Bluffton, Georgia TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

Productive skills are speaking and writing. In teaching productive skills, teachers must create a need in the students to use these skills during the lesson, meaning the students must want or need something from someone or want or need to communicate something to someone. Different phases of the lesson will focus on either accuracy (correct usage) or fluency (speaking without stopping to think). The Study phase of a speaking lesson usually focuses on accuracy and is structured, teacher-controlled, and involves correcting errors. Some Study activities and most Activate activities focus on fluency and are largely student-controlled and more creative than structured. Teachers do not want to correct during this phase because correction could impede the free flow of language and also intimidate students, leading to a reluctance to speak the target language at all. Writing, although it may be more difficult and time consuming to teach and learn, is also important. Like speaking lessons, the Study phase will focus on accuracy--in this case of penmanship, spelling, and punctuation, and the Activate phase will focus on creativity and the flow of the language. Creating an environment where students feel safe and as unselfconscious as possible when producing language is very important or they will not be able to practice using the language and, therefore, will never be confident using it in real life. One way to get students speaking in a fun way is through the use of games that require communication. Games can teach without feeling threatening.