The document discusses the components of the speaking skill. It identifies the main components as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension. It provides details on each component. Grammar involves using correct sentences and structures. Vocabulary refers to appropriate word choice. Pronunciation encompasses proper phonemes, stress, pitch, intonation, tone, tempo, and clusters. Fluency is speaking smoothly with few pauses. Comprehension means fully understanding the discourse. Pronunciation has several sub-components including phonemes, allophones, stress, pitch, intonation, tone, and tempo.

1. Skill of Speaking
Components of the
skill of speaking
M.Vijayalakshmi
Assistant Professor

2. B4 EL CS –
COMMUNICATION SKILLS

3. Unit – 3 :
Skill of Speaking
3.1 Speaking as a productive skill.
3.2 Characteristics of effective speaking.
3.3 Components of the skill of speaking.
3.4 Evaluation of speaking - Hitchman Rating Scale,
Role play Technique – Walter Bartz scale for role
play - Schulz communicative competence scale –
Oral interview or Live conversation.
3.5 Teacher's role in the development of speaking
skill among the students.

4. Unit – 3 :
Skill of Speaking
3.3 Components of the
skill of speaking.

5. • As proverb says ‘practice makes perfect’.
Therefore, students must practice to speak
English as often as possible so that they are able
to speak English fluently and accurately.
• A part of that, to speak English, we have to
know some important component.
• The component is what aspect influencing how
well people speak English.
• Here is the component of speaking skill
according to syakur. According to Syakur (1987:
5), speaking is a complex skill because at least it
is concerned with components of grammar,
vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency.

6. Grammar
• It is needed for students to arrange a correct
sentence in conversation.
• It is in line with explanation suggested by
Heaton (1978: 5) that student’s ability to
manipulate structure and to distinguish
appropriate grammatical form in appropriate
one.
• The utility of grammar is also to learn the
correct way to gain expertise in a language in
oral and written form.

7. Vocabulary
• Vocabulary means the appropriate diction which
is used in communication.
• Without having a sufficient vocabulary, one
cannot communicate effectively or express their
ideas in both oral and written form.
• Having limited vocabulary is also a barrier that
precludes learners from learning a language.
• Language teachers, therefore should process
considerable knowledge on how to manage an
interesting classroom so that the learners can
gain a great success in their vocabulary learning.
• Without grammar very little can be conveyed,
without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.

8. Pronunciation
• Pronunciation is the way for students’ to
produce clearer language when they speak.
• It deals with the phonological process that refers
to the components of a grammar made up of the
elements and principles that determine how
sounds vary and pattern in a language.
• There are two features of pronunciation;
phonemes and supra segmental features.
• A speaker who constantly mispronounces a
range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for
a speaker from another language community to
understand (Gerard, 2000:11).

9. Phoneme & Minimal Pair
• Phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a
language that is capable of conveying a
distinction in meaning.
• In other words, phoneme is a speech sound that
signals a difference in meaning.
• Consider, for example, the words “dime” and
“dine”. They sound exactly alike except for the
/m/ and the /n/, but their meanings are
different.
• Therefore, it must be the /m/ and /n/ that made
the difference in meaning, and these two nasals
are established as English phonemes.

10. Minimal Pairs
• Pairs of words like those above that
demonstrate a single phonemic contrast are
called minimal pairs. In other words, one
method of establishing the phonemes of a
language is by means of minimal pairs.

11. • The Rules for Minimal Pairs:
• The words must have the same number of
sounds;
• The words must be identical in every sound
except for one;
• The sound that is different must be in the
same position in each word;
• The words must have different meaning.

12. Allophones
• Allophone is the variants of the phonemes that occur in detailed
phonetic transcriptions. In other words, allophone is one of a set of
multiple possible spoken sounds (phones) use to pronounce a single
phoneme.
• Allophone is non-distinctive individual variation of the phoneme.
• The use of an allophone does not change the meaning of a word.
• Example:
• [p] and [ph] are allophones of the phoneme /p/
in some cases, such as:
• /p/ as in pin [pɪn] is aspirated (as if pronounced by [ph];
• /p/ as in spin [spɪn] is unaspirated (plain);
• In the word paper, the first /p/ is aspirated and pronounced as [ph],
and the second /p/ is usually unaspirated and pronounced as a
plain [p], like:
• [‘peɪpə(r)] → [‘pheɪpə(r)]).

