FACTORS THAT

ENHANCE ENGLISH
STUDENTSS ORAL
COMMUNICATION SKILL
Oral comunicacin enhancement

The following article brings to mention important concepts

involved in the learning process students pursue in order to
develop their speaking skill. At the same time the article
provides a set of steps and solutions to enhance such
important skill in learners from all the ages. The article sets
some basis to affirm that carrying this process is largely
teachers responsibility while they monitor, correct, and
reward students-behavior.

MEd. Juan Francisco Hidalgo Sandoval

05/06/2017
 INTRODUCTION

The following article brings to mention important concepts involved in the

learning process students pursue in order to develop their speaking skill. At the same

time the article provides a set of steps and solutions to enhance such important skill

in learners from all the ages. The article sets some basis to affirm that carrying this

process is largely teachers responsibility while they monitor, correct, and reward

students-behavior.

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 FACTORS THAT ENHANCE ENGLISH STUDENTSS ORAL
COMMUNICATION SKILL

According to Brown, 1994; Burns & Joyce, 1997, speaking is an interactive

process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and

processing information. Its form and meaning are dependent on the context in which

it occurs, including the participants themselves, their collective experiences, the

physical environment, and the purposes for speaking.

Based on that well-defined concept, it is known by everybody how important

language in humans lives is since we all survive thank to the complex language

systems we have developed through the time. It may be interesting to see how

children naturally acquire the language they are exposed to; sometimes it is not

always noticeable the different factors involved in such a process. Only paying

carefully attention to those factors, teachers can realize about the strengths or

weaknesses there may be; in order to have students speaking skill well developed,

teachers must be able to apply different elements students need in this process.

Since teachers are the ones in charge of providing the different strategies to enhance

students speaking skill, they should apply some of the following elements:

Using minimal responses:

Language learners who lack of confidence in their ability to participate

successfully in oral interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking.

One way to encourage such learners to begin to participate is to help them

built up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in different types of

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 exchanges, especially for beginners. Minimal responses are predictable, often

idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate understanding,

agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker

(ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN FACTORS THAT ENHANCE

INTENSIVE BASIC ENGLISH STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT OF
THE ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS- LISTENING AND
SPEAKING- AT THE WESTERN MULTIDISCIPLINARY CAMPUS
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EL SALVADOR, SEMESTER I-2012.
(Goals and techniques for developing speaking, page33.))
Recognizing scripts:

In this step students are taught to answer with predictable set of spoken

exchanges. Greetings, apologies, compliments, invitations, and other functions that

are influenced by social and cultural norms often follow patter scripts. In these scripts,

the relationship between a speakers turn and the one that follows it can often be

anticipated (Burkhart, 1998).

(ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN FACTORS THAT ENHANCE

INTENSIVE BASIC ENGLISH STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT OF
THE ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS- LISTENING AND
SPEAKING- AT THE WESTERN MULTIDISCIPLINARY CAMPUS
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EL SALVADOR, SEMESTER I-2012.
(Goals and techniques for developing speaking, page34.))
Accurate activities:

Whenever teachers are in front of students with lack of speaking skill or just

shy children, they need to know which methods are the best to approach them since

students need to feel like they are in a comfort zone. Before starting any class or

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 course, the teacher must have a profile of all his/her students in order to provide

activities able to cover as many students competences and abilities as possible.

After some weeks, students will be expressing themselves a little bit more due

to the activities they were involved in; the teacher as well will have a more complete

idea of how the students are like and how much they improve their speaking skills.

Including enough speaking activities

The outcomes from the students increase when teachers include enough

speaking practices in their lesson plans. Some guidelines for lesson planning can be

summed up in the following ways:

a. Present and explain the speaking strategies.

b. In large EFL class, speaking strategies, such as asking for clarification and using

fillers in order to gain time to process, etc. can first be introduced to the students by

exemplification. These strategies should be related to the topic to be discussed in

class.

c. Provide a topic that engages the interest of the group and is educationally enriching.

Design a group task that involve some degree of discussion and uses the strategies

related to the topic presented and explained by the teacher.

d. Consider and specify the role each participant of the group can play in the group

discussion. Clear specifications are useful in avoiding problems, such as uneven

participation.

e. Specify the time allotted for group discussion and presentation of group views to the

class.

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 (ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN FACTORS THAT ENHANCE INTENSIVE
BASIC ENGLISH STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORAL
COMMUNICATION SKILLS- LISTENING AND SPEAKING- AT THE
WESTERN MULTIDISCIPLINARY CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF EL SALVADOR, SEMESTER I-2012. (Goals and techniques for
developing speaking, page35.))

By putting those recommendations into practice, one can enhance students

speaking skill while helping them to be more sociable and critical thinkers. Once in

the process, students need to be encouraged to maintain that attitude and motivation

to express themselves. In order to get that, it is important to pay careful attention to

the following aspects inside the classroom:

Participation: Its much better when students are not forced to participate; if

they do it step by step only in moments and with topics they fell comfortable with, the

outcomes will be much better.

Fluency: through participation students develop fluency while they imitate the

intonation and pronunciation in the way they hear it from the teachers.

Confidence: in this aspect, teachers are a really important element since

students confidence at speaking will depend on how open the teacher is and how

accurate corrections teachers make in answer to students mistakes.

Reward and reinforcement: students tend to expect something as a reward once

they develop any task; in this case they expect the teacher to say good job, I like it,

or a simple nice. It may look like nothing, but in this learning process this type of

motivation plays a really important role.

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 To wrap up, it is important not only to be aware of the main elements that

enhance speaking skill in students but also to be able to apply them in any type of

scenario. Doing this is one of the ways students may increase their fluency and

confidence. It is important to take into consideration the kind of environment we are

going to be working in since children nowadays represent a bigger challenge for any

teacher. Many distractors make students get stuck when trying to talk, but it is

important to be able to deal with all them.

CONCLUSION

After constructing such meaningful article, the notions about the topic have

changed: it results interesting to analyze how important a good advisor is for students

carrying a learning process focused on speaking skill. Thats why, in the future,

different strategies will be applied by the writer in order to obtain better results from

the students.

It is expected from the reader to have gotten as much information as possible

taking into account the importance of a good teacher to help develop the students

four macro skills.

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 REFERENCES

ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN FACTORS THAT ENHANCE INTENSIVE

BASIC ENGLISH STUDENTS DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORAL
COMMUNICATION SKILLS- LISTENING AND SPEAKING- AT THE
WESTERN MULTIDISCIPLINARY CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF EL SALVADOR, SEMESTER I-2012. (Goals and techniques for
developing speaking, page33-34-35-.)

Palmer, H. (1987). QUANTITY before Quality in second Language

acquisition. In Raimes, A TEFL Anthology, ICA: UK.

Mead, N.A. and Rubin, D.L. (1985). Assessing Listening and Speaking
Skills. ERICK Digest, Erick Clearinghouse on Reading and
Communication Skills: Urbana III.