1. Comparative essay: How to teach Speaking skill.
As long this essay develops we will compare two points of view about the same issue,
How to teach speaking, according to two writers, Douglas Brown and Burkart.
When we teach spoken language for communication, the main objective is to enable
students, to use whatever they have at their disposal to produce spoken language as
they carry out a range of tasks in a great variety of contexts outside the classroom.
“They should be able to use the language to interpret, express, and negotiate meaning.
In communicative language teaching, the emphasis is on what the learner is able to do
in and with the language”. (Burkart, 1998)
The audio-lingual method (ALM) was revolutionary in its day for, giving more priority
to listening and speaking abilities than to reading and writing, by that time it was
something really new. However, nowadays practice speaking usually meant repeating
after the teacher, reciting memorized dialogues, and practicing shrewdly constructed
but rather mechanical pronunciation and grammar drills. Learners had few
opportunities to use the language for expressing their own meanings in real
communicational situations.
ALM had many successors, which advocated more meaningful use of the target
language and more opportunities for learners to use the language creatively. Other
successors have proclaimed themselves to be "communicative" approaches. However,
even under these approaches, there is often not much time for real communication.
(Burkart, 1998)
Many teachers teach as they were taught, and sometimes that is a terrible mistake, as
Burkart says teachers must encouraged their students to learn in the way that they
want to use, when students are motivated is easier to teach them. To begin with,
instead of drilling or testing the students, adopting a conversational mode will be
better, when you talk with someone you are comfortable with, you listen to the
content of what he or she is saying. You don't interrupt them to correct the
pronunciation or grammar, in this way students feel engage and they are able to
understand more and they feel comfortable in the class. “Encourage students to
experiment and innovate with the language. Create a supportive atmosphere that
allows them to make mistakes without fear of embarrassment. Which returns us to
the issue of correction of mistakes? Of all activities you do with your students,
conversation is preeminently one in which the flow of talk should not be interrupted
by the teacher's corrections. Although you won't correct your students while they are
trying to communicate, you can make a mental note of any recurring errors. A
communicative output activity should he followed by a feedback session in which
students verify whether they have successfully carried out the task set for the activity.
At this time you can also comment on inaccurate or inappropriate language forms you
have noted.”(Burkart, 1998)
Therefore learners are not ready for a real conversational situation until they reach an
intermediate or advanced level of the language they study. According to Burkart, she

2. states in her research that in order to achieve a proper level of English students needs
to be trained in a balanced way, a method that prepare them to real life situation, in
the balance activities approach the teacher use a variety of activities from the
different categories (listening, reading, speaking, writing) in order that learners get
the necessary communicative skills to have an effective language learning.
Jaime Saez.
According to Douglas Brown, speaking and listening are considered oral
communicative skills. That’s why usually they are taught together in
“listening/speaking courses”. (As Brown exemplifies, conversations are a good
example of the typical performances of oral communicative skills) Besides, is
recommendable to be conscious that we as teachers must teach this skill in order to
the student be able to achieve a successful communicational performance. “The
benchmark of successful language acquisition is almost always the demonstration of
an ability to accomplish pragmatic goals through interactive discourse with other
speaker of the language.” (Douglas Brown, 2000)
As the other skills, the process of teaching speaking, also have some complications
such as clustering, reduced forms, colloquial language, stress, rhythm and intonation.
As brown points, having in mind these issues would facilitate the process of learning
speaking properly. Nevertheless, it exist an issue that overwhelm adults L2 learners,
pronunciation. According to the author, adult learners will never achieve an “accent-
free” L2. Fluency and accuracy in spoken language are other issue on teaching
speaking. The issue is which one is more important; fluency, speaking with a natural
rhythm but probably the listener wouldn’t be able to understand, or accuracy, the
speaker have an excellent domain of grammar, vocabulary, etc; but the speaker at the
moment of speaking, speaks word by word unnaturally. We believe that when
teaching speaking both, fluency and accuracy, should be taught inside the classroom.
Douglas brown point some hint in order to teach spoken language, such as imitation,
but how I pointed previously, speaking should be taught in order to the student could
achieve a successful communicational process. So, how a student could be able to
produce language, if he/she is used to imitate what the teacher is saying? However,
this method is useful when learning pronunciation is required. Also, as brown points,
we need to foster our students to self-initiate on speaking. Monologues are functional
when your students have a proper domain of the language; thus, they feel that they
don’t possess the proper amount of vocabulary or strategies to confront an audience.
Finally, the most typical activity of speaking teaching, dialogues. Dialogues can be
useful when student need to overcome the anxiety of speaking with a classmate or
even the teacher.
To conclude, both writers present the same issue differently, Burkart present the
issues of how the speaking is faced by teachers, but Brown shows how speaking
teaching should be faced by teachers in order to ensure the student will be able to use
techniques and strategies when he/she be in front of a speaking situation.
Guido Riquelme