How to manage the noise level while the children are doing the speaking activities?Post title

During the speaking activities, the noise level alone can quickly escalate and disturb other classes. (Linse, 2001). To manage the noise level, try not to shout to them. It will be useless. By shouting “ All right everyone, you are too noisy”, the teacher, herself is contributing to the noise level. It will be much better and productive if you just give the signal to get their attention, for example ringing the ball, or turning the lamp on and off.

Classroom Techniques and Activities for Teaching Speaking

Speaking activities are often considered the focal point of instruction. Therefore, it is important to select activities which match the objectives of your program. The specific techniques and tasks that you choose should be based on the aims of the program coupled with the student's stages of development.

Audio Lingual Method (ALM)

The ALM is based on the notion that one can learn language by developing habits based on the patterns of language (Celce – Murcia, 2001) The first typical feature of ALM is drills. You can substitute one word in each line of the drill. See the following example.

(Children listen and repeat the sentences spoken by their teacher)
T: This is a yellow dress.
S: This is a yellow dress.
T: This is a blue dress.
S: This is a blue dress.

If you think your students can manage more complicated tasks, try to use this one...
T: This is a blue dress.
S: This is a blue dress.
T: This is a yellow dress.
S: This is a yellow dress.
T: pink
S: This is a pink dress.
T: green
S: This is a green dress.
T: jacket
S: This is a green jacket.
Etc.

Some students find that drilling is boring. To handle this one, you can modified the substitution or bring pictures of items. For example, instead of mentioning the word, you can just hold of the picture of the thing in front of your chest and show it to your students. For example:
T: (Holding the picture of a blue dress) This is a blue dress.
T: (show different picture: a red dress)
S: This is a red dress
etc.

The second feature of ALM is dialogues. Dialogues provide students with grammatically controlled scripts that they can use in real life. However, there are some problem that may be face when doing this activity: the children are to shy talking to their friends; they feel uncomfortable working in pairs or groups; they find it difficult to do this tasks. You can help them manage their problem by providing puppets for them. Puppet can easily model different dialogues for children to practice with their classmates. A child may feel very comfortable when the same adults or their friends are holding a puppet and speaking to the child as the puppet. Puppet also make the language – learning activity more fun.

Fishbowl technique
In this technique, the teacher can either invite a volunteer to do the activity with him or can model the activity using two or more puppet. It is very useful so that the children know exactly what they are expected to do.

Games
Play is purposeful activity and games are a part of playing. You can create or modify a well – known game to suit your objectives. For example, a game of concetration: MEMORY. This game can be played with partners or in small groups. The game is made with two sets of 10 matching cards (1 set contains of pictures of the vocabulary and another set contains of the words of the vocabulary) with the vocabulary items that children are studying (you can modify the number of matching cards). The 20 cards are placed face down on the table. Each player has to match the picture with the appropriate vocabulary. If the cards are matching, the player gets to keep them until the end of the game. If the cards are not matching, the player puts the cards back facing down on the table in the same spot they originally found them. The winner is the player with the most card at the end of the game.

Talking and Writing Box
You should provide a box and decorated it. Then choose one topic, and let the students bring the pictures or items they have self – selected and are interesting to them which are also related to the topic and put them inside the box. Next, ask them to pick the picture or item and ask them to share about it in front of the class. Just choose two or three volunteers on every topic. By using this box, children are able to personalize the information that they share. It will also help them develop the ideas of the speaking task.

What should you do when your students make errors while doing their speaking?

Children have a tendency to overgeneralize the grammar rules when they are learning English as their native language (Brown, 2000). One classic example of generalizations occurs with the use of past tense. For example, I readed the book. I writed my name on it.
Overgeneralization can also occur when a learner takes rules from his first language and applies them to a second or foreign language. For example, an Indonesian – speaking child learning English might say, I usually eat rice fried, instead of I usually eat fried rice.

To handle this kind of error, you can try these ways:

Model your students the correct response rather than telling them that they are wrong.

For example:
T: What does she do at 6:00?
S: She do her homework at 6:00.
T: She does her homework at 6:00. (repeat your student's answer and correct it in the same time). Yes, she does her homework at 6:00. (repeat the correct one once again and emphasize the word does). Let's look at another picture. Tommy, what does he do at 7:00?
S': He do Karate.
T: He does Karate. Yes, he does Karate. (you can use a puppet, Winston) Winston, can you help us?
W: (change your voice into a different one) Yes, I like to help.
T: Winston, what does he do at 8:00?
W: He does his English homework.
T: Good, Winston. All right everyone, what does he do at 8:00?
Ss: He does his English homework.
T: Very good. Again please...
SS: He does his English homework.

By doing this, the error has been corrected and re – modeled without embarrassing any of your students. Just provide a model that the students can copy. If it is possible, focus on one type of error only. Responding too many errors can discourage students from communicating and talking.

Do the peer corrections

Guide your students to do the peer corrections. Provide them with examples of correcting their friends' work. Just focus on one simple thing first, for example the use of the capital letters. Of course, after letting them do the peer correction, you have to do the correction again... However, at least it will make them be more aware in writing words that the first letter of the words need to be written in capital letters.

Teaching Speaking to Young Learners

Speaking is a skill that cannot be separated from the other skills. When children are finally able to speak, the experiment and play with the utterances that are made to form words and phrases. The words that they produce can give many advantages. Their words can be used to provide joy. A child learns that a simple utterance such as “Mommy, I love you” can delight a parent. (Linse, 2006)

Words can be used as a weapon against one another causing hurt feelings and bruised egos. For example, native English – speaking children are often taught this rhyme:

Sticks and stones

will break my bones,

but words will never hurt me.

