My Reflection on Two Blog Posts.

It was a joy for me to read these two blog posts one of which is entitled as “Suggested Activities to Improve Speaking” and the second one is “Discussion Activities: The Buzz Group”. I chose these particular posts to read about as everything related to speaking activities and tips to improve the speech interests me. I have mentioned several times that the main weak point of our department is that we speak in English very little and even when we speak we don’t do that  spontaneously as we do prepare for our presentations day before. I think that this is different from supplying a person with the ability to tell their feelings and thoughts to others easily sometimes without preparation, and sometimes by being prepared. Each of the language skills should be considered as a part of a whole, and studies should be carried out for balanced development of all of them. I often come to points where I really have difficulties determining how to say things correctly. So, these are the reasons of my choosing these very posts.

The reason that I really enjoyed the posts is that in both of them the authors were talking from my point of view. I agree with every stated opinion. Especially when the author states that one cannot claim knowing a language perfectly unless he/she has the command of all of the language skills at a certain level. I’m sure that all will agree with this. I also share the authors’ opinion that the speaking is one of the most significant indicators of knowing a language. That’s why when my friends ask me whether I know the language completely, I always answer NO, as I don’t stop repeating that I am very worried about my spoken English. According to the author learning ability of individuals is mostly related to how effective they use the oral communication skills. One’s being unable to state his thoughts and opinions, in a way not thinking, and as a result of this not taking part in classroom activities means being unable to learn. This is also very close to me as I have faced this problem as well. Sometimes I do know the answers or even worse want to arise some important questions during the class, but cannot express my thoughts clearly. It is obvious that the speaking ability takes more place in our lives than writing. Moreover, in the case of teachers it has a crucial importance to speak in English fluently. Otherwise how can I as a future teacher explain a simple grammatical rule without having a confidence to speak?

Another thing that is discussed in this post and also very important from my point of view is the students’ retaining accent characteristics. As the author states the reason of this is that psychology states that training on accent correction is effective in childhood or adolescence because one’s vocabulary is formed at these ages. This fact also makes me return to AUA. It seems that here we are taught to memorize some rules. But it is just impossible to develop the speaking skill by memorizing some rules and making them be memorized. In order to achieve this development in speaking, we should have plenty and various practices, to listen to people who speak well and effectively and to take them as models. However, I think that even this isn’t enough. Of course it is beneficial to have native-speaker professors and every day listening to them talking trains our listening skills, but still don’t train our tongues to speak with confidence and with a good pronunciation.

This piece of writing is very informative not only for the learners, but also for the future teachers. So I decided to copy the most important points concerning speaking education.

* During the activities about speaking education, teachers should provide the
students with examples about how to ask for permission to speak, when and how to
ask questions, which expressions to start and end a speech, and how to get ready for
prepared speeches.
* The activities should attract the attention of students, should be enriched by
considering the other fields of curriculum, and should be applied to daily speeches.
* Students should be warned about the importance of vocabulary and general
knowledge in giving good and effective speeches. The importance of being a good
reader and listener should be emphasized.
* The fact that students are more active than the teacher in a classroom is an
often emphasized point in getting productivity in educational studies. Teachers
should provide students with a classroom environment where they can present
themselves freely. Every chance to make students speak should be used to achieve
this.

So how can we achieve all this? The second blog post discusses one way to encourage students to speak. As the title suggests it is called The Buzz Group. This is a discussion activity in which students are put into groups of three or four and asked to think of topic. Teacher might ask students to think about as many examples as possible. I find this activity very useful. After some discussion within the groups students have opportunity to speak in front of the other groups and have a little debate on the topic. Buzz groups can form the prelude to a larger discussion.