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This unit 12 is a continuation of unit 11 (receptive skills). It widely discusses about the importance and functionality when applying productive skills (speaking and writing, including games).
I learnt that accuracy and fluency are equally important, in that both come into different stages of a lesson during the communication process between people. My finding is that although writing is often a most neglected skill in the TEFL world, it is actually a more difficult skill to navigate, which requires a greater level of accuracy.
In contrast, I managed to discover that although speaking is always focused by the students, any misunderstandings can be readily addressed “on the spot” as compared with writing skills, which requires a greater degree of fluency.
Accuracy activities (usually in study phase) are controlled by the teachers, in order to ensure students’ abilities to reproduce the language. Fluency activities (usually in activate phase), the language and contents output are driven by students themselves.
Furthermore, I also came across with some more useful speaking activities which I can apply into my future lessons. For examples, if I plan to enhance students’ accuracy, I can consider implementing controlled activities - “drilling” and “prompting”. This concept can similarly be applied to guided activities with greater emphasis on students’ creativity and productivity – “model dialogues” and “guided role play”.
On the other hand, if I plan to reinforce students’ fluency, I can executive some group activities such as “role play”, “information gap”, “debates” etc. By doing so, this can create more learning opportunities for the students to speak and interact with each other, and this is how their speaking fluency can be enhanced along the way.
Lastly, the other fruitful learning element for me would be the guidelines that I can follow through to ensure the greatest effectiveness when implementing free/creative speaking activities in my future lessons. There are 3 different stages – before the lesson (e.g. aims setting), during the activity (e.g. enhancing students’ interests through visuals (short lead ), and after the activity (e.g. providing feedback).
