Out of the four language skills, ‘Speaking’ is considered as the most essential skill to be mastered.
Oral language is a powerful learning tool, which shapes, Modifies, Extends and Organizes thought.
Oral language is the foundation of all language development and therefore the foundation of all learning. It is the basis for the other language strands like Listening, reading & Writing.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 1
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
Nothing. They consider ‘teaching of grammar rules’ and ‘memorising isolated lists of vocabulary’ as the foundation of English skill development.
Speaking is considered as the most essential skill to be mastered. Entire programs is designed to instil speaking skills from the beginning. It also develops the ‘Answering reflex’ and the ‘Ability to think on the spot’.
Evaluation of Speaking is used to customise learning path for each learner. It is the foundation of English skill development - Listening, Reading and Writing.
- Martin Bygate (1987, Oxford)
“People do not learn the pieces of the language and then put them together to make conversations.
Instead, infants acquiring their first language, and people acquiring second language learn the components of the language through meaningful interaction with other people”.
Nothing. They work with the concept that by learning the pieces of grammar and rules of usage, phrasal verbs, pronunciation etc, the students will be able to put them together and start speaking fluent English.
Stress is on un-planned, meaningful conversational interactions from day ONE!
Speaking is an unplanned activity and it exposes all short-comings. This analysis is used to prepare customised learning paths for Grammar, Usages, Pronunciation etc.
(Ellis,1990; Gass,1997; And Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991)
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 2
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
Opportunities to speak are very limited. As 80% of students are anxious and hesitant to speak, ‘spoken English classes’ end up as ‘teacher-speaking’ classes. Language labs are boring, life-less drilling sessions.
Every students must undergo speaking situations every day - in a friendly and non-threatening way. They practice any number of times!
There are over 300 meaningful contexts in the Spoken English Simulator, where the learner can respond to infinite number of questions.
(David Nunan, 1999)
Few minutes of ‘mock-interviews’ and ‘role-plays’ never help build language in meaningful contexts and situations.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 3
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
Speaking is a skill that can only be improved through practice. Many learners become nervous when they are speaking, because they do not want to make a mistake. Unfortunately, many learners of languages do not practice their speaking skills for fear that they will make a mistake. Because they do not practice, their speaking skills do not improve. The first step to improving your speaking skills is practice, practice, and more practice in meaningful contexts and situations!
“Speaking is any process in which people share information, ideas and feelings. It involves all of body-language, mannerisms and style – anything that adds meaning to a message”.
Body-language, mannerisms and style are not discussed seriously in spoken English classes, and language labs even though they are the most crucial part (80-85%) of communication.
Each student is subjected to anxiety creating interviews every day so that the whole experience reduce the anxiety and foster speaking.
Facial expressions, gestures and postures are captured when the learner faces incisive, point-blank questions.
- (Hybel, 2001)
Efforts are limited to recording of ‘mock-interviews’. It doesn’t give any result because ‘poor body language’ appears when the person is exposed to anxious, tense situations. Not in a mock-interview or in front of a mirror!
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 4.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
“In order to ensure the development of Speaking skills, we must provide maximum opportunity to students to speak the target language by providing a rich environment that contains collaborative work, authentic materials and tasks, and shared knowledge".
Most spoken English classes use the textbooks of 1960s, (or the modified versions of these text books). Language labs are multi-media versions of the same grammar books.
SpeakEnglishGym uses CBI (Content-based Instruction) Methodology, proved as the only way for an adult to acquire superior English skills.
SpeakEnglishGym ensures collaborative work by customising the themes and teaming-up for self & peer evaluations of the captured recordings.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 5.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
- Hayriye Kayi (2006)
Reduce teaching speaking time in class while increasing student speaking time. Step back and observe students.
Do not correct students’ pronunciation mistakes very often while they are speaking. (Correction should not distract student from his/her speech).
Provide timely, factual, and convincing feedbacks that is actionable.
Studies reveal 90% of speaking in ordinary classes are by teachers, not by students. In Language labs serious talking doesn’t take place!
