“How to improve my speaking skill?”
“I do not know exactly what to do to ace my speaking”
“How to be fluent when delivering my speech?”
“My speaking is not as good as yours”
“I understand what you are talking about, but I do not know what to say and give responses”
Well, those questions and statements are often said by non-native English speakers or by English learners. Most of them probably do not know how to start and what to say, even easily get stuck when they try to speak up. In this case, some factors can affect their performance in speaking such as the lack of self-confidence, the fear of making mistakes in grammatical structure, having limited sources of vocabulary, and so forth.
As one of the essential parts of learning a language, first thing first, speaking becomes one of significant skills that must be mastered by language learners because this skill is frequently implemented in everyday life to connect, communicate and interact with the outside world. So that, speaking “should” easily be done when it comes to human-to-human interconnection. However, actions speak louder than words. As a matter of fact, most of them are still struggling to enhance and ace their capability in speaking. Therefore, suitable activities are called for helping improve someone’s English speaking ability. There are some helpful speaking activities that can be applied to language learners.
- Debate
Conducting a debate session as a speaking activity can be something fun and also challenging. In debate, not only does it require English learners to speak up about their standpoints, but also it forces them to speak in chronological order. It means that they should state their opinions clearly by giving explanations, reasons and also evidences to make them concrete and accurate. These schemes ask them to speak for a long duration and train them to vary the usage of language expressions to be a well-rounded argument with a good flow of speaking.
- Podcast-based Activity
In this modern era, “podcast” is a prominent term used by Youtubers to gain information from a speaking partner. To run a podcast-based activity is likely running an interview session like the most, but in casual conversation. One person becomes the interviewer and another one can be the source of the information which this activity involves two-way communication.
- Group discussion
Discussion activities refer to a group of people discussing a topic that they talk about. All participants in the group will actively be involved to share ideas, opinions, suggestions, recommendations, perspectives or even solutions to achieve goals that have been agreed with. This activity is also effective to build self-confidence which it is needed when communicating with people.
- Presentations
Oral presentations can be an effective tool to be applied in a language classroom for improving the speaking of English learners. It gives them an opportunity to deliver a topic as if they were an expert on a particular thing. This situation provides a responsibility to present the material to be well-delivered and it also enhances the communicative competence of the speaker. The contact created by the communication between the speaker and audience is a good fundamental to engaging them in a cooperative interaction.
Those speaking activities above can be alternatives to practicing and upgrading English speaking skill. As a kindly reminder, it is totally fine making mistakes in the process of being good at speaking English. However, learning from mistakes is also important.