Improving oral language skills of beginning students

As you know, the education system is a social mechanism for the constant transfer of accumulated knowledge to subsequent generations. With the help of this mechanism, the formation of the personality in society is ensured and predetermined, because without the transfer of accumulating and developing knowledge, neither society nor the individual can develop.

Educating young people in the spirit of patriotism and respect for our national values, protection from various ills and threats, increasing the effectiveness of propaganda work is one of the pressing problems of today.

Most English-language teachers would agree that listening and speaking are two of the most important and difficult skills to teach students of English. This is especially true in Uzbekistan, where English is a foreign language and the students do not have opportunities to practice these skills in an authentic setting, nor do they hear English spoken outside the classroom.

Reasons for using supplementary exercises. Uses the functional approach, I felt need to conduct some extra communicative activities as supplementary exercises. Firstly, we wanted to motivate the students to speak English. Second, I wanted to help the shy students overcome their inhibitions and use English naturally. Third, I wanted to provide students with opportunities to use English in real situations. Fourth, we wanted to help them speed up their acquisition of English. And finally, I wanted to encourage language learning through the use of lively and interesting materials and activities that would bring the students’ world into the classroom. The communicative activities also provided opportunities for personal interactions among learners and between learners and teachers, which personalized the classroom and supported the learners in their efforts to learn the language. [1] As teacher, my role was to select activities suitable for the age, interests, and language ability of the students. I explained the purpose of each activity and the context or situation when I introduced them. I also provided language items or structures to be used in the activities, and I ignored mistakes in pronunciation while the students in real communication. I avoided interrupting them so as not to inhibit their fluency in speaking and so that I wouldn’t distract the students when they were communicating ideas. Mistakes were corrected after the language activities. The reasons are obvious to most practitioners: speeches are difficult to manage in the classroom; they are hard to evaluate; teachers feel insufficiently prepared in formal public-speaking theory; and students are reluctant to do them because of the amount of work and the stage fright they entail. Finally, but most important of all, the oral presentation can easily turn into a one-man show with only one student, the speaker, involved.

Presentation of oral language activities. Here are the instructions for five supplementary activities that used last semester. After describing each activity, I will comment on each one and the results of using it in my classroom.

Informal Interview. Instructions:

• -    Ask the students to sit in a circle and write three questions on a piece of paper that they would like to ask the teacher.

• -    The teacher only gestures agreement or disagreement in response to the students’ answers.

This activity helps break the ice at the beginning of the semester, and it helps the shy students to speak without inhibition. It also reviewed the language structures they had studied the semester before coming to this course.

Interest Pie. Instructions:

• -    The teacher asks the students to draw a pie on a sheet of paper.

• -    Next, the students should divide the pie into several slices and write a word related to an activity or thing that they are very interested in.

• -    The width of each slice depends on the importance each other about the information they see in their partner’s pie.

• -    Finally, the students sit in a circle, and each one talks about his/her partner’s interests: reading, music, travelling, cooking, watching TV, job, family.[2]

Again, this activity provided opportunity for the students to review the language structures previously taught, to express likes/dislikes, as well, as to talk to each other about themselves. After the activity was finished, I commented on their mistakes in structure, pronunciation, vocabulary.

The ability to give an oral presentation is an important skill in a varied range of careers, and training in public speaking can help develop important linguistic and personal qualities in students. Some teachers already include formal presentations in their courses, realizing that students benefit from the attributes that are demanded. Training in public speaking not only cultivates confidence and clear articulation, but also develops useful research skills and encourages careful planning and preparation in the in the use of language. However, many teachers feel they can do little to help students beyond setting a topic, providing class time, and offering post-presentation advice. But while this view is understandable, it is also misleading. It’s true that the teaching of literature offers little assistance on how teachers should either prepare students for public speaking or provide them with worthwhile feedback on their performances. However, detailed help can be offered in the planning and delivery of oral presentations. This skill area can be taught just as systematically as any other in the syllabus if it is treated as a practical step-by-step process leading to the final presentation.

Obviously, students cannot be expected to simply gather data and present it. As with most language activities, there are skills and strategies That can be thought to make the task easier and help speakers discover some of the problems before they actually deliver their talks. To demonstrate a number of basic precepts of oral communication, students can practice giving simple presentations of a few minutes’ duration. These might merely involve a speaker describing a hidden diagram consisting of a few simple shapes that the audience has to draw. The teacher can easily prepare a number of diagrams in advance and ask a series of students to present them. [3]

Conclusion. The activities presented above proved to be a success. They are simple and easy to use. At the end of the semester the students showed that they had increased their vocabulary, mastered many language structures, and could express their ideas more freely.

The teacher’s role, while the students are performing the activities, is to be an understanding listener without demanding perfect responses and to create situations and exercises that provide opportunities for oral communication and stimulate the students to try to engage in such communication, overcoming all the obstacles that hinder them. While the students perform, the teacher can monitor their strengths and weaknesses, and at the end of each activity can use the weaknesses as indications of what needs to be learned, and thus to plan remedial work. Every language teacher can think of additional ways to use interesting techniques to supplement language instruction. What teachers should bear in mind is that the most important thing is to help the students become more confident in their ability to communicate orally with a limited knowledge of English.