for clarification, and so on.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Grand Conversations about Stories

• To dig into a story and deepen their comprehension, students
talk about books they’re reading.
• Grand conversations have two parts: open-ended question
where students talk about their reactions to the book, and
teacher focuses students’ attention on one or two aspects of
the book that they didn’t talk about in the first part of the
conversation.
• After grand conversation, students often write in their reading
logs, or write again if they wrote before the grand
conversation.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Thematic Unit Discussions

• Discussions deepen students’ content-area knowledge and develop
their academic language proficiency in these ways:
• Students deepen their knowledge about the topic
• Students use technical and precise vocabulary and more
complex sentence structures to express the ideas being
discussed
• Students learn to provide support for the ideas they
present
• Student ask inference and critical level questions, those
with more than one answer
• Students participate actively and make comments that build
on and expand classmates’ comments.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Asking Questions
• Asking and answering questions are common types of talk in
classrooms.
• Questions can be grouped into three levels:
• Literal – single factual answer and can be answered
with few words.
• Inference – synthesize information and form
interpretations.
• Critical – open-ended, think creatively and abstractly
about global ideas.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Oral Reports
• Students prepare and give reports about topic they’re
studying.
• Giving a report orally helps students to deepen their
knowledge as well as to develop their ability to speak in
front of a group.
• Students review information they’ve gathered and
decided how best to present it so that the report will be
both interesting and well organized.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Interviews
• Students refine their ability to ask questions as they conduct
interviews.
• They can participate in these types of activities:
• Students pose as book characters and are interviewed
by classmates.
• Students interview favorite authors and illustrators.
• Students interview experts as they study thematic units.
• Students participate in oral history projects and
interview grandparents and older community members.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Debates
• Students participate in debates when they’re excited about an
issue.
• As they participate in debates, students learn how to use oral
language to persuade their classmates.
• They must articulate their viewpoint clearly, use logical and
emotional appeals to support their viewpoints.
• Students not participating in the debate often assess their
classmates’ performance and determine the winning team.
Activities or Strategies that Promote Talking

Picture Describing
• Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is
to give students just one picture and having them describe
what it is in the picture.
• For this activity students can form groups and each group is
given a different picture.
• Students discuss the picture with their groups, then a
spokesperson for each group describes the picture to the
whole class.
• This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of the
learners as well as their public speaking skills.
1. What topic are both connected to?
2. How are these pictures similar?
3. How are these pictures different?
4. Where do you think these pictures are taken?
5. What are advantages/disadvantages of life in a countryside/big city?
6. Where would you prefer to live? Why?
1. What topic are both connected to?
2. How are these pictures similar?
3. How are these pictures different?
4. Where do you think these pictures might be taken?
5. What are advantages/disadvantages of each school?
6. Compare your school with those in pictures.