SPEAKING TRAINING (A GUIDE TO A BETTER ESL-CLASS LECTURE)

AGENDA:

Objective: To be able to develop the speaking skills of the teachers in classroom

teaching thru a lecture on the necessary useful speaking skills commonly used in
class.

I- NECESSARY SKILLS
1. Organization
2. Maintaining consistency
3. Making a good synthesis
4. Summarizing the whole class lecture
II- APPLICATION
1. Impromptu Speech

THE LECTURE PROCCESS

 ORGANIZATION (PRIOR TO THE CLASS PROPER)

-must express clear ideas
*Class Motivation-start with a clear delivery of what you want your students
to catch. Avoid using “flowery words” Korean students in general lack the
ability to read between the lines.
A. How?
1. For speaking classes, read the questions ahead and understand the
task being asked, make sure you as the teacher understood what
the questions are asking the students to do. Avoid thinking what
you’re doing is a routinely task that does not need a prior review.
2. For VAGUE questions, it’s easier for our students to understand if
we’d take the effort on rewording key words in the questions in the
simple form. This is not an easy task as it seems, chances are we
might change the question’s point or we might take it only on our
pure understanding.
3. Before finalizing what you will say in class, take time to sit for a
while and ponder in mind how will you start the class right. Always
foresee students Korean students are not that well exposed to
English, so do not presume they would always understand you
when you speak to them at first.

Ready relevant supporting ideas to your lecture (ideally 3)

4. Always arrange your ideas from the most to least important, bear in
mind the time given us, 50 minutes is not much time. Take note of
the lessons we need to deliver in each term, taking much time on
one single topic is not advisable.
 Although we need to deliver a quality lecture it must go with the
quantity too. ESL-learning gives our students not ample time to
learn. Teachers’ task is to deliver English knowledge as much as we
can the best we could.

 MAINTAINING CONSISTENCY
-As for the motivation, we’re acquainted to always establish a good rapport
with the students. True enough, but this should come also with establishing
the topic already at once. Remember again the time.

It’s not wrong to ask our students “How’s your day today?” or “Good
morning/afternoon, how have you been?” But try to picture yourself doing
and saying this to your students from the morning till the afternoon everyday
Monday to Friday. The point is ESL-learning is a new era form of learning;
therefore it should go with transformation of the way we’re used to. Instead
of the normal greeting our students, try to hit them with questions related to
the topic that day.

A. How?
1. Introduce your topic in not more than 3 sentences, make it short
and sweet. Bear in mind the motivation should ideally last for
only 5 minutes or else you won’t be able to get to your main
lecture topic.
a. For the READING COMPREHENSION classes, you may use the
pictures in the book, or find other related pictures conveying
the idea you want your students to pick up.

The use of experiences may also work at times, but you

should consider, there are some students who wish to keep
their personal experiences private, meeting these students
would make it harder to deliver the class lesson. A good way
to answer this situation is write “simple words” related to the
topic on the board, and then draw the students to speak on
those words. Do not use words that would require them to
use their dictionary this is more irritating to students who
does not want to share.

2. When explaining the lesson proper for BG. GROUP it very helpful
to draw a diagram on the board while you’re discussing. Then
after your finish go over the diagram and let them follow your
hand as your reiterate your point of discussion. Use simple and
short syllabic words in the diagram.
a. BEFORE EXPLAINING
-Select a point of your topic that is easily supported
 -Organize the flow of your lecture in your mind
-Make sure you have enough reasons when students asked
for more explanations

b. WHILE EXPLAINING

-Make a clear statement of your topic

-State clear and short reasons for your topic, students still
have deficiency in listening to English. Speaking in long
complex sentences only creates a rigid learning condition to the
students. TEACHERS! We’re not here to show how excellent
speakers we are here to guide students and make them
competent in English.

-Use concrete examples, like pictures, situations, etc. In doing

this let’s be selective and considerate, Koreans are conservative
people. Do not use offensive pictures that in our culture are
openly acceptable, it may not be for them.

-Use transitions or signal words when explaining. Signal words

help the student to easily follow what we say in class. It’s best to
also give them a copy of the simple yet useful transitions during
the first day of the term.

 MAKING A GOOD SYNTHESIS

-To make our students understand the discussion in class and be able to draw
responses from them must always be our main goal. At the same time we’re
trying to help students recognize the speaker’s attitude and tone when they
hear people talking. Let’s make them understand English speaking should
come with the proper tone and attitude of the speaker. We can only do this if
we their teachers are doing so.
A. How?
1. Read the lesson and take down notes of key words you can use
when you’re already giving your lecture in class. We have been taught
that an efficient lecturer or speaker speaks without looking into his or
her prepared speech. Well this is not true in the case of teaching
Koreans. The concept of an efficient teacher in Korea is a teacher who
brings a lot of materials in class, such as notes to confer to when he
she is lecturing. You might find this odd, but it’s true try to observe
your students eyes when you’re speaking and you seemed lost their
eyes would be directed to your books. It is not a shame to prepare and
note where you can look into when you have forgotten your next word.
Even professors of todays’ use cue cards in class.
 2. To synthesize the lesson do not do away with the main characters in
the lesson, when you want to cite added examples use the same
characters, it would be easier to the students to follow you.
 SUMMARIZING THE WHOLE CLASS LECTURE
-The main purpose of summing-up the class is to leave the students a great
impression of the topic making them remember the lessons longer. We don’t
expect students to remember all, but for them to appreciate the class is to
give an EXCELLENT SUMMARY of the topic. The rationales why we need to
give the most effort in this part is Korean students are very much attracted to
learn English when they get to like their teachers. One way to make your
students like you is not to show off your speaking ability in the manner we
know here in the Philippines. Impress your students by making them
understand you and making them catch up with you.
A. How?
1. Paraphrase key points of your lecture, support your summary with
one example.
2. Use transitions signaling you’re already summarizing the class. Once
you’re done and there’s still time left, give the students a preview of
the next lesson. You might find this odd, as you observe students they
have a very short memory retention of the English language especially
on the latter part of the class, so to be able to finish all your lesson in
45 minutes time if you can leaving you and the students to talk about
the next lesson although they might not be any more interested will
make you daily lesson well done, at the same time, the next day when
you ask them about the next lesson they might as well something from
what they can remember of the very short 5 minutes preview the day
before!