Teaching Speaking with Technology
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Here, in Indonesia, English becomes one
of foreign language which has to be taught to the students. English is the
universal language and the government put English in the curriculum to draw up
the young generation for facing the global era.
Many students equate being able to speak
a language as knowing the language and therefore view learning the language as
learning how to speak the language, or as Nunan in Lawtie (2004) wrote,
"success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation
in the (target) language."
There are some benefits of utilizing ICT
in teaching English speaking. They are:
1. ICTs
can give teachers access to great conceptualisers – inside or outside their own ranks – to assist them in planning
and programming cognitive development.
2. the
interactive capacity of ICTs provides more opportunities for student to engage
as creators and manipulators in the learning process.
3. ICT
enables student to design in ways that demonstrate perspectives difficult to
create in classroom spaces, that reveal new ways of seeing. “We can bring
serious research more easily into creative speaking or we can incorporate story
treatments into science using multi-media to enrich and stimulate better
learning outcomes” (Williams in Widayanti, 2010).
ICT can support didactic or facilitative
approaches, collaboration and interaction across time and distance, enquiry or
interrogation, open or closed research, lock step or mind-map.
There are some functions of speaking
1. Talk as interaction
Talk as interaction
refers to what we normally mean by “conversation” and describes interaction
that serves a primarily social function. When people meet, they exchange
greetings, engage in small talk, recount recent experiences, and so, on because they
wish to be friendly and to establish a comfortable zone of interaction with
others. The focus is more on the speakers and how they wish to present themselves to
each other than on the message.
2. Talk as transaction
Talk as transaction
refers to situations where the focus is on what is said or done. The message and
making oneself understood clearly and accurately is the central focus, rather
than the participants and how they interact socially with each other.
Burns (1998)
distinguishes between two different types of talk as transaction. The first type involves
situations where the focus is on giving and receiving information and where the
participants focus primarily on what is said or achieved (e.g., asking someone
for directions). Accuracy may not be a priority, as long as information is
successfully communicated or understood. The second type is transactions that
focus on obtaining goods or
services,
such as checking into a hotel or ordering food in a restaurant.
The main features of
talk as transaction are:
a. It
has a primarily information focus.
b. The
main focus is on the message and not the participants.
c. Participants
employ communication strategies to make themselves understood.
d. There
may be frequent questions, repetitions, and comprehension checks, as in the
example from the preceding classroom lesson.
e. There
may be negotiation and digression.
f. Linguistic
accuracy is not always important.
3. Talk as performance
The third type of talk
that can usefully be distinguished has been called talk as performance. This
refers to public talk, that is, talk that transmits information before an audience,
such as classroom presentations, public announcements,and speeches.
Talk as performance
tends to be in the form of monolog rather than dialog, often follows a
recognizable format (e.g., a speech of welcome), and is closer to written language
than conversational language. Similarly, it is often evaluated according to its
effectiveness or impact on the listener, something that is unlikely to happen with
talk as interaction or transaction. Examples of talk as performance are:
a. Giving
a class report about a school trip
b. Conducting
a class debate
c. Giving
a speech of welcome
d. Making
a sales presentation
e. Giving
a lecture
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