On Teaching Oral Skills


A semester’s worth of effort has finally been realized after handling my first ever English Speech and Communication class. Sixty students proved to be a challenge as I was wondering at first how is it possible for me to “listen” to all of them. A feedbacking program proved to be working.
I found this very interesting article on Feedbacking by Maria Spelleri and tried it. Accordingly, there are four choices teacher can elect for correcting errors of students on utterances they make: Rising intonation question, Recast, Explicit, Meta-language. Giving it a thought, a rising intonation question has been the trademark of a teacher 's teacher. I call it as such because they are the traditional spoon-feeders, prescriptive in their approach and sometimes intimidating. A correction like “You go to the store YESTERDAY?!” for a student making a mistake over verb tense could bring further anxiety. Recast, aggravatingly, would be more direct putting the correction as “I WENT to the store yesterday.” This could mean that the correct utterance has been supplied. Like a recast, Explicit could also be unswerving yet explanatory. “ Don’t say "go" for the past- say "went"”. Of the four, Meta-language has been the most popular. It is the most preferred. Teachers here would really serve as facilitators of learning developing students’ thinking skills. Hence, a meta-language correction would go as: “Are you talking about the past or present? What has to change in your sentence if you are talking about the past? And so, what is the past tense of the verb you want?”
Taking this learning to an actual classroom of sixty would be a challenge. What I did was that every time I made such a comment on one student, I made sure the rest of the fifty-nine listened. This should give a wise use of the time. Spelleri’s experience over Meta-language spelled out differently. She tends to go the “downward spirals” because she gets to compromise by “changing” her question to a less difficult one. My response to that would be to shift to other choices of correcting errors or the worst scenario would be calling on somebody to help. It gets the blood circulating not only for the student involved but with rest of the class.
Thinking of ways of exploring all TEACHING STRATEGIES that we have learned and considering we cannot really single-out the BEST one is but a big pedagogical wonder we teachers need to probe into. Why not use all the FOUR choices? If a class of slow learners really need to be spoon-fed at times; I don’t think that would be short-changing them with the Bloom’s principle. We all had the time and the chance to go up the ladder. Remember “Individual Differences”?
My Evening College class of sixty have improved. One student even won an impromptu interview. He (my student) as the interviewer. This made me proud, knowing I have “made” them. What gauge of success is it for us than having been thanked by a student after a semester’s lesson. Telling us that they really have become good speakers. I would tread the same path for I have learned how to become a Speech Class teacher. For as long as we keep on learning and exploring, things would surely be for the better!


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