Republic of the Philippines

Laguna State Polytechnic University

Province of Laguna

English 5: Teaching and

Assessment of the Macro
Skills

Prepared by:

Taracatac, Jessica G.
Toralba, Jessa M.
Toress, Jaizel Mae P.
Trinidad, Frances Rhomell E.
Umali, Kristine Jane A.
Velasco, Alaiza E.
Velasco, Carlo C.
Villadiego, Molly Anne P.
Villar, Percival P.
BSED II – A, English

Submitted to:

Dr. Aileen Daran

Introduction

Language is a tool for communication. We communicate with others, to

express our ideas, and to know others’ ideas as well. Communication takes place,
where there is speech. Without speech we cannot communicate with one another.
In-order to become a well-rounded communicator one needs to be proficient in each
of the four language skills via. Listening, speaking, reading and writing, but the ability
to speak skillfully, provides the speaker with several distinct advantages. The
capacity to express one’s thoughts, opinions and feelings, in the form of words put
together in a meaningful way, provides the speaker with these advantages.

Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of
verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. But how can a teacher
assess one student to develop its speaking skills?

What Is "Teaching Speaking"?

What is meant by "teaching speaking" is to teach ESL learners to:

Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns

Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the
second language.
Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social
setting, audience, situation and subject matter.
Organize their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence.
Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments.
Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which
are called as fluency. (Nunan, 2003)

Activities to Promote Speaking

The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event,
or find solutions in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that
the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the
discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend their
time chatting with each other about irrelevant things.
For example, students can become involved in agree/disagree discussions. In
this type of discussions, the teacher can form groups of students, preferably 4 or 5 in
each group, and provide controversial sentences like “people learn best when they
read vs. people learn best when they travel”. Then each group works on their topic
for a given time period, and presents their opinions to the class. It is essential that
the speaking should be equally divided among group members. At the end, the class
decides on the winning group who defended the idea in the best way. This activity
fosters critical thinking and quick decision making, and students learn how to
express and justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with the others. For
efficient group discussions, it is always better not to form large groups, because
quiet students may avoid contributing in large groups. The group members can be
either assigned by the teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but
groups should be rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can work
with various people and learn to be open to different ideas. Lastly, in class or group
discussions, whatever the aim is, the students should always be encouraged to ask
questions, paraphrase ideas, express support, check for clarification, and so on.

Role Play

One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students 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. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are David, you go to the
doctor and tell him what happened last night, and…" (Harmer, 1984)

Simulations

Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different
than role plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring
items to the class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is
acting as a singer, she brings a microphone to sing and so on. Role plays and
simulations have many advantages. First, since they are entertaining, they motivate
the students. Second, as Harmer (1984) suggests, they increase the self-confidence
of hesitant students, because in role play and simulation activities, they will have a
different role and do not have to speak for themselves, which means they do not
have to take the same responsibility.

Information Gap

In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will
have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share
their information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a
problem or collecting information.  Also, each partner plays an important role
because the task cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information
the others need. These activities are effective because everybody has the
opportunity to talk extensively in the target language.

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 are that the
students are
not criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.

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. For instance, at the very beginning of
each class session, the teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes
as an opening. In this way, not only will the teacher address students’ speaking
ability, but also get the attention of the class.

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. Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance
to practice their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them
becoming socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to
the class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her
partner to the class.

Story Completion

This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students

sits in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few
sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the
point where the previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to
ten sentences. Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.

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.

Playing Cards

In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic.
For instance:

 Diamonds: Earning money

 Hearts: Love and relationships
 Spades: An unforgettable memory
 Clubs: Best teacher

Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5
questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example:
If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible
questions:

 Is money important in your life? Why?

 What is the easiest way of earning money?
 What do you think about lottery? Etc.
However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity that students
are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions, because by saying yes or no students
get little practice in spoken language production.  Rather, students ask open-ended
questions to each other so that they reply in complete sentences.

