This document discusses strategies for developing oral fluency in language learners. It defines oral fluency as the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably accurately, and without too much hesitation. It recommends initially focusing on accuracy through drills and repetition, then shifting to focus on fluency through meaningful activities that encourage personal expression. Some problems with speaking that are addressed include inhibition, lack of vocabulary, and uneven participation. Suggested solutions involve grouping students, preparing topics, and minimizing correction to encourage communication.

1. SPEAKING
ICELT
Leticia Adelina Ruiz Guerrero
MA in ELT

2. Reflect on your own practice
 How much do your students speak in class?
 How do you prepare speaking activities in the
class?
 What materials do you use?
 What particular problems do your students
have?
 In what ways do you encourage real
communication to take place in your class?

3. The main goal in teaching the
productive skill of speaking will be
oral fluency.
The term ‘fluency’ is sometimes
used in different ways. Agree on
what you understand by this term.

4. Oral fluency can be
defined as the ability to
express oneself intelligibly,
reasonably accurately and
without too much hesitation.

5. Task 1:
Reflection on experience
 Think of a foreign language you have
learned, and preferably one that you speak
quite well.
 How would you assess your oral fluency in
relation to other skills in the language?
 Which aspects of your learning of the
language most contributed to the
development of your fluency?

6. Task 1:
 What experience do you think would be
most useful to you in order to enable you to
develop your fluency yet further?
 It is sometimes argued that fluency
develops naturally in response to a need to
communicate. To what extent is this point
of view confirmed by your own experience
of learning languages?

7. To attain the goal of achieving
oral fluency, you will have to bring
the students from the stage where
they are mainly imitating a model
of some kind, or responding to
cues, to the point where they can
use the language freely to express
their own ideas.

8. Training students
 Level 1: practice in the manipulation of
the fixed elements of the language
(phonological and grammatical
patterns, together with vocabulary);
 Level 2: opportunities for the
expression of personal meaning.

9. Level 1 work
 Chorus work
(model – repeat)
 Back chaining
 Front chaining
 Mechanical drills
 Substitution drills
 Transformation drills

10. Level 2 work
 Meaningful practice
 Guessing drills
 Imaginary situations
 Open-ended responses
 Free practice
 Discussion activities
 Spoken interactions
 Oral production

11. Their relative importance, in
terms of the amount of
attention we need to pay to
them at different stages of the
language program, may be
represented as follows:

12. Focus on cy
en
accuracy flu

13. a cy Focus on
c ur
ac fluency

14. Characteristics of a successful
speaking activity
Learners talk a lot.
Participation is even.
Motivation is high.
Language is of an acceptable
level.

15. Problems with speaking
activities
Inhibition.
Nothing to say.
Low or uneven
participation.
Mother-tongue use.

16. To solve some of the problems
 Use group work.
 Base the activity on easy language.
 Make a careful choice of topic and task
to stimulate interest.
 Give some instruction or training in
discussion skills.
 Keep students speaking the target
language.

17. Techniques-Correction
1. It is best to work so students make
as few mistakes as possible.
2. It is best to correct all the mistakes
students make.
3. It is useful to encourage students to
correct each other.
4. Mistakes are best corrected as soon
as the student makes them.
5. Too much correction is as bad as too
little.

18. Correction
 Mistakes are a natural part of the
learning process.
 Give students the chance to correct
themselves.
 Involve the class.
 Isolate the problem.
 The student must use the correct
language.

19. Correction
 There are many kinds of mistakes.
 Correcting register and appropriacy
needs tact.
 Correct promptly for accuracy,
afterwards for fluency.
 Don’t over-correct.
 Reformulation is often better than
correction.
 Use class discussion as a basic method of
correcting written work.

20. The silent learner
Here are now some of the
problems of the ‘silent learner’ –
the student who finds great
difficulty in contributing to any
kind of discussion in English, and
who is reluctant to take advantage
of opportunities to develop oral
fluency.

21. Problems with fluency
 A) Inhibition / lack of confidence.
 B) Fear of making ‘mistakes’.
 C) The feeling of having nothing to say
on the subject.
 D) Lack of appropriate language.
 E) Lack of practice in conventions of
conversational interaction.

22. Task 2:
Solving the problem
 Brainstorm measures the teacher can take to
help with each of these problems.
 Look at the following list of measures. Add
further items you have brainstormed to this
list.
 Write ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, or ‘e’ beside each of the
measures in your revised list according to
which of the previous ‘problems’ it is
intended to address.

23. List of measures:
 Pre-teach key vocabulary.
 Thoroughly prepare for any discussion
through brainstorming and exchange
of ideas.
 Organize the class so that activities
take place in small groups.
 Provide ‘stimulus’ materials (e.g. texts
on topics to be discussed).

