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.