Picture Narrating

This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell
the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria
provided by the teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures
they need to use while narrating.

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, and 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.

Find the Difference

For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different
pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls
playing tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the
pictures.

Suggestions for Teachers in Teaching Speaking

Here are some suggestions for English language teachers while teaching oral
language:

 Provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by

providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic
materials and tasks, and shared knowledge.
 Try to involve each student in every speaking activity; for this aim, practice
different ways of student participation.
 Reduce teacher speaking time in class while increasing student speaking
time. Step back and observe students.
 Indicate positive signs when commenting on a student's response.
 Ask eliciting questions such as "What do you mean? How did you reach that
conclusion?" in order to prompt students to speak more.
 Provide written feedback like "Your presentation was really great. It was a
good job. I really appreciated your efforts in preparing the materials and efficient
use of your voice…"
 Do not correct students' pronunciation mistakes very often while they are
speaking. Correction should not distract student from his or her speech.
 Involve speaking activities not only in class but also out of class; contact
parents and other people who can help.
 Circulate around classroom to ensure that students are on the right track and
see whether they need your help while they work in groups or pairs.
 Provide the vocabulary beforehand that students need in speaking activities.
 Diagnose problems faced by students who have difficulty in expressing
themselves in the target language and provide more opportunities to practice the
spoken language.

Ways of Teaching and Assessing Speaking Skills to the students

Learning how to teach and assess speaking skills is probably one of the
biggest challenges compared to the other three language skills because you have to
pay attention to aspects such as:

Fluency:  This means speaking easily, reasonably quickly and without having

to stop and pause a lot.
Pronunciation: The act or result of producing the sounds of speech, including
articulation, stress, and intonation.
Vocabulary: The body of words used in a particular language.
Accuracy: This refers to how correct learners’ use of the language system is,
including their use of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.
Interaction:  This refers to the ability to interact with others during
communicative tasks.
Communication: This refers to the students’ ability to transmit her/his ideas.

Now that you know the aspects that you have to pay attention to, it is time cover
some of the different types of speaking activities that you can use to evaluate
speaking skills.

5 Types of Activities to Assess Speaking Skills

1. Intensive Speaking

A read aloud Task: Teacher listen to a recording and evaluate the students in a

series of phonological factors and fluency.  

Some variations of this task are:

reading a scripted dialogue with someone else

reading  sentences containing minimal pairs
 reading information from a table chart

Sentence/ dialogue completion task: Students read through the dialogue so he

can think about proper lines to fill in. The teacher produces one part orally and the
students respond

Picture cued Tasks: The picture-cued requires a description from the test taker

2. Responsive Speaking

Question and answer: Students respond questions that the test administrator asks

3. Interactive Speaking

Interview: It is a face-to-face exchange between test administrator and test taker.

The stages of an interview are

Warm-up
Level Check
Probe
Wind-down

Role play is a common pedagogical activities used in communicative English classes

Discussions and Conversations: These two speaking tasks provide a level of

authenticity and spontaneity that other assessment techniques may not provide

4. Extensive Speaking

Oral Presentations are the most common task for evaluating extensive
speaking; these are evaluated based on content and delivery.

Picture-cued story telling:  Students describe a story based on series of pictures

that they previously saw.
Re-Telling a story, News Event: Students are asked to tell a story of a new of something
they heard or read.

5. Imitative speaking:

Imitative speaking tasks are based on repetition. You just need to repeat a sentence you
hear.

Conclusion

Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The

ability to communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the
success of the learner in school and success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it
is essential that language teachers’ pay great attention to teaching speaking. Rather
than leading students to pure memorization, providing a rich environment where
meaningful communication takes place is desired. With this aim, various speaking
activities such as those listed above can contribute a great deal to students in
developing basic interactive skills necessary for life. These activities make students
more active in the learning process and at the same time make their learning more
meaningful and fun for them
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https://englishpost.org/assess-speaking-skills/

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