Words can be used also as a form of entertainment. During their play, children make conversations; they practice to talk to one another. It usually happens when they are playing the role – play. For example, a young child pretends to be a teacher. She tends to practice and adapt scripts that they have heard from her real teachers or on TV. While pretending as a teacher, she gives commands such as telling the students to be quiet or do their tasks.

Seeing the importance of speaking, we as the teachers should be aware of ways to help them build their speaking skills. Don't ever put a high expectation which is not fitting their age. The expectations for children learning ESL or EFL should not be greater or more demanding than the expectations for children learning to speak in English as their native language. For example, for Asian students, they might find difficulties in pronouncing the /th/ sound. For that reason, a process will be needed. Don't ever hope that your students will be able to pronounce it well in a short time. Instead of pushing them to reach your goal instantly, help them and encourage them to improve their skill step by step until they are able to reach the goal by themselves. By doing this, they will be proud of themselves and realize that they can turn something which is at first very difficult for them into something easy. They will have boldness to face other difficult things they may face in the future.

You can start teaching them to speak by introducing simple chants, rhymes, or songs. Choose songs that have much repetition. You can also modify the lyrics of the songs or the entire songs themselves with pantomime and TPR – style activities. Doing these kind activities, children will not recognize that they are learning to speak a language; the vocabulary, pronunciation, and even the grammar, through the repetitive lyrics of the songs. Below, you can see a simple songs with repetitive lyrics...

This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Monday morning.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Tuesday morning.

You can modify this song to make it suitable for your goal.

For example, you want to teach them the vocabulary of days in a week, you can modify them into like this:

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Monday morning.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Tuesday morning.

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Wednesday morning.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Thursday morning.

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Friday morning.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Saturday morning.

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Sunday morning.

If you want to focus on introducing new verbs for the children, you can modify it into this one, for example:

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes.

This is the way we wash our clothes so early Monday morning.

This is the way we iron our clothes, iron our clothes, iron our clothes.

This is the way we iron our clothes so early Tuesday morning.

This is the way we pick our clothes, pick our clothes, pick our clothes.

This is the way we pick our clothes so early Monday morning.

This is the way we fold our clothes, fold our clothes, fold our clothes.

This is the way we fold our clothes so early Tuesday morning.

You can also ask them to act the verbs mentioned in the lyrics, such as washing, ironing, picking, and folding using the TPR technique.

Or use The Hokey – Pokey song:

You put your right foot in.

You put your right foot out.

You put your right foot in.

You shake it all about.

You do the Hokey – Pokey and you turn yourself around.

That's what it's all about.

(you can change the word “right” into “left” or “foot” into “arm”, “hand”, “head”, etc. Act the songs out with your students. Involving them through the activities will grow their interest in learning the language)

Young Learners' Classroom

It's an important thing to pay attention not only for the materials for your students but also for the design of the classroom. Some observers have found that the attractive design of the young learner's classroom will increase their motivation and curiosity of learning English.

Here are some examples of the young learners' classrooms:

The Map of the Young Learner's Classroom

The Sketch of A Pre - School Classroom

Butterflies

(Classroom's decorations will help the young learners get an easier undersatnding about colours)

Teaching Listening to Young Learners

Listening is one of the four language skills. Its importance is not less than the three others language skills. As we might already know, listening and reading belong to receptive skills since the focus is on receiving information from an outside source. Speaking and writing, on the other hand, belong to productive skills because the focus is on producing information.

Listening can be considered as the foundation for other skills. By listening, children are preparing to replicate the sounds when they speak. By developing good listening skills, they are able to match the sounds with the corresponding symbols when they decode words. Those two informations show that listening comprehension skills can prepare children to develop reading comprehension skills.

This following statement that shows how other skills are built on listening:

You need to hear a word before you can say it.
You need to say a word before you can read it.
You need to read a word before you can write it.

Before teaching listening to young learners, teachers should be familiar first with the three main learning channels: auditory, tactile, and visual.

1. Auditory Learners

They are able to learn the material better when it is presented in an auditory format such as listening to someone read a story aloud. The other examples of input are

• songs


• chants


• poems


• environmental sounds (rain, cars, trucks, animals, vacuum cleaners, computer printers, people walking, etc.)

2. Tactile Learners

They are able to remember information, language, and content better when they have physically manipulated or touched the information. They benefit when they have actually made something with their hands. The examples of input for tactile learners are:

• real life objects that children can touch as toys and puppets (the children need to actually touch the objects, not just merely look at them.)

3. Visual Learners

They often recall visual images or pictures easily. The examples of input for visual learners are:

• pictures such as drawings, sketches, photographs, paintings, posters, murals, diagrams, etc.

Imagine this situation...

Children are listening to a picture story book being read aloud. The visual learners will not be satisfied unless they have a good view of the pictures. The truly auditory learners will be content to listen to the words and tale being told with only the minimal amount of visual input or pictures. The tactile learners will want to have puppets or other props that they can handle as they listen to the story being told or as they tell the story themselves.

Anyway, it should be noted that all learners use a combination of different learning channels even though they may have a preference for one over the others.

From knowing that there are three main learning channels, you can create a learning that provide their needs. For example:

By doing such of things you will help the children to have a better understanding about the materials.