During my long years of teaching I must confess that teaching spoken skill is difficult especially teaching to adolescents or adult students. They seem more influenced by their mother tongue. One of the reasons for their poor performance is perhaps their own lack of interest or time as they are engaged in other pursuits of life. Since they are in the class, they have to be taught as well as motivated.
Despite what was said above, their learning of the sentence structure is comparatively better in my experience as they can compare and contrast L1 with L2 in a better manner. However, learning new vocabulary and using it in their sentences is what they find difficult. Here I think instead of a single word idiomatic phrases can be very effective in helping them speaking more fluently and by and by accurately.
It is my inveterate habit that whatever I study specially what we call pleasure reading I underline any expression that touches my esthetic sense or teaching sense. At some other time I jot dawn these expression in a diary. In the class I just pick up five to ten expressions and write them on the board. Then I ask my students to guess their meanings. Next I make one or two sentences of the expressions myself. Afterwards I ask them to try. I have experienced that to a great extent this works not only in making them speak as well as making them write idiomatically.
I also do this exercise with my student of O level or High School certificate. I have found it very effective there too. Their writings become more expressive and idiomatic. These students also learn to pickImproving speaking skill
During my long years of teaching I must confess that teaching spoken skill is difficult especially teaching to adolescents or adult students. They seem more influenced by their mother tongue. One of the reasons for their poor performance is perhaps their own lack of interest or time as they are engaged in other pursuits of life. Since they are in the class, they have to be taught as well as motivated.
Despite what was said above, their learning of the sentence structure is comparatively better in my experience as they can compare and contrast L1 with L2 in a better manner. However, learning new vocabulary and using it in their sentences is what they find difficult. Here I think instead of a single word idiomatic phrases can be very effective in helping them speaking more fluently and by and by accurately.
It is my inveterate habit that whatever I study specially what we call pleasure reading I underline any expression that touches my esthetic sense or teaching sense. At some other time I jot dawn these expression in a diary. In the class I just pick up five to ten expressions and write them on the board. Then I ask my students to guess their meanings. Next I make one or two sentences of the expressions myself. Afterwards I ask them to try. I have experienced that to a great extent this works not only in making them speak as well as making them write idiomatically.
I also do this exercise with my student of O level or High School certificate. I have found it very effective there too. Their writings become more expressive and idiomatic. These students also learn to pick up such expressions while they read.
I would like my readers to share their views on this subject and would be happy to some practical suggestions in this regard.