24. …
 Pursue and justify a policy of placing low
priority on correctness and correction in
certain activities.
 Teach exponents of defining (e.g. ‘a
thing which you do … with’; ‘a thing for
…ing’) and of eliciting unknown words
(e.g. ‘what do you call a thing for …
ing?’).

25. …
 Provide learners with specific training
in communication strategies (e.g.
circumlocution, hypothesizing on the
basis of features of the learners’ first
language or on the basis of the
learners’ existing knowledge of English
itself).
 Focus initially on information rather

26. …
 Encourage and organize discussion of
learning skills and objectives. Try to
convince the learners of the value of
trying to express themselves beyond
their apparent linguistic limits,
encouraging them to accept that
‘mistakes are inevitable’ in some
activities in which the main focus is on
oral communication.

27. ...
 Analyze a (video) tape of native
speakers involved in heated discussion,
asking learners to pay attention to the
speed and pitch of speech, body
movements and gestures.
 Precede activities with extensive stages
of preparation of some of the language
the teacher has anticipated students
may need to use during the activity.

28. Task 3:
Comparing two activities
 Stage 1: Experience. Try out in
teams the two activities handed out.
Keep an eye on what you are
assigned to do on your role card.
 Stage 2: Comparing. Now compare
the activities. In general, which one
would you say is better?

29. Topic- and Task-based activities
 Activity 1 is topic-  Activity 2 is Task-
based. based.
 This activity asks  This activity asks
participants to talk participants to
about a certain perform something.
subject.  The discussion
 The main objective process is a means
is the discussion to an end.
process itself.

30. Topic-based activities
 A good topic is one to which learners
can relate using ideas from their own
experience and knowledge.
 It should also represent a genuine
controversy.
 Don’t feed all the arguments to the
class, leave room for their own
initiative!

31. Task-based activities
 A task is usually goal oriented.
 It requires the participants to achieve
an objective expressed in an
observable result.
 The result is only attainable by
interaction between participants.
 A task is enhanced if there is a visual
focus to base the talking on.

32.  Using rejoinders DISCUSSION SKILLS
 Asking follow-up questions
 Seeking clarification
 giving clarification
 Using comprehension checks
 Soliciting and using details
 Interrupting
 Expressing opinions
 Volunteering answers
 Referring to information and opinion sources
 Helping discussion leaders
 Leading a discussion
Kehe, D. and Kehe, P. Discussion Strategies, beyond everyday conversation

33. Task 4:
Discussion activities
 Volunteers!
 Stage 1: Preparation. Select one of the
activities and prepare to present it to a
group of your peers.
 Stage 2: Experience. Do the activity,
participate and observe the work.
 Stage 3: Reflection. After finishing,
discuss the activity.

34. Discussion activities
Describing pictures.
Picture differences.
Things in common.
Shopping list.
Solving a problem.

35. Other kinds of
spoken interaction
 Interactional talk. Culture-linked. This
is a matter of learning conventional
formulae of courtesy.
 Long turns. Speaking at length is
specially relevant to advanced or
academic students.
 Varied situations, feelings,
relationships. Give practice in a wide
variety of contexts.

36. Teaching ideas
 Interactional talk: practicing patterns as in
Conversation and Dialogues in action (Dornyei
and Thurrell, 1992)
 Long turns: telling stories and jokes,
describing people or places, recounting a film,
play or book, giving short lectures or talks,
arguing for or against a case.
 Varied situations, feelings, relationships:
dialogues, plays, simulations, role-play.

37. Activities for Oral production
Explanation and Description
Role-play and Dramatizations
Discussion / Conversation
Games and Problem solving

38. Explanation and Description
 Interpretations of graphs, maps,
diagrams.
 Mini-speeches on topics or interest.
 Street directions, or directions for a
journey.
 Instructions for operating something.
 Describing a process.

39. Role-play and Dramatizations
 Extending or continuing a set dialogue.
 Inventing a conversation for characters
in a picture.
 Social events (shopping, party,
interview, travel).
 Dramatizing a sequence (family
discussion, witnesses to a car accident).

40. Discussion / Conversation
 Interpretations of pictures (making up
a story or speculating).
 Social issues (traffic, pollution,
education, role of women).
 Personal experience (discussion of
horoscopes, disasters; plans for the
future, holidays).
 Pictures for opinions (fashion, pop
stars).

41. Games and Problem solving
 Guessing games (yes/no, twenty
questions, glug, personalities, hide and
seek).
 Elimination games (just a minute,
don’t answer yes or no, Simon says).
 Problems (find the difference, arrange
a meeting).

