Importance of teaching English through productive skills

The article deals with teaching English through productive skills ESP students. The best goal of most teaching English through writing and speaking skills will enable to communicate effectively. Writing and speaking are considered to be productive skills that means, they involve producing language rather than receiving it.

The best goal of most teaching English through productive skills ESP students is to acquire language skills that will enable them to communicate effectively. What is communication, however if it is merely one-sided? It is, of course, necessary to be able to understand a person speaking to you, but if you cannot respond with a succinct, understandable answer, opinion, comment or question, there is rarely a point to engaging in the interaction to begin with. Whether these interactions are verbal or written, a person unable to share their point-of-view, defend their actions, praise or thank someone will inevitably have a difficult time connecting with people and, in end effect, navigating the world. Communication takes on many forms and significance, and because successful, clear communication is the ultimate goal in the ESP classroom, writing and speaking skills become the focus. While writing and speaking are considered productive skills (as opposed to listening and reading, the receptive language skills); both require different teaching methodologies and pose different pedagogical difficulties. Speaking is the means through which a good ESP classroom will run and is most often the focus of students trying to learn the language. Speaking commands, a certain level of fluency, which can only be acquired through regular practice. In addition, a speaker will often need to think "on the spot" and be ready to respond to some unpredictable circumstances. It is obvious that only a classroom committed to using English as the language of communication can benefit from practice and only a teacher willing, patient, organized, and dedicated enough to bettering his/her students' English speaking Skills will see their students improving. It is his\her responsibility to design lessons that not only maximize student talk time, but also present the opportunity to practice speaking in controlled, guided and creative speaking situations. A variety activities will not only keep a class active and interesting, but will also inevitably provide students with a wide-range of circumstances in which English must be used in different ways. Drilling students in the pronunciation of a certain word by first asking the class to repeat the target word three times and then calling on three separate students to try individually, is an example of a controlled activity, developed to build students’ confidence and to give them abundant practice before moving on to an activity that requires more free-thinking production. A guided activity might include a role-play complete with relevant vocabulary and appropriate phrases needed to enact a scene. This allows students to experiment with the language, while simultaneously ensuring them that they are on the right track, producing understandable, applicable language. Finally, a creative activity allows students to choose freely from all the English they already know to produce something more likely to mirror a real-life situation. This type of activity could be anything from a debate, some sort of communication game like Taboo, or a discussion. Students’ writing, like their speaking, can only benefit from exposure to a wide-range of situations which require specific skills and language. A teacher will want to ensure that she\he is giving students practice in all areas of writing. Of course, a course’s concentration on a particular style of writing, as with a particular style of speaking, will depend on the ultimate goals of the students in the course, but every class can benefit from exposure to varying patterns, rules, techniques and themes. We would like to analyze aspects of teaching speaking and writing and have a deeper look into the problems of teaching them. we will also present some interesting and practical ideas how to make students successful in writing and speaking. Writing is one of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Writing and speaking are considered to be productive skills that means, they involve producing language rather than receiving it. “ within the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of writing enjoys special status- it is via writing that a person can communicate a variety of messages to a close or distant, know or unknown reader or readers. Such communication is extremely important in the modern world, whether the interaction takes the form of traditional paper- and pencil writing or the most advanced electronic mail. “ (Celce- Murcia, 1991: 235). Writing has served different functions in society. It is typically used for the transmission for cultural knowledge, keeping records of historical facts or scientific developments, codifying laws etc. in everyday life, writing is used for sharing information (newspapers), for entertainment (comics, computer games), for social contact (e-mails, SMSs) and for action 9telephone directories). When writing, we have to distinguish between accuracy and fluency, writing accurately involves spelling correctly, forming letters correctly, writing legibly, using correct pronunciation, using correct lay outs and choosing the right vocabulary. We also have to use grammar correctly, joining sentences correctly and using paragraphs correctly. As it was mentioned earlier, when we write we communicate a message. To communicate a message means; e.g. Express somebody’s experience, respond to greeting or invitation. Therefore we can state, that both accuracy and fluency on both of them. The goal of a language teacher is to enable students to produce fluent, understandable, accurate and appropriate written English. But this is a hard work for English teachers in mixed ability classes where the students are on the different level. According to G. Broughton, et al., English teachers can use three stages of writing; 1.Controlled writing, 2 Guided writing, 3 Free writing (Broughton, 118) . Teaching speaking skills in this part of the work I would like to introduce several suggestions by different authors for teaching speaking skills. Robert S. Brown and P. Nation claim that students should be offered form-focused instructions and meaning-focused instructions. Form- focused Speaking goes deeply into details of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. This stage is suitable for beginners. An effective way how to start teaching foreign languages is to base speaking on some simple, useful phrases and sentences e.g. greeting, simple questions and answers or personal descriptions which are easy to remember. These can be practiced by repetition drills. By repetition drills the teachers can change speed, the learner who is to repeat, the content of the sentence and the way of choosing the substitution. I agree with their opinion that: “ Drills play a useful part in a language course in helping learners to be formally accurate in their speech and in helping them to quickly learn a useful collection of phrases and sentences that allow them to start using the language as soon as possible.” Meaning – focused Speaking – in this stage the attention lays on the message being communicated.

The activity develops learner’s ability to speak. R.S Brown and P. Nation suggest several ways: 1. The teacher presents new vocabulary or grammar ( it is based on form- focused instruction) and then the students are given some practice.2. Frequently, before the students start to speak they work in groups or pairs to prepare the activity. The activity gives learners the opportunity to learn form each other.3. The students are given topics to talk about. They may prepare it for homework, use dictionaries or a reference text and then they present what they have prepared. 4. Often, the activities are supported by pictures or written texts. They appear in a raking activity or a problem solving activity where the text contains important data about the situation and so on.5. Many speaking activities force students to ask each other. The pattern of these activities is that each learner receives different information for completing the activity.