Improving Speaking Skills Essay

This expression examines the assorted circumstances under which infant and adult jibeers develop announceing skills. We will regard the facilities or difficulties in both cases in order to focus on the real possibilities of adults to develop a tall direct of speaking proficiency. We will apprehend what the role of the teacher is in order to modify the take iners skills, the features of oral communication that need to be improved and which strategies bottomland be apply to overcome the difficulties. get a line words speaking skills, adult learning, oral communication, teaching strategies.Resumen Este articulo analiza las diferentes circunstancias en las que ninos y adultos desarrollan las destrezas orales. Veremos las facilidades y dificultades en ambos casos para asi centrarnos en las posibilidades reales que tienen los adultos de alcanzar un alto nivel de competencia oral. Veremos tambien cual es el papel del profesor en este contexto, para mejorar las capacidades de lo s alumnos, y ver cuales son los elementos de la comunicacion oral que hay que mejorar y que estrategias se pueden aplicar para superar las dificultades.Palabras clave destrezas orales, aprendizaje de adultos, comunicacion verbal, estrategias de ensenanza. If we think of the period in our lives when we learned to speak our first-class honours degree row, and the moment in which we started to even off huge efforts to speak our support/foreign language we describe significant differences. In the former case, we may constitute fond memories of what our p arents told us and in the latter, it suddenly becomes a frustrating experience that seems to bring imperfect results.For adults, learning to speak a new language is in legion(predicate) cases far from satisfactory simply because they feel they need to cope with many distinguishable aspects at one time, and that seems to be impossible in real conversations. I wonder if it is possible to tackle a high level of speaking proficien cy in adults I wonder if it is possible to prepare adult learners improve their speaking skills, and the most important thing for teachers how?The first question we take over to consider in order to reach a conclusion is whether learning at infancy is different from learning at adulthood which are the circumstances that differentiate them and if those onditions inevitably lead to obvious and hopeless results. Only bearing in mind what we can expect of a particular type of learner, we can focus on how to improve their speaking skills. It is obvious that there are pronounced differences between children learners and adult learners and that they cannot acquire the second language under the same circumstances. Consequently, the results will be also different. Concerning children and the early age at which they learn to speak, we can say that they enjoy sure advantages that make them outstanding learners.They view surprising linguistic abilities due to optimal moment in which they fi nd themselves for language learning, this is to say, at this moment their brain is characterized by a certain plasticity that allows some abilities to develop with ease during a period of time, after which it becomes really difficult for these abilities to be developed (F allowa, 2006 53), or using 86 Improving utter Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 Kleins words between the age of two and puberty the human brain shows the plasticity which allows a child to acquire his first language (Klein, 1986 9).Therefore, children are special learners for their natural and innate abilities to acquire a language. According to Fleta, one of these special abilities is filtering advanced information about language properties from birth (Fleta, 2006 49), in other words, children have an enormous ability to integrate difficult information in an easy and unconscious way from the beginning of their development. They are able to acquire and integrate complex data without being awar e of it, whereas other learners, at other ages, would find it voiceless to achieve.Moreover, apart from this special gift children have for assimilating difficult information, we can mention some of their other qualities, such as their capacity for perceiving and imitating sounds. Some studies have showed that young infants are especially sensitive to acoustic changes at the phonetic boundaries between categories (Kuhl, 2004 832). Also, children are especially good at predicting syllable chunks infants are sensitive to the consequent probabilities between adjacent syllables (Kuhl, 2004 834) which makes children with a surprising instinct as far as language knowledge is concerned .Finally, students also acquire the ability of say words within a sentence (grammar rules) unconsciously there is some licence that young children can detect non-adjacencies such as those required to learn grammar (Kuhl, 2004 836). All in all, we can say that children learn the language without being awa re of it when they are exposed to the right attr supple of auditory information (Kuhl, 2004 836), this is, children learn the language through communication and interaction and thanks to that they acquire all the abilities they can potentially develop.On the other hand, concerning adults we observe how difficult is that they can acquire certain native sounds their pronunciation will be, on many occasions, foreign-like which is due to their difficulty in distinguishing and producing some sounds after the so called critical period. In that respect, some authors claim that adult learners cannot acquire a phonological development (Lightbown and Spada, 2006 69). However, other researchers defend the opposite.Wolfgang Klein, in his book Second Language Acquisition (1986) utter that the apparent facility with which children learn a second language is often attri justed to biological factors, but an alternative explanation might be that, unlike adults, children have no need to fear the lo ss of their kindly identity (Klein, 1986 6). Authors such as Klein