improving speaking skills

Literature Review
Speaking English is not a new concept to any one of us, every one in the school, office and in the society while conversing they speak in English. In our country English has become the second language and it is the most widely used language in the world therefore it is very important to have a good command over English language. On the other hand our English speaking is not as good as we want it to be in conveying messages. In this literature review, we will be focusing on some methods of improving our English speaking. Our literature review will be focused on improving our English speaking skill. The purpose of doing our research on English speaking skills is to help our selves in developing a good English speaking skill so that we can convey accurate messages through English. However, as a primary school teacher, we need to have good English speaking skill in order to become a successful and valued person in the profession. Therefore, it is important to identify the main elements of English speaking skill that is likely to help us to become successful speakers. Although there are various elements of speaking skills, here we have discussed about four that we think are the most important.

Pronunciation in English speaking
Pronunciation refers to the phonology of the language – or the meaningful perception and production of the sounds of that language and how they impact on the listener. Clear pronunciation is essential in communicating the messages. Even where learners produce minor inaccuracies in vocabulary and grammar, they are more likely to communicate effectively when they have good pronunciation and intonation. For example, a speaker might say its hot today as it ho day. This is unlikely to be clear because of inaccurate sound, stress and intonation patterns. As a result, a listener would not find the speaker comprehensible, because meaning is not available. Palmer (1976, p.1),

Children learn to notice and manipulate the sounds of oral language. Those who are phonemically aware understand that spoken words are made up of sounds, and they can segment and blend sounds in spoken words (Tomkins, 1997, p.146). This being the case, it is very important for a teacher to create language-rich environment and give enough opportunities to the learners to speak. Before teaching or learning basic pronunciation, it is very important to learn phonemic awareness so that speaker will know the sounds of a word and this will help the speaker to segment and blend sounds in spoken words.

Lack of opportunities to use English
In the Bhutanese context, although English is used to teach most of the subjects in school and university curricula, much of the classroom talking is actually done by the teacher, while we as students for the most part were passive consumers of transmitted information (Trout, [n.d.]). In most classes, our teacher talked and we listened passively. This we thought was mainly and because of a large class size. In a crowded classroom, for instance, the teacher may find it better to talk and let the students listen than mismanage a large classroom and lose control of it. Yet, the students who talk are mostly the high achieving ones or those who come from English speaking homes and from schools where effective use of English was modeled by the teachers and where rich language learning experiences and opportunities were created for the students. Kirkland and Peterson (2005) believe that ‘classroom can serve as a Mecca of language events that help children to construct new understandings about receptive and expressive language.’ They warn teachers that the cost of deleting oral language form our classrooms is high. In a typical Bhutanese classroom, the chances of deleting English form the student’s classroom discourse are high since the students use their home language to learn academic content and the teachers do not generally insist o the use of the target language. If teachers create language-rich environment and provide enough opportunities to the students to speak in the classroom then Bhutanese students will speak much better with appropriate intonation, pronunciation and more fluently. If students are asked to speak repeatedly, give enough opportunities to practice then this will enhance students’ fluency in speaking.
Confidence and Attitude
Lack of oral fluency influences student’s attitude towards the target language, in our case English. Lack of experiences and opportunities for students to learn English in the authentic social, cultural and academic contexts of school, home and the community will not only generate fear and anxiety in the learners but will over time generate an attitude that views English as an exclusive language with the standards they can never achieve. In fact, this linguistic cringe is still evidenced in South Asian countries, including Bhutan. Rahman (1996), for example says, “Nineteenth-century literary English, however, is still held in high esteem by a large section of educated persons in Bangladesh” and that “People have negative attitudes toward nonnative models”. Desai (cited in Baily, 1996 pp.47-48) says, “Indian English is laughed at by the purists, but so was ‘American English’ a hundred years ago”. An attitude that defies ‘native’ American or British models and downplays the importance of learning English in the lush environment of one’s cultural and society will take students further away from the possibility of acquiring competencies and developing a unique ‘nonnative’ model of English that is comprehensible, intelligible, congruent with accepted international standards, and therefore acceptable to a global audience.
Intonation
According to the Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary ‘Intonation’ is basically the rise and the fall of the voice in speaking, especially as this affects the meaning of what is being said. Intonation covers all the basic elements of speech, such as, stress, loudness, rhythm, pitch, intonation, speed of delivery and voice quality. All these factors affect in effective communication.
Yadugiri(2007) states that there are three factors related to intonation, namely, the number of tone units and the location of tone unit boundaries in an utterance, the syllable which carries the tone in a tone unit and the type of tone used, are governed by the meaning that the speaker wishes to convey. Hence, it is obvious that intonation has an important function in conveying the speaker’s meaning to the listener. In order to overcome our difficulty in the intonation, we should imitate the intonation of the native speakers. Since they have a good intonation, imitating them and practicing will greatly help us to improve our own intonation resulting in our speaking of good English. This will make a great development in our intonation, and then we will have greater confidence to speak loudly.
It is important for us to know that using the target language that is, English, is the only way to learn it and learn how to think in English, in the classroom and beyond. The more time we spend with the language, the faster we will learn it. Overtime our range vocabulary increases and our ability to communicate verbally will increase exponentially. As we improve our oral fluency in English, we learn automatically think in this language. This being the case, we speak in English and have no time to translate the thoughts from one language to another.