Teach English in SAnlei Zhen - Wuwei Shi

Productive skills are equally as important as receptive skills. It includes speaking and writing, both skills related to output instead of the input of the receptive skills (reading and listening). More than often, teachers and students tend to ignore writing, which doesn't lead to the development of that skill. Moreover, in speaking, we use accuracy and fluency activities. The difference between both is that accuracy concentrates on producing correct pronunciation and output, while fluency concentrates on the creativity and flow when using the language. Teachers may use accuracy in the study phase and fluency in the activate phase of a lesson. There are some speaking activities that may help in class such as controlled activities, guided activities, and creative communication. Teachers may use drilling or prompting activities as controlled activities, where the language is focused on accuracy and controlled by the teacher. In guided activities, model dialogues and guided role-plays may suit best, since they are accuracy based with a little creativity and the output is controlled by the teacher. Teachers may also use creative communication, where the activities are based on fluency and not much controlled by the teacher, but created by him/her instead. Some creative communication activities include free role-play, discussions, information gap, debates, and simulations. However, some students may hesitate to speak in class due to a variety of reasons, some of which may be lack of confidence, fear of mistakes, peer intimidation, lack of interest, previous experience, or cultural reasons. It is up to the teacher to encourage those students by assigning peer-work, controlling and guiding activities before fluency practice, creating a need to communicate, changing classroom dynamics, planning carefully, and giving students time to think before they answer. Therefore, there are a few guidelines to ensure a free and creative speaking environment. Before the lesson, the teacher should decide on the objectives of the lesson, predict problems that students may encounter, tailor activities to the lesson time, prepare materials for the class, and work out the instructions. During the activity, the teacher should draw the students' interest through relating the topic to their own experiences, remind them of certain vocabulary that could be used, give clear instructions of the activity and its aim, and ensure the students have enough time to prepare for it. Teachers can also make sure the activities are ''process'' rather than ''product'' based, monitor the activity, and finally evaluate the students' performance and give feedback. After the activity, the teacher should state how well the students communicated, record the activity sometimes, and note down possible student errors in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary use. Writing, on the other hand, incorporates a number of factors such as handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuation, and creative writing. For penmanship, it is ultimately important since it could affect the reader negatively, and teachers should always encourage its improvement. Spelling can also affect the writer negatively, since misspelling a word could lead to an incorrect understanding by the reader. Layout and punctuation could be a problem for some students, for if it's different than their prior knowledge with their own language. Students should be able to practice various activities, in order to be exposed to the new language as often as possible. With creative writing, students are given the change to explore different aspects of the new language, by giving them creative writing tasks in pairs or groups. Personally, I think that games could be a very powerful tool for learning a new language in the classroom. It grabs the students' attention and gives them a chance to compete and feel a sense of accomplishment. It can be fun and equally educating. They are very popular amongst children and teenagers and there are many creative books which incorporate games specifically for the English language. Some educational gaming can be in twenty questions, tic-tac-toe, hangman, twister, cluedo, snakes, connect 4, mime, jeopardy, crosswords, or pictionary.