Reflection On Speaking Skills

The main goal of this short paper is to reflect on my teaching experiences in English classes. In today’s class I focus on the speaking skill. Put simply, speaking skills are a central focus of today 's lesson, with an emphasis on natural, conversational language. As mentioned in the previous reflective journals, the textbook for this class is “Interchange”. Therefore, in this book, the discussion, role play, and speaking exercises, as well as the Interchange activities, provide speaking opportunities that systematically build oral fluency. In addition, the conversations illustrate different speaking strategies, such as how to open and close conversations, ask follow up questions, take turns, and use filler words (e.g., well, you know, so). Moreover, almost all other exercises offer fun, personalized speaking practice and opportunities to share opinions. Usually, when I teach speaking skill, two important questions raise in my teaching. The first one is “my students often have problems understanding my instructions. What am I doing wrong?” and the

I asked few pairs to role play the conversation for the class. Unfortunately, there were just two students who they could present the conversation. Hence, I used a new task which its aim was to encourage the students to look at their partners while practicing conversation. I pointed out to the students that it is important to look at your partner when speaking and then I explained the task. They should work in pairs in this way: student (1) looks briefly at the first line of the conversation and tries to remember it. Then the student (1) looks up at student (2) and say the line. Student (2) looks briefly at the next line of conversation, tries to remember it, and then looks up and says it. This technique is a useful way to help the students develop eye contact while speaking and it works best when the students stand up and face each