TESOL Nairobi

The two productive skills in a language are, speaking and writing. This unit discussed the difference in accuracy and fluency exercises. Both are important, with writing accuracy can be more important since there may not be a chance to fix any mistakes that were made, where as with speaking you often have a chance to fix the problem. When we are working on productive skills it is very important to get all the students feeling comfortable to try speaking by finding ways to encourage them. When working on writing, handwriting, spelling, and layout and punctuation are very important. A lot of students may not be encouraged or feel they have no reason to practice writing so creative writing is often a good way for them to practice. Good activities for a writing lesson could involve comic strips where the students have pictures and empty bubbles and in pairs the students write the story in the bubbles. Lastly this unit discussed the use of games in a classroom. Although games are fun we should use them as tools for learning. There are many games created just for learning language but other games can be adapted to help learning if the teacher uses some creativity.