13. Suprasegmental Phonemes
• Vowels and consonants can be thought of as
the segments of which speech is composed.
Together they form the syllables, which go to
make up utterances. Related to the syllables,
there are other features known
as suprasegmentals.
• In other words, suprasegmental features are
the aspects of speech that involve more than
single consonants or vowels.

14. • These features are independent of the
categories required for describing segmental
features (vowels and consonants), which
involve, for examples, air stream mechanism,
states of the glottis, and so on.
• The components of suprasegmental features
consist of: stress, pitch, intonation, tone,
and tempo.

15. STRESS
• Stress is the rhythm of a language. In
pronunciation, stress can refers to words, part of
words, or even one word in a group of words that
receives the most emphasis.
• Stress is one of the suprasegmental features of
utterances. It applies not to individual vowels and
consonants but to whole syllables. In the level of
word, a stressed syllable is pronounced with a
greater amount of energy than an unstressed
syllable.

16. PITCH
• Based on the aspect of articulator, pitch is influenced by the tension
of the vocal cords. If the vocal cords are stretched, the pitch of the
sound will go up.
• Pitch refers to the normal melodic height of an individual’s speech.
It is like a degree of highness or lowness of one’s speech.
• We make use of pitch as a part of our signaling system. Although
we employ many degrees of pitch in speaking, we use only four
levels of relative pitch as phonemes. They are:
• 4 >> extra-high
• 3 >> high
• 2 >> normal
• 1 >> low
• This is to say, the normal pitch of speaking voice, whatever its
actual height, is called level 2; and from this, we make various
upward and downward. These variations of pitch we make in
speaking will affect the intonation of our speech.

17. INTONATION
• Intonation shows how the ‘music’ of a
language rises and falls over a speech. In other
words, it can be also described as a fluctuation
of one’s voice, which is characterized as a
downward or upward movement of a voice or
sound in an utterance as a result of the pitch
variations. Thus, the intonation of a sentence
is the pattern of pitch changes that occurs.

18. TONE
• Pitch variations that affect the meaning of a
word are called tone. The meaning of the
word depends on its tone.
• Tone is shown or heard in how something is
being said. It is more like an attitude rather
than being a voice pattern. Emotion has also a
great deal of influence to one’s tone. By using
different tones, the words in a sentence can
have different meanings.

19. TEMPO
• Tempo of speech is the relative speed or slowness of
utterance which is measured by the rate of syllable
succession/movement, the number, and duration of
pauses in a sentence.
• In English, speakers try to make the amount of time to
say something the same between the stressed
syllables. If there are three or four unstressed syllable
between the stressed syllables, for example, the
unstressed syllables will be spoken faster, so that the
speaker can keep the rhythm. For this reason, English is
a said as a “stressed time language”.

20. CLUSTERS
• A cluster is when two consonants of different
places of articulation are produced together in
the same syllable.
• Note that clusters are determined based on
the sounds, not the letters of the words.

21. • Cluster can appear in the initial, medial,
or final positions of words:
• Initial clusters are usually formed by combining various
consonants with the /s/, /r/, or /l/ phonemes.
• Examples:
• sleep ['sli:p], green ['gri:n], blue ['blu:]
• Medial clusters usually appear at the beginning of a
second or third syllable in a multisyllabic word.
• Examples:
• regret [rɪ'gret], apply [ə'plaɪ], approve [ə'pru:v]
• Final clusters are usually composed of a variety of
phonemes including /sk/, /mp/, /ns/, /st/, and /ŋk/.
• Examples:
• desk ['desk], camp ['kæmp], mince ['mɪns], fast ['fɑ:st],
• bank ['bæŋk].

22. Fluency
• Fluency can be defined as the ability to speak
fluently and accurately.
• Fluency in speaking is the aim of many
language learners.
• Signs of fluency include a reasonably fast
speed of speaking and only a small number
of pauses and “ums” or “ers”. These signs
indicate that the speaker does not have to
spend a lot of time searching for the
language items needed to express the
message (Brown. 1997: 4).

23. Comprehension
• Comprehension is an ability to perceive and
process stretches of discourse, to formulate
representations the meaning of sentences.
• Comprehension of a second language is more
difficult to study since it is not; directly
observable and must be inferred from overt
verbal and nonverbal responses, by artificial
instruments, or by the intuition of the teacher or
researcher.
• Comprehension refers to the fact that
participants fully understand the nature of the
research project, even when procedures are
complicated and entail risks (Cohen et al.,
2005:51).

24. Sources are taken from
•Slidesharenet.com
•Web sources