Spoken Grammar and other features of speaking which help to develop students productive skills in distant learning

Аңдатпа

 Авторлар көптеген мұғалімдер онлайн оқыту кезінде кездескен өзекті мәселелердің бірін зерттеді. Зерттеу барысында мұғалімдер қашықтықтан оқыту кезінде ағылшын тілінде айтылым дағдысын дамытуға арналған тапсырмаларды орындап көрді. Зерттеуде оқушылар нәтижелеріне талдау жасалды. Мақалада Spoken Grammar (сөйлеу және грамматика) тұжырымдамасы анықталып, шет тіліндегі сөйлеу ерекшеліктері зерттелген, сонымен қатар сөйлеу кезінде адам миында жүретін процесс қарастырылады, бұл мұғалімге оқушының қалай сөйлейтінін толығырақ түсінуге көмектеседі. Қорытындыда онлайн сабақта айтылымды ұйымдастыруға арналған кеңестер мен идеялар келтірілген.

Аннотация

Авторы исследовали одну из актуальных проблем, с которой многие преподаватели столкнулись в период онлайн обучения. В исследовании преподаватели опробовали на практике задания, которые помогают развивать навыки говорения на английском языке во время дистанционного обучения. В ходе исследования предоставлен анализ мониторинга результатов учащихся. Статья дает определение понятия Spoken Grammar (говорение и грамматика) и рассматривает особенности речи на иностранном языке, также раскрывает что происходит в голове человека во время речи, что поможет учителю лучше понять, как ученик говорит. И наконец, в статье даются советы и идеи для организации говорения на онлайн уроке. 

Abstract

The authors investigated one of the topical problems that many teachers encountered during online learning. In the study, the practical tasks that develop students speaking skills during online learning were tested. The study provided an analysis of the students’ results monitoring. The article defines the concept of Spoken Grammar (speaking and grammar) and considers the features of speech in second or third language, also reveals what happens in a person's head when he or she is speaking, which help the teachers better understand how the student speaks. And finally, the article gives tips and ideas for organizing speaking in an online lesson.

What is spoken grammar?

A definition of ‘spoken grammar’, might be something like ‘elements of the grammar of conversation that have been noticed by teachers and described by corpus researchers, but haven’t yet become part of our everyday teaching syllabuses.’ (Ken Paterson).

 One example is the way we sometimes relocate bits of language to the beginning of questions. Rather than saying: “Is that woman in the corner your colleague?”, we break the question into two parts, using a co-referential pronoun in the second: “That woman in the corner, is she your colleague?”

Or the way we use marker words like ‘look’ or ‘well’ when, in conversation, we’re about to report what someone actually said: “... and then I said to her, look, are you sure the train stops at Didcot?”

Or the way we use ‘nice’ and ‘lovely’ in adjective pairs: “It’s lovely and sunny outside,” or, “It’s nice and comfortable in that hotel.”(https://www.kenpatersonwriter.com/spoken grammar/#:~:text=What%20is%20spoken%20grammar%3F,of%20our%20everyday%20teaching%20syllabuses.)

And spoken grammar is somehow different from writing grammar. The figure 1 and 2 suggested by the British Council demonstrates the scheme of difference between spoken and writing grammar. 

Figure 1.

Figure 2. 

What is happening in our brain when we speak? 

As we can see, it is a complex process of three stages that requires our students to be familiar with the vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Therefore, they are inextricably intertwined and must be the part of learning while you are teaching speaking. 

Research

During 2020-2021 academic year, the study was conducted in three 8 Grades. The teachers applied tasks taking into account the development of speaking skills during distance learning. Through co- planning, keeping in mind the needs of students and differentiation, teachers developed a number of tasks and tips for teachers when planning and organizing the teaching of productive skills at the lesson online.

Tips for Speaking Lesson

1. Before the lesson, plan your aim and objective. What do you want your students to say? Make sure your lesson contains the skills and grammar needs to achieve the goal. Choose an activity that is suitable to the lesson and to the student’s level and interests.
2. Plan your instructions and try to foresee potential problems or difficulties. For example, what will you do if you want your students to work in pairs, but you have an odd number of students? How do you want the students work in chanels or in general meeting or upload the video in the chat or social media or on the school website?
3. Make the task as realistic and meaningful as possible. 
4. Give very clear instructions. Demonstrate what you want them to do. Very important!!!
5. Give an appropriate time limit.
6. If you are setting up a role-play, provide the framework, i.e., where the situation takes place and who the participants are. However, it is important to let the students choose who they will be in the role-play and how they feel. For example: The role-play takes place in a shop. There is a shopkeeper, and a customer who is trying to return a sweater. Ask the students these questions: “Who are you?”; “How do you feel?”; “Are you happy, sad or angry?”; “Why are you returning a sweater?”; “Shopkeeper, are you going to make it easy to return the sweater or difficult?”
7. During the activity, remove yourself from the central position, give the students chance to show the initiative, take notes, and monitor what is going on. 
8. Do not interrupt or correct; however, you may need to subtly encourage some of the students with prompts demonstrating it through PPT. 
9. After the activity, allow enough time to get some feedback from the class. The feedback is vital for the students getting more confident while they are speaking and in oreder to prevent them from making mistakes in the future. Take up and correct problems as a group. 

