Developing students' speaking via different materials and activities

As speaking is one of four essential skills, so we cannot deny its vital importance as comparing to other three. Teaching speaking is type of art and helping others understand its gist as well as teaching non-native speakers how to speak correctly, with confidence, accuracy and etiquette is way much harder than anyone can think. If we talk about teaching speaking specifically in a certain level of the language proficiency, we usually find an approach how to direct students into better understanding and acquisition of the language we are teaching, and that could be any kind of method chosen by the teacher.

For instance, traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form or drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer. The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer. The aim of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and answer the question.

In contrast, the purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information, or expressing an opinion etc. In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say. Authentic communication involves an information gap; each participant has information that the other does not have. In addition, to achieve their purpose, participants may have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding. As in the book "Keep talking" Communicative fluency activities for language teaching by Klippel the purpose of teaching this skill is, to create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, instructors need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression. Instructors need to combine structured output activities that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely.

It is significant to note that, while implementing the activities or the methods can create some of the difficult moment which we never expect. Difficult with students' confidence when speaking, error correction techniques, pronunciation, intonation, their accent and their reactions to express themselves freely; therefore dealing with these issues can be time consuming as well. While conducting the research done by the investigator, she had concerns such as, "How can students overcome their native language influence on the target one regarding their accent and pronunciation?" , "How will the developmental activities improve their speech?", "What are the possible solutions for making them understand that errors are not too important when learning to speak?".

Some studies have shown that the human brain is more open to linguistic development during the years between birth and pre-adolescence and that children who learn a language before the onset of adolescence are more likely to develop native-like pronunciation . The linguistic apparatus of a 3-5 year old child is already formed, but still retains its flexibility. According to linguists and psychologists such as N. V. Imedadze, M. P. Bahurova and others, these physiological abilities allow children to learn a foreign language without slowing down their further speech development. W. Penfield states that the physiological reason for the success of language learning at this age is that the child’s brain has a special ability to learn a language – an ability that decreases with age. Scholars who advocate early bilingualism mention the existence of a comparison mechanism in the mind of a child. This mechanism of comparing a foreign and a native language enables the child to master two languages simultaneously (Roman

• 2008) . On the basis of experimental research, Imedadze concluded that in their bilingual language development children pass two stages:

• 1)    mixing both languages while speaking;

• 2)    independent functioning of the bilingual system.

The basis for the successful switching from one language to another, in the author’s opinion, lies in the stability of differentiation. That is, the clearer the differentiation is, the easier it is to switch from one language to another, and the fewer cases of language mixing occur. Another view is shared by N. S. Karapetova (2000) and N. A. Malkina (2004). The authors insist on creating a “pure” language environment before beginning to teach foreign language classes to young children. They recommend avoiding any use of the native language and to give the students an impression that the teacher does not understand the native language at all. These authors suggest teaching a language by applying the full immersion method, through painting, singing and body movements.

Also, Jean Piaget identified four stages of cognitive and affective development in childhood and adolescence. The child develops cognitively through active involvement with the environment, and each new step in the development builds on and becomes integrated with previous steps (Piaget, 2010). Because two of the four shifts in the developmental stage normally occur during the elementary school years, it is important for 20 language teachers working with children to keep the characteristics of each cognitive stage in mind. Piaget points out that children are not simply miniature adults who have less experience and thus less knowledge to work with as they approach problems and new situations. They do not think like adults because their minds are not like adult minds. It is the privilege of the elementary school teacher to share their world and learn to work within it.

Obviously, children are considered as natural language learners. Almost without exception, they learn their native language with apparent ease. Moreover, children who are brought into a foreign language setting and immersed in a new situation – for example, an elementary school taught in the foreign language – often begin to function successfully in the new setting at a sufficient linguistic level after around 6 months. Curtain and Dahlberg (2009) note that these examples of children’s natural language learning ability may seem to suggest that the best way to help a child learn a language is simply to place him or her in the target language setting, but, unfortunately, this is not an approach that will be available to most children. The authors point out that both linguistic and psychological theory can help explain children’s seemingly effortless second-language acquisition and provide insights 18 that can make the classroom a better place for such language acquisition to take place (Curtain and Dahlberg, 2009). As learners of a foreign language, children have their own psychological characteristics, which are different from those of adults. These characteristics include their ways of thinking, their attitude, their aptitude, et cetera. This should, of course, influence the way they are taught. To give them the best quality of English teaching, their teachers need to know and understand the children. Pre-school children are in a sensitive period for language development. They absorb languages effortlessly and are adept imitators of speech sounds. Because they are very self-centered, they do not work well in groups, and they respond best to activities and learning situations relating to their own interests and experiences. Although they have a short attention span, they have great patience for repetition of the same activity or game.