42. To test or not to test?
Choosing an appropriate
elicitation technique is
only part of the problem
when testing oral
proficiency; there are
many other difficulties
associated with design,
administration and
assessment.

43. Task 5:
Debate
 Stage 1: Preparation. Think about
what your own arguments would be
for, or against, testing oral
proficiency.
 Stage 2: Debate. Present your
arguments to your peers, listen to
their opinions. Come to a conclusion
as a group.

44. For testing oral fluency
 A language test should include all aspects of
language skill – including speaking.
 Speaking is arguably the most important skill,
and therefore should take priority in any
language test.
 Knowing that there will be a final test on
speaking will guarantee that it will be work
on as a skill all through out the course.
 Students who speak well, but write badly will
be discriminated if all the test is based on
writing.

45. Against testing oral fluency
 It is difficult to design tests to get learners to
improvise speech.
 When grading speech it is difficult to judge
quickly, objectively and reliably.
 There are no obvious criteria for assessment.
 Even if you agree on criteria, some testers will
be stricter and others more lenient. It will be
difficult to get reliable, consistent assessment.
 It is more time consuming, since it has to be
done individually.

46. The following scale is loosely based
on that actually used in the Israeli
school-leaving exam.
The candidates are tested on fluency
and accuracy, and may get a
maximum of five points on each of
these two aspects, ten points in all.

47. Accuracy Fluency
Little or no language production 1 Little or no communication 1
Poor vocabulary, mistakes in Very hesitant and brief
basic grammar, may have very 2 utterances, sometimes difficult 2
strong foreign accent to understand
Adequate but not rich
vocabulary, makes obvious Gets ideas across, but
grammar mistakes, slight 3 hesitantly and briefly 3
foreign accent
Good range of vocabulary, Effective communication in
occasional grammar slips, slight 4 short turns
4
foreign accent
Wide vocabulary appropriately
Easy and effective
used, virtually no grammar 5 5
communication, uses long
mistakes, native-like or slight
turns
foreign accent
Total score out of 10: _______

48. Mark each statement:
agree, disagree or undecided.
1. Teachers should always speak at a natural speed.
2. Choral pronunciation is useful for all classes.
3. Students need to know phonetics.
4. “I never say ‘Good’ about a student’s pronunciation unless it is
good”.
5. Students should learn RP pronunciation.
6. Consistency is as important as accuracy for students’ pronunciation.
7. Stress and intonation are not important in beginners’ courses.
8. Stress, pitch and intonation are best shown with your hands.
9. Stress is sometimes as important as grammar.
10. Bad intonation can lead to important misunderstandings.

49. TECHNIQUES-SPEECHWORK
 Do not distort when giving a model.
 The model must remain the same.
 Use choral pronunciation.
 Conduct choral pronunciation
decisively.
 Move around the room when doing
choral pronunciation.

50. Speechwork
 Keep your language to a minimum in
pronunciation practices.
 Vary your criterion of “good” in
pronunciation practice.
 Articulation is an important first step
in practice.
 It is helpful to do articulation practices
more than once.

51. Speechwork
 Bring variety to “say after me”
 Something which is not a real word
sometimes helps.
 There is no such thing as the “c-h
sound”.
 The main criteria for pronunciation
are consistency and intelligibility.
 Teach intonation by back-chaining.

52. Speechwork
Don’t explain intonation,
demonstrate.
Show stress, pitch and intonation
visually.
Refer to stress and intonation even
when not specially teaching it.

53. Mark each statement:
agree, disagree or undecided.
1. Conversation lessons need detailed
preparation.
2. The best conversation lessons are usually
about serious topics.
3. The teacher should encourage everyone
to contribute.
4. Avoid provocative remarks in
conversation classes!
5. Group work is often a good basis for a
conversation lesson.

54. Techniques-Conversation
 Exploit opportunities for short
spontaneous conversations.
 Don’t flog a dead horse.
 Encourage contributions without
interfering.
 Conversation does not need to be
about serious issues.

55. Conversation
Provocative statements are often
better than questions.
Problem solving is often an
excellent basis for ‘conversation’.
Encourage active listening.

56. Bibliography
 Byrne, D. (1986) Teaching Oral English. England,
Longman.
 Dornyei, Z. and Thurrell, S (1992) Conversations and
dialogues in action. UK, Cambridge University Press.
 Ur, P. (1991) A course in Language Teaching, practice
and theory. UK, Cambridge University Press.
 Harmer, J. (2001) The Practice of English Language
Teaching. England, Longman.
 Lewis, M. and Hill, J. (1992) Practical Techniques for
Language Teaching. England, Language Teaching
Publications.