In SpeakEnglishGym, 90% of the talking is done by students. Students are encouraged to talk in a timely manner about various impromptu topics and rapid, unexpected questions.
Students’ pronunciation mistakes are corrected only in the evaluation, feedback stage, not during the talk. SpeakEnglishGym provides timely, factual, and convincing feedbacks.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 6.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
- Hayriye Kayi (2006)
Students are fed up with meaningless communication in classrooms.
For instance, "A traditional classroom exchange in which one student asks “Where's the library”? and another student answers “It's on Green Street, opposite the bank”, when they can both see the answer, is not much like real communication".
They repeat the same mistake. Their approach clearly establish that display questions and drills are meaningless,as are scripted "conversations" in textbooks, all of which discourage students from speaking. As a prime case in point, drills introduced by Audio-Lingual Method are notoriously meaningless .Drills which spotlight only limited language structures through repetition,known as simple repetition drills, substitution drills, and slot substitution drills only tax students' short-term memories, with no hope of improving communicative ability.
There is no scripted conversation. Every students is encouraged to speak from his/her experiences by incisive questions and the answers are evaluated for verbal and non-verbal correctness.
Opportunity to use meaningful communication reduces anxiety and foster more speaking.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 7.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
- (Harmer, 2001, p. 85)
Most students have difficulties with their speaking production because they looked apathetic and inhibited in activities which involved oral skills. Many of them felt afraid of being criticized and humiliated in front of their partners. As a result, they avoided being part of this kind of activities”. This kind of personal feelings such as of lack of confidence, fear of being humiliated, lack of motivation, and inhibition are known in the EFL field as “affective factors” and are individual for each learner. Programs must take care of this.
Spoken English classes and Language labs don’t consider ‘affective factors’. They think that ‘lack of speaking proficiency’ is due to ‘less expertise in grammar-rules’ and teach grammar more vigorously.
SpeakEnglishGym is designed considering these ‘affective factors’ in various ways. It protects privacy of the learner till he/she becomes confident.
SpeakEnglishGym offers customisation the lessons for easy and efficient learning. Learner is able to learn tough grammar rules and vocabulary through a theme of his/her liking.
- Urrutia and Vega (2010, p.12)
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 8.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
Speaking requires that learners not only know how to produce specific points of language such as grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (linguistic competence), but also that they understand when, why, and in what ways to produce language (socio-linguistic competence).
Moreover, speakers need to know that speech has its own skills, structures and conventions different from the written language.
Nothing. They ignore that a main goal of communicative language teaching is the ability not only to communicate using rules of grammar, but also to use language appropriately in social contexts and to employ verbal and nonverbal strategies to overcome breakdowns in communication.
Learners develop a desire to communicate something.They have a purpose for communicating. They will be focused on the content of what they are saying ...rather than on a particular language grammar structure.
Context and a real purpose for speaking is the most important; language structure instruction might come afterward, but only as evaluation/feedback when communication has failed.
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills- 9.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?
- (Cunningham,1999)
“It is essential that greater awareness is created among teachers of the effect that learners’ views of their own abilities have on their motivation to speak English.
By being encouraging and supporting, and helping learners believe in their own potential, teachers have a key role to play in enhancing learner motivation and enabling them to develop not just their oral skills in English but their proficiency in the language generally”.
Nothing. They ignore the fact that the students must get confidence about the learning process first. They must develop ‘Expectancy Belief” as most of them have bad memories of earlier English education. Students will be more motivated if they are exposed to activities to which they can relate, which encourage them to use the target language, and which allow them to choose what they want to say.They will be motivated to engage in an activity if they feel it is cognitively challenging.
SpeakEnglishGym stresses the need of building ‘Expectancy Belief’ in learners. It removes the fear, and anxiety associated with speaking English through Content-based Instruction and Simulation.
Speaking is used as the foundation of English skill development - Listening, Reading and Writing.
- Al-Badi (2006, p. 48)
Experts’ Advice on Building English & Speaking Skills - 10.
How does SpeakEnglishGym Implement this Advice?
What do Spoken English Classes & Language Labs do with This Advice?