TEACHING SPEAKING STRATEGIES TO BEGINNERS

Mrs. Hana Majed

English Teacher

Abstract
In my experience as a language teacher, speaking has always been the most
challenging skill for most of our freshman students. Despite the fact that various oral
activities including strategies are implemented in the classroom, it is difficult to monitor each
student’s progress. For that reason, I've decided to invite some students to develop
extracurricular sessions. During these sessions, they could practice the use of speaking
strategies: Fillers, asking for clarification and expressing not understanding. My main
objective was to train the students on these basic speaking strategies so that they could use
them regularly. The methodology to develop the sessions consisted in three stages: 1) a pre-
task to know the participants’ previous knowledge of speaking strategies, 2) the training
sessions, which were taught through formal instruction and practice in oral tasks and, 3) a
post task to show if the frequency of strategy use increased after instruction. In order to
analyze the progress of the participants, a questionnaire to collect previous knowledge about
the students’ oral strategies, and a check list to analyze the video recorded sessions were
used. The results from the post task showed there was an increase in the use of the strategies.
Satisfactorily, the students showed more confidence when communicating or expressing
themselves orally.

Keywords: Strategies, training, speaking, foreign language

Introduction
Along our lives through our learning process we try different strategies in order to
store important elements in our memory; for instance, when we are learning to speak; the way
our parents or the people around teach us to say certain words or sounds so that
communication takes place is a strategy. The most common words that we are taught would
be “mom”, “dad”, “milk” among others, but why do the parents teach these basic words?
And, which strategy or strategies do they use so that the babies get familiar with the use of
language or sounds? Most parents teach babies by repetition and association. For example,
when they are drinking milk parents teach them the word “milk”, until the baby is able to
associate the meaning of the words, and begins to produce the language. Therefore, strategies
take an important place during the learning process; each individual chooses the one that is
the most suitable for him or her.
When learning a foreign language some students use different strategies as long as
they work for them. For instance, points out that those students who learn easily use a great
number of learning strategies. On the other hand, there are some students who see the
English language learning as a challenge; even though they have already learned their mother
tongue without any problem they see the
target language as something hard to achieve especially when they have to speak in English
there is when the teacher has to help and motivate the student.
Since speaking is one of the main challenges for a basic student, and leads to student’s
frustration since the beginning of the degree; it was proposed to carry out a study based
specifically on the speaking skill strategies at basic level in order to support and enhance
student’s oral participation.

Oral communication skill

As individuals we have the need to communicate. We have learnt to communicate in many
different forms for instance, at the early ages' pictures were ways of expressing ideas.

To communicate in another language which is not our mother tongue is a challenge,

especially if there is little knowledge of the target language; students feel limited to speak.

There are some useful strategies that teachers could make her students use in order to apply them

during oral activities and so students with the practice of these strategies could speak more and feel more

confident. In the following section it will be given the most common strategies for speaking skill.
.
.

Speaking strategy
Speaking strategies so that students are able to communicate in an oral way:
 Asking for clarification (what?)
 Asking someone to repeat something (huh? Excuse me?)
 Using fillers (uh, I mean, well,) in order to gain time to process
 Using conversation maintenance cues (uh-huh, right, yeah, okay, hm)
 Getting someone’s attention (hey, Say, So)
 Using paraphrases for structures one can’t produce
 Appealing for assistance from the interlocutor (to get a word or phrase, for example)
 Using formulaic expressions (at the survival stage) (how much does cost?
How
do you get to the _?
 Using mime and nonverbal expressions to convey meaning
 Circumlocution is another strategy which was used by Mendez and Marín (2007,
p.78) and it was added to the four specific strategies taught during this research.
 Circumlocution which is the use of a synonym or a descriptive sentence for unknown
words. For instance. An item you use to sit down (chair)

