“The Speaking Skill in Foreign language Teaching and Learning”

Teaching and learning a foreign language has always been the primary concern of so
many researchers. One of the pertinent areas is teaching and learning language skills more
particularly “the speaking skill”. That is, speaking is the most impressive motor skill since
human begins are able to produce an infinite number of words and capable to well generate
their body language. In this case, foreign language learners need to know how speakers differ
from one another and how particular circumstances call for different forms of speech. From
that standpoint, a number of questions were highlighted: So, to what extend is the speaking
skill relevant? And how could a tutor improves his learners speaking ability?

To start with, teaching the speaking skill has been a debatable issue for so many years.
For many decades, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers
have continued to teach it just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues despite its
importance. However, today's world requires the improvement of students’ communicative
skills, because, only in that way, they can express themselves and learn how to follow the
social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative circumstance.

To put clear, being able to speak and communicate ideas independently and fluently has
always been measured as one of the crucial skills that challenge learners to different degrees.
Most of foreign language teachers experience a great defy when trying to improve their
students’ communicational abilities. This means that the speaking skill is emotionally,
cognitively and socially complex. According to Chaney (1998) “Speaking is the process of
building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a
variety of contexts”; so, Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching.

Then, owing to David Nunan (2003), teaching the speaking skill means helping
students to produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns, to use word and sentence
stress, intonation patterns and the rhythm of the second language; besides to selecting
appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting and subject matter,
organizing their thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence, and to use language as a
means of expressing values and judgments.

In addition, the major goal of teaching the speaking skills communicative proficiency,
i.e. language learners should make themselves understood by using their existing knowledge
and current proficiency throughout avoiding confusions in the message. Hence, according to
Nunan (1991) “a success in language learning is measured in terms the ability to carry
out a conversation in the target language”. This means that if learners fail to speak, they
will soon get demotivated and loose interests.

As a matter of fact, a tremendous number of foreign language students more often than
not have many difficulties in developing their speaking skill. One of the prime common
complexities is “students’ inhibition”: that is, speaking activities require a student to have all
eyes on him and exposure to an audience can often give students stage fright. They may also
be worried about making mistakes, being criticized or losing face in front of the rest of the
class. 

Students may also have “nothing to say” that is another common problem ; students
sometimes think they have nothing to say on a particular topic whereas in reality, they may be
bored or feel that the topic is unrelated to anything they know. If this is the case, they will
have no motivation to speak other than the fact that they know they should be participating in
the speaking activity. They often lack confidence in their speaking ability and feel they have
insufficient language skills to express exactly what they want to say. 

Besides to “The low of participation”; there will always be dominant students in an

English class making it difficult for more reserved students to express themselves freely.
Dominant students who interrupt frequently or who constantly look for the teacher's attention
tend to create an environment in the ESL class where more timid students are quite happy to
sit back and watch the lesson unfolding instead of participating. 

In addition to the “Mother-tongue use”; students who insist on using their mother
tongue are students who are fearful of criticism and need to be encouraged to speak English.
They must understand that they cannot revert to their mother tongue as this will take away
precious speaking practice time during lessons and slow down oral progress.

Therefore, it is part of teachers’ job to solve students’ communicational problems and to

help the evolving throughout considering tremendous factors and implementing sundry
activities. Indeed, nowadays, many linguistics and ESL teachers agree on that students learn
to speak in the second language by "interacting". “Communicative language teaching”
and “collaborative learning” serve best for this aim.  Communicative language teaching is
based on real-life situations that require communication. By using this method in ESL classes,
students will have the opportunity of communicating with each other in the target language. 
In brief, ESL teachers should create a classroom environment where students have real-life
communication, authentic activities, and meaningful tasks that promote oral language. This
can occur when students collaborate in groups to achieve a goal or to complete a task.