argue that phonological facilities of children are not bound to biological reasons, but to psychological ones. In that respect, adults feel attached to their native identities, to their original social identities, which is what pr even upt them from achieving perfection in L2 pronunciation.Klein confirmed that suitably motivated adults are opened of mastering to perfection the pronunciation of the most exotic languages (Klein, 1986 10). Therefore, we conclude that although the cases of adults speaking a second language without any accent are not really common, this does not mean that it is impossible to acquire a native-like pronunciation. Also, besides phonological issues, we can talk about the capacity of adults to acquire any other kind of linguistic faculties, more related to structural relations (UG).In that sense, there are authors that doubt the validity of Lennebergs Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by ass uring that even adults have access to the well known Universal Grammar. While Lenneberg claimed that just now before puberty learners had UG available, authors such as S. W. Felix defended by evidence that adult L2 learners also benefit from the UG principles If child and adult learners use different modules for the purpose of language acquisition, then we would expect adult learners to be unable to assume grammatical knowledge that arises only through the mediation of UG.If, in contrast, adults do attain this type of knowledge, then, we have reason to believe that UG continues to be active even after puberty (Felix, 1988 279). Therefore, we can conclude that adults are also able to master a proficient use of the second/foreign language, not only in grammatical issues but also in phonological ones, which makes us believe that we can improve adult learners speaking skills. 87 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90Once we know that adults can be bi ologically and psychologically prepared to have a native-like proficiency in the second language, we should move on to the second language teaching context in order to achieve our aim of improving adult learners skills. In that respect, we should reflect on the teachers role in this billet and what they can do to be successful with their learners. Teachers therefore need to analyse the students needs, face their problems and find fruitful solutions that foster them develop their speaking abilities. S.Pit Corder, in his chapter called Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching, in Introducing Applied Linguistics (1973) defended the important role of linguists who identify the problems of the learners and find solutions for them. Corder added that specialists role is to formulate the appropriate questions in order to define problems that need to be faced. Using his words, the formulation of the questions, the identification of the problems and the special(prenominal)ation of their n ature presupposes linguistic opening. The nature of the problem is defined by the theory which is applied to it.The solution to a problem is only as good as the theory which has been used to solve it (Corder, 1973 138). In this direction he say that in language teaching there are two appropriate questions teachers should make what to teach and how to teach, these are the problems of content and method, or, using an industrial analogy, the problem of crossing and process design respectively (Corder, 1973 139). Therefore, if teachers wish to know how to improve speaking skills, what they need to ask themselves first is what they are going to teach, and how.On the one hand, let us consider the first question what. If we need to improve speaking skills we need to know which skills or which features learners need to develop. In that respect, there are several(prenominal) authors that stated different goals or different dimensions that speakers needed to achieve. Goodwin, for instance, established several goals for a proper pronunciation. She called them functional intelligibility, functional communicability, increased self- authorization, and speech-monitoring abilities (Goodwin, 2001 118).She argued that learners should be able to speak an intelligible foreign language, that is to say, listeners need to understand the learners message without huge efforts learners also need to be successful in a specific communicative situation (Goodwin, 2001 118) they need to gain confidence in their ability to speak and be understood (Goodwin, 2001 118) and finally, they need to monitor and control their own doing by paying attention to their own speech.Goodwin specified those abilities that learners need to acquire through certain linguistic features that can be practiced Intonation, rhythm, reduced speech, linking words, consonants and vowel sounds, word stress, etc. These are concrete speaking aspects in which learners should be trained in order to improve their speaking skills.Similarly, other authors such as Anne Lazaraton suggest that oral communication is based on four dimensions or competences grammatical competence (phonology, vocabulary, word and sentence formation) sociolinguistic competence (rules for interaction, social centres) discourse competence (cohesion and how sentences are liked together) and finally, strategic competence (compensatory strategies to use in difficult situations), (Lazaraton, 2001 104).According to Lazaraton learners should develop all these abilities to acquire a high oral level of the foreign language, but she adds that in recent years, with the influence of the communicative approach, more importance is given to fluency, trying to achieve a proportion with the traditional accuracy.Moreover, apart from what pedagogically and theoretically should be taught, many researchers are presently analysing real problems that learners face fluent speech contains reduced forms, such as contractions, vowel reduction, and eli sion, where learners do not get sufficient practice (Lazaraton, 2001 103) use of slang and idioms in speech since students tend to sound