Teaching Speaking Zhang Lu

Task 1 Study the dialogue below & then make a list of things that this dialogue contains. Li Lei: Sam, what are you going to do tomorrow? Sam: Nothing much. Why？ Li Lei: We’re going to watch a football game. Would you like to come to? Sam: I’d love to! What kind of football, American or soccer? Li Lei: Soccer. But we don’t call it soccer in China. We call it football.

Task 2 The procedure of an oral lesson aiming at teaching new language items can be idealized into three stages as the PPP model.（Presentation, Practice, and Production）The descriptions of these three stages are given below. Can you match each description with a P?

1. In this stage, stages are given the opportunities to use the newly presented language items in a controlled framework. This may be done by drills, or by repeating parts of the dialogue presented in the first language. 2. At this stage, the teacher introduces the new language items to be learned. The teacher focuses the students’ attention on model sentences, dialogues or other types of texts and checks their understanding of the new language items. 3. At this stage, learners have the opportunity to integrate the new language items with the old through activities that give free and extensive expression aimed at developing fluency skills.

Different types of speaking activities repetition role play gapped dialogue (filling in blanks in a dialogue) use pictures to make up stories drills games prompted dialogues (make up a dialogue according to cues) match expressions discussion read and act information gap make up a dialogue in a given situation scrambled dialogue interviews using a questionnaire

Task 3 Each of the speaking activity above can fit into a certain stage of the lesson according to the amount of teacher-control that is exercised. Can you put the alphabetic codes (a, b, c) of the activities along the Control-Communication continuum? A few of them have been done for you. Control··················|··················|Communication

Fragment A: The presentation goes through the following procedure: The teacher asks the students to read Dialogue A after him. The teacher asks the students to read the dialogue in pairs. The teacher introduces the structure “Could you … please” from the dialogue and asks the students to translate sentences on this model into Chinese. The teacher asks several pairs to read the dialogue in class. Fragment B The teacher introduces the structure “Could you … please” and drills the students by giving cues. (e.g. The teacher: “Call me”. The students: “Could you call me please?”) When satisfied with the students’ performance, the teacher asks the students to read Dialogue A in pairs. The class goes on…

The presentation goes through the following procedure: Fragment C The presentation goes through the following procedure: The teacher asks the students to read Dialogue A in pairs. The teacher asks questions based on the dialogue. The teacher would like the students to discover the usage of “Could you … please ” and the opening and ending of a telephone dialogue by answering these questions. How does Kate start the dialogue and how does Li Lei respond? How does Li Lei end the dialogue how does Kate respond? How does Li Lei ask for the person she wants to speak to? How does Li Lei make the request to have Kate ask Jim to call her? How does Kate ask Li Lei to spell her name? The teacher asks the students to read Dialogue A again in pairs.

Fragment D The presentation goes through the following procedure: 1 Fragment D The presentation goes through the following procedure: 1. The teacher has prepared Dialogue B on a piece of paper. He chooses two pairs of good students and asks them to read out Dialogue B first and then he asks them to read out Dialogue A. The students who listen are required to identify which dialogue sounds more polite. Dialogue B is shown below: 2. After the students pick out Dialogue A as the polite dialogue, the teacher asks the pairs to read the two dialogues again and the other students to note down what makes Dialogue A sound more polite. 3. The teacher writes down the students findings on the blackboard. 4. The lesson goes on… Next look at word text: G： // 教学法讲义 试卷//suzhou （how to teach speaking）

Practice Stage Fragment A Practice focus: to make a request using “Could you … please.” (the teacher draws a table on the blackboard with two columns. Column A has a list of requests and Column B has scrambled responses to these requests.) the teacher ‘s instructions to the students are like this: Work with your partner. Match each request in Column A with its corresponding response in Column B and read them out aloud. Fragment B Practice focus: to ask the way and give directions. (The teacher prepares two sets of gapped dialogues) The teacher’s instructions to the students are like this: Work in pairs. Student A in each pair will have Dialogue A and Student B will have Dialogue B. Do not show each other the dialogue. Fill in the missing words by asking each other questions.

Fragment C Practice focus: to invite and persuade your partner to visit the Great Wall with you. The teacher’s instruction to the students are like this: In this task, the student invited refuses at first, with his/her partner’s persuasion, he/she accepts the invitation at last. They appoint the time of starting and the place where to get on the bus.

Production Stage Fragment A The teacher sets up the following situation: Tom Steele will soon finish school. He wants to become a doctor. He asks his headmaster and his father’s friend, Dennis Lawson, what you should do to succeed. Tom Steele: Ask your headmaster, Mr. Mullins, what he thinks you should do to become a doctor. Then ask your father’s friend, Dennis Lawson, what he thinks you should do. Mr. Mullins: Tom comes to you to ask to become a doctor. Advise him on what he should do (e.g. study hard, get good grades in Sciences, apply to Medicine School). Dennis Lawson: Your friend’s son, Tom, wants to become a doctor. You remember how difficult it was to get accepted by Medicine School, advise him to study hard and get the necessary grades. Procedure: The teacher explains the situation and then gets the students into groups of three to act their roles. When they have finished, she asks one group to re-act their role-play in front of the class.

Fragment B The teacher sets up the following situation: Mary Brown left teaching fifteen years ago in order to devote her time to her family. Now her daughter is old enough to look after herself, and Mary seems to have much more time on her hands, so she is thinking of going back to teaching. She wants to discuss this with her family in order to find out their views and seek their advice. Role: Procedure: The teacher gives out the role cards, each pair getting the some role. Then she gets the pairs to discuss the situation and what they think they can do in tier role. She is happy to answer any questions at this stage about anything they have not understood and any help they might need with what to say. When the students feel they have prepared their role, she then puts them in groups of four, each one with a different role, and tells them to start with Mary Brown explaining to the others why she has called them together and asking their opinion. The teacher gives them a time-limit of 15 minutes, by which time, Mary must have made their decision. At the end, the teacher asks Mary Brown to explain what she decides and why. She then deals with the language problems she heard while the role-play were taking place.

The End