Autor: prof. Bogdan Maria- Georgiana
Getting students to speak in class can sometimes be extremely easy. In a good class atmosphere, students who get on with each other, and whose English is at an appropriate level, will often participate freely and enthusiastically if we give them a suitable topic and task. However, at other times it is not so easy to get students going. Maybe the class mix is not quite right. Perhaps we have not chosen the right kind of topic. Sometimes it is the organisation of the task which is at fault. But a problem that occurs more often than any of these is the natural reluctance of some students to speak and to take part. In such situations the role(s) that teachers play will be crucial.
Reluctant students
Students are often reluctant to speak because they are shy and are not predisposed to expressing themselves in front of other people, especially when they are being asked to give personal information or opinions. Frequently, too, there is a worry about speaking badly and therefore losing face in front of their classmates. In such situations there are a number of things we can do to help.
- Preparation: when David Wilson was trying to use German while living in Austria, he found out something that most speakers of foreign languages know. If he was to go into a restaurant and order something, it was much better if he spent some time outside the restaurant, reading the menu and then rehearsing ( in his head) what he was going to say. Then, when he went in and placed his order, he did it fluently and without panic ( Wilson 2005).
He describes the value of planning and rehearsal for speaking success, and students, too, will perform much better if they have the chance to think about what they are going to say and how to say it. This may involve just giving them quiet time to think in their heads about how they will speak, or it may mean letting them practise dialogues in pairs before having to do anything more public.
Mark Helgeson suggests making a feature of this thinking-in-our-heads ( that is trying out a conversation in our minds). He suggests a series of ten tasks that students can do on their own ( Helgeson 2003). For example, when they are on a bus, they can imagine they are in a taxi and the imaginary taxi driver directions. They can practice telling themselves about the best thing that happened to them today or tell the person in their head about their plans for the future.
At other times, where students are going to take part in a discussion, we can put them in buzz groups to brainstorm ideas so that they have something to say when the real discussion happens.
Of course, where will be times when we want and expect spontaneous production from students, but at other times we will allow them to prepare themselves for the speaking they are going to do.
- The value of repetition
Repetition has many beneficial effects. Each new encounter with a word or phrase helps to fix it in the student’ s memory. Repetition allows students to improve on what they did before. They can think about how to re-word things or just get a feel for how it sounds.
When students repeat speaking tasks they have already done once ( or twice), their first attempt is like a rehearsal for the final effort. Each rehearsal gives them more confidence as they are not attempting to get the words out for the first time when they try to speak in subsequent ‘ performances’.
Repetition works even better if students get a chance to analyse what they have already done – or at least get feedback about it – their performance second or third time round can only get better. Paul Howarth ( 2001 a and b ) describes this as process speaking, characterised by the pattern: plan >perform > analyse < -> repeat.