To put it differently, the value of the “Group work” is well documented. It increases
the amount of time available for oral practice and allows more than one student to benefit
from speaking time. Working in groups also lowers the inhibitions of shy students who are
not comfortable speaking in front of the whole class, as Vardar stated: “our confidence in
our friends allows us to undertake the first grouping steps for sorting out our feelings
and thoughts and putting them into words.”

Another factor to facilitate communication is “Easy language”: simple language

makes it easier for students to speak for longer without hesitation and gives them a sense of
accomplishment. Essential vocabulary can be pre-taught before the activity enabling students
to fill-out their speech with more interesting sentences and rich language. Besides to selecting
“Interesting topic”, i.e. choosing a topic according to the interests of the class ensures
student motivation. If the material and task instructions are presented clearly and
enthusiastically students will be more likely to meet the challenge set for them.

Providing “Clear guidelines” for students also ensure their language development.
Stating clearly what is expected from each student is essential in guaranteeing that everyone
in the group contributes towards the discussion. Feedback reveals the results of the discussion
and motivates each student to follow the guidelines. At the mean time, a monitor can be
appointed to each group to remind students speaking their mother tongue to switch back to
English. A lack of classroom management and discipline will encourage students, who do not
feel that there is resistance to their mother tongue, to easily revert back to it as soon as they
have problems expressing themselves.
unlike the other skills is more complicated than it seems since it involves more than just
pronouncing words. The way of uttering sentences is said to be spontaneous. In other words,
it is generally believed that humans are able to speak fluently and express themselves
naturally, without being prepared or planned beforehand. Unlike the written language that is
planned and well organized, the spoken language is often characterized by the frequent
repetition, false starts, hesitations, short sentences …etc.

Variation is another characteristic of the spoken language. That is, speakers usually
produce language according to the present situation and depending on the interlocutor; when
speaking with a director the language is more formal than when speaking with peers. Then, it
is reasonable to believe that language changes through time and differ from one situation to
another.

As a matter of fact, most of peoples’ daily life language is assimilated as blocks. This
means, people usually produce “gambits speech”; a kind of conversational speech routines.
This gambits speech is built of some words and sentences that speakers are more likely to
produce naturally according to the current situation. This kind of routine language is not
planned or taught off, as for instance: I like it- don’t worry…etc.

As far as the foreign language oral competence is concerned, it is really significant to

enhance learners’ oral expressions; this could be done through teaching them such kind of
gambits or conversational routines speech: how and when to use it?. It is part of teachers job
to teach their learners the not only the benefit of these expressions but also the extent to which
they contribute in promoting a social cultural knowledge; the gambits language reflects the
societies’ specific features and cultures.

Moreover, the teaching of conversational routines to foreign language learners helps

them to overcome their difficulties in speaking. That is: students usually face some
linguistics’ background deficiency. So, the gambits speech is regarded as “a language
strategy” that helps learners to make up for their communicative competence lack, and simply
to adjust their spoken language. This way, they could improve their communicative skills and
be more fluent.
 Furthermore, society’s culture plays an important role in language’s production. It is
simply defined as every single patterns and aspects associated to a group of people. Thus, the
spoken discourse reflects to a large extent the cultures and believes of a specific community.

To put it simple, culture is considered as an undistinguishable feature of language

discourse. Whenever speaking, people usually consider their norms and society‘s governing
rules in order to produce a comprehensive language.

Additionally, throughout the foreign language teaching, the “non verbal language” was
not well considered; it was simply marginalized. Yet, some researchers have accentuated on
the relevance of the body gestures and signs; they claim that most of our language is produced
and transmitted via “body gestures”. Thus, “the non verbal communication” is of paramount
importance; in many cases, “the oral speech” is better transmitted via body movements and
sign, it facilitates the interaction and the interpretation of the message.

Finally, teaching and learning “the speaking skill” requires some efforts from both
teachers and learners. The way to achieve good communicative skills is through providing
learners with opportunities to practice the target language. Then, students have to get clear
instructions about the appropriate use of speech according to a given situation. By doing so,
the learners’ speaking quality and quantity will definitely improve.