Speaking Activities

1. Principles of Teaching Speaking

                 Principles of teaching speaking are as follows (Harmer, 2001: 102)

a. Help students overcome their initial reluctance to speak. Be encouraging; provide

opportunity; start from something simple;

b. Ask students to talk about what they want to talk about.

c. Ask students to talk about what they are able to talk about.

d. Provide appropriate feedback.

e. Combine speaking with listening and reading.

f. Incorporate the teaching of speech acts in teaching speaking.

2. Method of Teaching Speaking

The method of teaching speaking as suggested by Harmer (1998:95) is Engage Activate-Study. Engage means that the teacher gives warming to the students. For instance: the topic of the discussion is about fruits. Then, activate the teacher give an opportunity to the students to express their ideas and opinions. Afterwards, study means that it concerns with the material of the discussion. Therefore, the students can get the learning experience. The other method of teaching speaking skill is through information gap activities that are suggested by Raptou (2001: 211). Information gap is useful activity in which one person has information that the other lacks. They must use the target language to share that information. For instance, one student has the directions to a party and must give them to a classmate. One type of speaking activity involves the so-called “information gap” where two speakers have different parts of information making up a whole. Because they have different information, there is a gap between them.

3. The Activities in Speaking Class

The activities of speaking class are as follows (Harmer, 2001:271-274).

a.    Acting from a script.

In this section the teacher asks the students to perform the play based on the     dialogue in the script. Thus, the teacher as the director and the students perform the dialogue.

b. Communication Games

A game is one of activities that can help students relaxed in learning the language. This technique is particularly suitable for the children in mastering the language. It is designed to make communication between students, so that the students have to talk to  a partner in order to solve a puzzle, draw a picture, puts the things in right order, and differences between picture.

c.   Discussion

The problem in conducting the discussion is the students reluctance to give opinion in front of their friends. Particularly when the students are not mastering the topic of discussion. Therefore, to encourage the students is to provide activities which force the students in expressing the ideas through the topic which is familiar with student’s world. For instance, are: their daily activity, the situation of their class, and describing.

d.   Problem solving

The material is used in this technique giving the students to work in pairs or groups. They share their problem, opinion and feeling. In this case the teacher as the bridge to communicate among the participants. Then, the students give a question and answer each other. This communication will help the students practicing and expressing their ideas in spoken language.

e. Information Gap

Information gap activities can also reinforce vocabulary and a variety of grammatical structures taught in class. They allow students to use linguistic forms and functions in a communicative way. These activities bring the language to life for students. Grammar is no longer a concept they have difficulty applying to their speaking. Students have the opportunity to use the building blocks of language we teach them to speak in the target language.

Source :

Harmer, Jeremy. 2001. The practice of English Language Teaching. England.