bookish (Lazaraton, 2001 103), stress, rhythm, intonation, lack of active vocabulary, lack of interaction pattern rules 88Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 Once speaking goals have been determined, next step consists of questioning how they are going to be achieved. For designing a concrete methodology teachers need to adopt a theoretical vista, they need to reflect on the linguistic approach that will be used in their teaching. Many authors, following the up-todate trend of the Communicative approach, defend the interactive role of speaking and promote its teaching from a communicative perspective stressing meaning and context.In Goodwins words In Teaching Pronunciation the goal of instruction is threefold to enable our learners to understand and be understood, to build their confidence in entering communic ative situations, and to enable them to monitor their speech (Goodwin, 2001 131), also pronunciation is never an end in itself but a means of negotiating meaning in discourse, embedded in specific sociocultural and interpersonal contexts (Goodwin,2001 117).If we think of how this theoretical background will be applied in real teaching, we find that in traditional classes they focused speaking practice on the production of single and isolated sounds, whereas within the communicative approach, the focus shifted to fluency rather than accuracy, advance an almost exclusive emphasis on suprasegmentals (Goodwin, 2001 117).There is the key word, when communication is the main goal linguistic practice turns into longer structures, at the suprasegmental level therefore, the training on individual sounds makes way for macro structures that affect interaction directly. The second part of how to teach, moves away from theory to approach real problems and their solutions. Several authors have s tated that when learners face problems in speaking they need practical and concrete solutions to know how to behave and respond in order to overcome those difficulties.Mariani, in his article Developing Strategic Competence Towards Autonomy in Oral Interaction, recalls L1 strategies that native speakers use when they encounter communication problems, and suggests teaching those strategies to L2 learners just think of how often, in L1 communication, we cannot find the words to say something and have to adjust our message, or to ask our interlocutor to help us, or to use synonyms or general words to make ourselves understood (Mariani, 1994 1).Mariani classifies those strategies according to the speakers behaviour learners can either avoid certain messages because they dont feel confident with their speaking skills (reduction strategies), or make the most out of their knowledge and modify their message bearing in mind their weaknesses and strengths (achievement strategies borrowing, fo reignizing, translating(Mariani, 1994 3).The author praises the latter by saying that achievement strategies are a very interesting way of developing learners language domain. Speakers who opt for this option make huge efforts to transmit a message by playacting with the language to the extreme, which only brings beneficial consequences. In the second or foreign language classroom context, teachers should train learners to use and practice the different strategies that can help them face difficult situations.The only way of training students in this direction is by means of a bank of activities in which they become aware of the different possibilities that they can put into practice. Authors such as Goodwin or Lazaraton offer a varied list of exercises to be used in class poems, rhymes, dialogues, monologues, role plays, debates, interviews, simulations, gambol scenes, discussions, conversations Therefore, coming back to the initial question proposed above, I think it is absolutel y feasible to teach adults strategies to improve their speaking skills.Of course, that objective depends on many different factors that will affect the degree of acquisition, let us think of age, motif, or even the context in which the language is learned ESL versus EFL. In that respect, learners in a second language context will have numberless occasions to practice the language and that will undoubtedly influence their skills development. With reference to the foreign language context, authors such as Lazaraton admitted the difficulties learners 89 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 ormally face homogeneous EFL classes, where all students speak the same first language and English is not used outside the classroom, present certain additional challenges for the teacher (Lazaraton, 2001 110). As she said, teachers have considerable limitations in EFL classes such as lack of opportunities to use the language, lack of motivation in the learners, the number of students in the class, curriculum restrictions(Lazaraton, 2001 110), but there are solutions and strategies, as the ones previously mentioned, that should be put into practice.Mariani, in his article mentioned above, also makes a reflection on whether communication strategies should be teachable or not. He states the pros and cons by saying that training students on specific strategies can provide them with certain limitations and consequently hamper fluent communication we can hardly force them into a straightjacket of pre-selected strategies. Most of us would agree that we should encourage spontaneity, creativity and originality in language use (Mariani, 1994 7).However, on the other hand, he argues that if learners become aware of the different strategies they can flexibly use, they will finally integrate them either consciously or unconsciously, which will stretch their possibilities for communication. To sum up, as teachers can, and should, improve learners speaki ng skills and communication strategies, the only thing they need to do is to plan their teaching slightly two main questions what they want to teach, which specific speaking features they want to develop in their learners and how they want to do it.