What comes to your mind when you hear the
word speaking? In my case I really get afraid of. I am a shy person and I
avoid speaking in public, unless I have to do it. Now, that I am becoming a
teacher I am realizing that I will face this situation in many of my classes
with students. I have to look for ways to motivate them to speak. Fortunately,
there are varied activities to motivate students to speak. Most of the
time, when we think about speaking, we think about speaking for minutes. And it
becomes harder when it is an English class. People, in general, are afraid of
speaking in a language that is not the native language. Our job as teacher
is to create a confident environment for students, so that they feel confident
with themselves and make them feel that there is no problem if a mistake is
done. Show them that even we, as teachers, make mistakes.
There are thing that need to be taken into account when making speaking activities. For example, not to ask do you understand? I don´t know if you understand. With those phrases or questions we are telling students that they are not intelligent enough to understand what we are saying. Instead we can ask: Did I make my self clear? Is there any question?. The instructions for kids have to be short an simple. we need to find ways to have them stand up. Avoid repeating "stand up" for every activity.
Finally, I will share an activity, a speaking activity that was done in our classroom. We suppose that we saw animals the previews class, so the teacher (our classmate) inflated a balloon. He trough it to a student and the student who has the balloon had to say an animal and trough it to the teacher and so on. By doing this activity he made as speak without us noticing. We were motivated to remember as many animal as we could. It was funny and meaningful. We just need to llok for the appropiate activity. Remember, when teaching kids, speaking is not speaking for minutes, it is saying the words or phrases they remember.
There are thing that need to be taken into account when making speaking activities. For example, not to ask do you understand? I don´t know if you understand. With those phrases or questions we are telling students that they are not intelligent enough to understand what we are saying. Instead we can ask: Did I make my self clear? Is there any question?. The instructions for kids have to be short an simple. we need to find ways to have them stand up. Avoid repeating "stand up" for every activity. Finally, I will share an activity, a speaking activity that was done in our classroom. We suppose that we saw animals the previews class, so the teacher (our classmate) inflated a balloon. He trough it to a student and the student who has the balloon had to say an animal and trough it to the teacher and so on. By doing this activity he made as speak without us noticing. We were motivated to remember as many animal as we could. It was funny and meaningful. We just need to llok for the appropiate activity. Remember, when teaching kids, speaking is not speaking for minutes, it is saying the words or phrases they remember.
Deyanira, I really like the analysis you did about the fact of the strategies that teachers should be aware of in order to motivate students to speak the new language. I encourage you to forget about your shiness and think about what will your students get from your personality. Would you like to be remembered as a shy teacher?
ReplyDelete