Speaking should be the natural result of using English as the main means of communication in the classroom. However, speaking does tend to develop fairly slowly. Try to take every opportunity in class to get students to use the language they have learned previously. If you want your students to be able to converse in English, then you need to make the classroom a conversational place.

The tips were created after observing and analyzing the number of lessons and are the base for teachers that they must start from when they are going to plan and organize speaking lesson. 

Monitoring of the results

After conducting SAU and SAT, the teachers have analyzed the results. The diagram below shows the speaking monitoring results in three different classes for term 3 and 4. The results demonstrate the steady growth during all the period of monitoring in 2020-2021 academic year. 

Ideas for Speaking Activities

The following are several options for speaking activities that are amaizing and suitable both for online and offline lesson. The activities were tested at the real lessons of teachers, which were observed and discussed after that.  

1 Make a sentence

Purpose: To review and reinforce the use of problematic words and expressions.

1. Procedure: Prepare at least 30 cue cards with nouns, verbs, conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, adjectives, or expressions on each card (for online teaching you can use wordwall.net  or https://quizlet.com/latest). 

Divide the class into groups.

Place the pile of cards face down between the students. Each student in turn takes a card and uses the words on it to make a sentence.

2 Group Tic-Tac-Toe

Purpose: To work on reading accuracy while practicing sentences.

Procedure: Divide the class into two teams. One team is the “X” and the other is the “O” team.

Draw the grid on the online board and fill it in any vocabulary words. 

One member of each team start. Have them do “rock, paper, scissors” using video. The loser points to one of the grids and asks the winner “What is it?”(The questions may vary according to students level).

The winner must answer correctly (either read the word, or give the definition, or make up a sentence with this word). If the answer is correct, that team receives either “X” or “O”, depending on which team they are on. 

If the answer is incorrect, they don’t get “X” or “O”.

The strategy of the game is to get a row of 4 Xs or 4 Os going in any direction. 

3 Picture Speculation

Purpose: To give students some conversational clues from interesting pictures.

Procedure: Divide the class into pairs or small groups in chanels.

Give each pair or group a picture. All groups can have either the same or a different picture.

Have the students ask each other questions about the picture, or compose a story or a dialogue to present to the class.  

4 Tongue Twisters

Purpose: To practice pronunciation and problem sounds.

Procedure: Write tongue twisters on the online board

Read each one slowly to your students.

Have your students repeat it word by word. Once they have begun to get hang on it, let them practice a bit by themselves. Students can take turns saying the tongue twister in front of the class. 

Note: When you use the tongue twisters in ESL classroom, remember that the focus is on accuracy and pronunciation, NOT speed. 

Examples of tongue twisters you can find here: https://www.mondly.com/blog/2019/08/23/71-best-tongue-twisters-to-perfect-your-english-pronunciation/

5 Presents Swapping

Purpose: Get students to talk about their likes and dislikes, with specific regards to hobbies, sports and interests.

1. Procedure: This game can be played with any number of students, the cards could be presented in https://jeopardylabs.com/ cards as there are students, ensuring that each card has “a partner”.

Explain the students that they are at the New Year party and they will discuss the presents they received.  

Through the discussion, students impart the information on their role-play card to as many people as possible. May be they can find somebody who can help them with their problem. When they found this person, they could sit together and discuss the problem.

Note: The object of this game is for everyone to find someone they can swap their presents with. 

7 English Bee

Purpose: A fun way to review while getting students to speak in full sentences.

Procedure: Divide the class into two teams.

Prepare some quiz questions for them to answer. 

Have teams flip an online coin to see who goes first. 

Ask one team a question that they must answer in a full sentence to get full points. If they cannot answer the question, the other team can try to answer it for half the points. 

8 Question Cube

Purpose: Practice asking and answering who, what, when, where, why and how’ questions. .

Procedure: Cut out and make the cube (for offline lesson) and wordwall.net fortune wheel for online lesson. Have students take turns rolling the cube and asking other students a question, using the word that is face up on the cube. 

Note: You can adopt this activity either for low beginners or even for advanced classes.

For low beginners you can add pictures with question words, so that students could easily remember question words. 

Something like that.

Alternatively, you can write ready questions and students can use them as a model to make their own questions. 

For advanced students you can set up this activity after reading, listening or writing. Students should ask questions on the gained information and check the comprehension. 

Alternatively, you can use more complex questions. For example, conditional questions, open questions and so on. 

Resources:

1. Teaching English. TESOL, 2004 Global TESOL College Corp. 
2. Riggenbach, H., & Lazaraton, A. (1991).Promoting Oral Communication Skills. In M.

Celce-Murcia (Ed.),Teaching   English   as    a   Second   or    Foreign   Language

(pp.   125-136).    Los   Angeles: University of California.

1. Olshtain, E., & Cohen, A. D. (1983). Apology: A speech-act set. In: Wolfson, N., Judd, E. (Eds.),     Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, pp. 1991, p.154.
2. ESL Games for the classroom. Michael DiGiacomo
3. https://www.yourtrainingedge.com/5-ways-to-take-advantage-of-the-80-20-rule-for-education/#:~:text=The%20principle%20is%20simple%2C%20stating,of%20the%20cause%5B1%5D.
4. wordwall.net
5. https://jeopardylabs.com/