TESOL Santiago De Los Caballeros

Unit 16 covered how to teach the productive skills speaking and listening. It is important to create a need and desire to communicate in the students to have a successful activity. There are mainly two types of activities. Accuracy activities like drilling and prompting focus on the correct use of the target language while fluency activities such as debates, communication games, and free role-play are used to produce creativity and to give the student practice speaking without stopping to think. In the latter, the flow in communication is the more important. Students can be reluctant to speak because of a fear of making mistakes, peer intimidation, or a lack of interest so teachers must ensure that the classroom dynamics are comfortable. This can be done through careful planning so as to choose a topic or activity that will motivate and be interesting for the class. Teachers can also encourage more pair or group work to relieve the stress. Doing guided practice before the activity can ensure that the students have the vocabulary or structures they need to complete it. Also, giving the students time to prepare will help certain activities. Writing, most often neglected because of the time constraint in class, focus on spelling, handwriting, and the lay out and punctuation. Activities are either situational writing such as postcards, emails, or formal letters or creative writing such as poetry or stories.