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Unit 12 Overview In this unit we learn in details about productive skills which are: Speaking and writing. First, we find more information about different Speaking Activities. It includes: Controlled activities: Drilling for pronunciation ?Make the students to repeat after teacher pronunciation of various words. Guided activities: Guided role-play ? After study phase (where vocabulary was introduced, etc), we can have the students conduct a role-play. Creative communication: Debates ? organize the class in two groups with a given challenging randomly selected topic, and have the students defend their group of arguments for or against. Next step is we create motivation, to engage students in learning. Often this is very hard. When we?re teaching speaking and writing the biggest challenge is getting our students excited or motivated. This is the reason why a lot of the students feel like they don?t really need to master it. What can we do? One way would be to build confidence in the students by actively praising the students when they answer correctly and letting them know that it?s okay to make mistakes. Never say that any idea is bad. Validate the student?s contribution and try to get other students to contribute as well. Second, the teachers must be aware of cultural limitations of speaking and work with them or assign them in groups/pairs where they can interact with their peers. Finally, the best way to promote students to speak and interact is to create a comfortable environment, where students are encouraged to contribute ideas, experiment with the language, and enjoy communicating. Teaching writing skills is not less important and equally challenging. To master it we learn about handwriting, punctuation, spelling, and differences in spoken and written English. There are students who use a system of alphabet that is different from the English language so forming the English letters can be a problem. Handwriting can also be problematic if it creates an obstacle for the reader to understand the content. In this case, the teacher should encourage students to continually improve their handwriting. Another thing to consider is the use of punctuation. Written work can be a mess if the proper punctuations marks are not put in place. Spelling is another major issue. Students have to be made aware of the most common rules and complexities of spelling including silent letters and differences in British and American spelling. Students should be encouraged to read extensively to improve their spelling skills as well. Lastly, it?s also important to explain to the students the differences in spoken and written English. Examples of these are words like ?can?t?, ?I?d?, ?gonna? for spoken English and ?cannot?, ?I would?, and ?going to? for written English.
