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This unit focuses in the two productive skills: writing and speaking. Both as equally important, they present some particular difficulties when it comes to learning them. Writing will require a greater degree of accuracy while speaking will be more focused on fluency.
In order to teach them successfully, the teacher should try to create the need and desire in the students to communicate something. When it comes to speaking, we can use either controlled or guided activities, which will focus more on accuracy, or creative communication activities, centered on fluency. A comfortable and friendly classroom is essential to avoid students feeling afraid or intimidated to participate. It is also important to give them enough time to think about what they are going to say.
In writing activities, when our students produce a written work, it is necessary to pay attention to grammar, the use of vocabulary, the punctuation, the words spelling and the text layout. All this aspects of the writing skill might be of great difficulty, depending on the students’ culture and native language and alphabetical system. During activities it is also necessary to allow sufficient time for the students to work.
Introducing games as part of the activities can be a fun and motivating way to learn these skills. We only need to adapt the game to the content we aim to teach.
Related to this lesson, I think everything is quite new to me, so all of the information is a new learning. Though both, writing and speaking, are essential skills when learning a language and quite difficult ones (I think the most difficult ones) in my personal experience, when I was learning English I remember that speaking was definitely the most terrifying one. Feeling scared of making mistakes or not being able to speak fluently enough because I would have to translate every word in my head would make it really hard for me to interact during the classes. I agree that creating a comfortable atmosphere in the classroom would be of great help during that hard period of language learning before being able to think in the language you are learning. Writing, instead, was much less scaring, since we have more time to think and review what is being done.
