Developing speaking skills requires moving beyond simply providing students with knowledge and instead creating opportunities for practice and application. The document discusses several methods for developing speaking skills, including applying knowledge to real situations, working in groups to reduce pressure, and keeping students actively engaged through techniques like "whole brain teaching" to improve confidence and participation. Overall, the key is focusing on cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development by giving students chances to speak freely without fear of mistakes.

1. DEVELOPING SPEAKING SKILLS
During my experience as an English teacher I’ve seen that many students
have had difficulties developing speaking. I’ve tried many different activities
in class, change the methodology in order to get to the students more
accurately and take them to a higher level of competence, unfortunately the
results haven’t been the best, so I wondered what else could I do or what
was I doing wrong, so I realized that in this context surrounded by Spanish
speakers and having students only few hours per day in class as the only
chance to practice speaking and make them repeat in class what they hear
was not enough to develop speaking skills.
During some conferences and tutoring classes in Colombo Americano Cali, I
noticed that methodologies based on developing speaking skill it is necessary
to apply the speaking to real situations where the students feel comfortable
trying to speak and not feel being put under pressure like being graded every
time he or she speaks in class, it’s not only give the student knowledge to be
repeated as a parrot and not having even idea of what to do with the
information received, the teacher should make sure that the students
understand all the topics, commands and the vocabulary seen in a normal
class.
According to these kinds of methodologies I found some authors as Bygate
(1987) who “claims that in order to achieve a communicative goal through
speaking, there are two aspects to be considered – knowledge of the
language, and skill in using this knowledge. It is not enough to possess a
certain amount of knowledge, but a speaker of the language should be able
to use this knowledge in different situations”.
We do not merely know how to assemble sentences in the abstract: we have
to produce them and adapt to the circumstances. This means making
decisions rapidly, implementing them smoothly, and adjusting our
conversation as unexpected problems appear in our path.
(Bygate 1987, 3)

2. Regarding Bygate’s words, it is clearly shown that students need to confront
situations where the time for answering a questions or interacting with
others is important to make decisions quickly in order to be understood by
expressing a message not matter the mistakes they could make during the
process. Another aspect that a teacher should take on account is the
affective one, because no all the students are open to communicate, they
might feel shy, afraid or pressured by his/her classmates and even by the
teacher himself, so in order to avoid these kinds of situations the students
have to work in groups or in pairs, so they feel more confident by being
supported by his/her friends and not feeling like being lost in a big ocean full
of fears. When the students work in groups, they can share information,
confirm the directions given by the teacher. If a student feels that making a
mistake doesn’t affect his grades and feels supported will learn easily from
his/her mistakes and will encourage him/herself to participate in class and
talk several times, all this is possible if the teacher keeps the “affective filter”
low, which is like a curtain that the students move up or down depending on
how they feel in class.
The more panic he feels, the curtain will be up, by the other hand the more
relaxed the student is, the curtain will be down and the student opened to
receive information and apply it to real situations.
Bygate also says that it is completely necessary for the student to correct
himself this includes tools such as substitution, rephrasing, reformulating,
self-correction, false starts, and repetition and hesitation. Bygate concludes
that incorporation of these features, facilitation and compensation, in the
teaching-learning process is of a considerate importance, in order to help
students’ oral production and compensate for the problems they may face.
“All these features [facilitation, compensation] may in fact help learners
to speak, and hence help them to learn to speak . . . In addition to
helping learners to learn to speak, these features may also help learners
to sound normal in their use of the foreign language. (Bygate 1987, 20-21)”

3. The Facilitation and compensation help the students make the oral
production possible or easier, or help them to change, avoid or replace the
difficult expressions, besides these functions also help students to sound
more naturally as speakers of a foreign language.
Another aspect that a teacher should take on account is the psychomotor
one, because interaction also involves coordination of movements where the
brain has to be active in order to function well and let the speaker
coordinates what he’s saying with the movement he’s performing.
Psychomotor aspect is so important that it has been taken by Chris Biffle as
the column of his “whole brain teaching” method that describes some steps
and rules to be followed by the student in the classroom in order to be active
all the time and letting the brain be activated to, in contrast with the regular
methodologies where the students should remain in silence without moving
keeping the order, this will get lazy students afraid to talk and accomplish the
program goals or develop an appropriate speaking skill.
In a “whole brain teaching” class the students should move, answer and
follow directions quickly having fun, but always keeping the order. An
example of this is, whenever the teacher says “class” the students should say
“yes” and however the teacher says “class” the students should say “yes”.
This will let the student feel comfortable, active and he will participate in any
speaking activity without feeling pressured.
This also helps to keep the “affective filter” low, the teacher will innovate in
the classroom with activities that might result interesting for the students,
will encourage them to participate and according to Chris Biffle method they
will surely learn and develop any skill.
I had applied this method in many classes getting excellent results; the
students have asked me for more activities like that where they feel
encouraged to accomplish a mission in the class having fun and not feeling
like having a boring homework to do.

4. All these methods and methodologies are similar to “Benjamin S Bloom’s
taxonomy learning domains” which focuses on three main domains.
1. Cognitive domain (intellectual capability, ie., knowledge, or 'think')
2. Affective domain (feelings, emotions and behaviour, ie., attitude, or 'feel')
3. Psychomotor domain (manual and physical skills, ie., skills, or 'do')
Bloom describes taxonomy as 'a set of classification principles', or 'structure',
and Domain simply means 'category'.
I agree with Bloom’s work because he claims that for developing an excellent
teaching and learning process, the teacher should be conscious about these
categories which let the students learn easier.
Bloom’s work is similar to what I have said above, about developing speaking
skills, but providing an excellent structure for planning, designing, assessing
and evaluating training and learning effectiveness. This model also serves as
a sort of checklist, which you can ensure that training is planned to deliver
all the necessary development for students, trainees or learners, and a
template by which you can assess the validity and coverage of any existing
training.
Here there is a more detailed explanation of Bloom’s taxonomy:
Cognitive Affective Psychomotor
knowledge attitude skills
1. Receive
1. Recall data 1. Imitation (copy)
(awareness)
2. Manipulation
2. Respond
2. Understand (follow
(react)
instructions)
3. Apply (use) 3. Value 3. Develop

5. (understand Precision
and act)
4. Organise 4. Articulation
4. Analyse
personal value (combine, integrate
(structure/elements)
system related skills)
5. Internalize
5. Naturalization
5. Synthesize value system
(automate, become
(create/build) (adopt
expert)
behaviour)
6. Evaluate (assess,
judge in relational
terms)
According to Bloom’s method it is important to have an organization of the
process to know the student development and performance along the period
or school year; he also says that all the four skills (listening, speaking, reading
and writing) should be complementary of each other, the student should
understand and react, follow directions and apply the topics learned in class.
It is also important for Bloom to work with the affective aspect of the
students in order to have a better attitude facing the class, and not feeling
shy.
Bloom also talks about the importance of coordinate the psychomotor aspect
of every student with the brain which will let them learn easier.
I might conclude that for developing speaking skills there is more than giving
knowledge to the students without any relevance, but make them move,
participate, encourage them to feel confident about themselves and not
panic. Take the student to new things, participate in real situations will be
more useful to develop speaking skills

6. TEACHING ENGLISH SPECIALIZATION PROGRAM
SANTIAGO DE CALI UNIVERSITY
HECTOR FABIAN TORRES
TEACHER: LIZETH RAMOS
SANTIAGO DE CALI, OCTUBRE 9 DE 2010