Procedure
To achieve the requirements, ten students of basic level were chosen to participate in a
short workshop that we designed which was divided into three sections. The first part of the
workshop was classified as a pre-task, a questionnaire was applied and the results were
registered in a checklist where we collected the data to find out if students used any strategy,
afterwards the students had to carry out an activity given by the teacher in order to speak.
The purpose of this first session was to find out if students knew about the speaking strategies
and how to use them at the moment of a conversation. At the end of the pre-task we realized
that students did not use any of these. A journal was used as well to keep all the details
observed during the sessions.
The decision to use Fillers, Circumlocution, asking for clarification and Expressing
not understanding, was based on the problems identified in class and the pre-task, observed in
the video recording and the survey. During the training session or training task the students
were given some speaking activities and before every activity they were taught how to use
the strategies, one at a time. The first strategy taught was Fillers, the order was on purpose,
since I believed that I had to start with fillers; this strategy would smooth the process of
teaching the other strategies.
The second strategy taught was circumlocution, students replace the unknown or
forgotten word by a synonym or a descriptive sentence, which can help the student to avoid
the use of Arabic during the English class and while giving the description they might
remember the word or while he/she explains, another classmate can recall the word and tell
him/her.
The third strategy was asking for clarification, this strategy was taught in order to
motivate students to ask for an explanation when they do not understand an idea, a question
or a word which is very common at this basic level. Instead of being silent, students could
use questions like: what do you mean?, or again, please?. Pardon?, or expressions like: You
mean that…, what you are trying to say is…etc.
The last strategy taught to these first semester students was expressing not
understanding by gestures (quizzical look) or expressions ( I’m sorry… can you repeat that?),
this strategy does not require a good level of English, actually if the student has a good level
of English and is having a conversation with a student who barely speaks then this student
will have to use the expressing not understanding strategy and vice versa.

Research approach
This research was both qualitative and quantitative. For the qualitative section we
used a checklist which was completed through observation, and a video recording to keep all
the necessary evidence. The activities were intended to improve students’ results, which at
the same time were observed and analysed to answer our research questions. On the
quantitative technique students answered a questionnaire that we used to collect some
important information about their language learning as well as each student’s background. In
order to have a clearer idea, the subjects and the instruments are briefly described.

Subjects
Only ten students were invited to take the training because they were identified as the
most responsible students in the classroom so they would not miss any session. From our ten
students, five had a good level of communication in English and did not show any fear when
they have to explain something, on the other hand the other five students hardly ever talked in
front of the class they just would say a few words, and sometimes they were not even able to
communicate a complete idea, so they were the best candidates for this study, basically they
had to be able to learn the use of the strategies and use them later on in the post-task freely.

Instruments
In order to obtain information about the use of the strategies, a questionnaire was
applied; the questionnaire was mainly to find out if students recognized the strategies or if
they used any when speaking.
The questionnaire began with a statement in which they had to describe if they used
any resource when they spoke in English. Then students had to read each sentence and mark
with an X the answer that better described him/her when he/she speaks in English, they were
eight sentences. In the last part of the questionnaire students provided us with general data
about their ages, gender, mother tongue, the languages they use at home, years in which they
have studied English or if they had had any training in speaking strategies. Another aspect
that we consider was if their level of English and if they enjoyed learning the language.
Results
The questionnaire results showed that half of the students (five) used the dictionary
when they did not know a word, and just 3 of them had previous knowledge of the target
language, in spite of the fact they did not use the strategies with frequency they really
enjoyed the learning of a foreign language. The students are aware that speaking English is
not easy and they need many ideas to speak more. After the interview the students were
invited to take a workshop, in which they would receive a very short session to learn 4
speaking strategies.
Resource Number of students
Use of Dictionaries 5
Previous knowledge 3
Phrases they memorize 2
Gestures 1
Thinking in English 3

Questionnaire results
The workshop
The training was divided into 3 different sessions a pre-task, the training task and a
post task.
The pre-task was a set up in which the students were going to show if they used the
strategies while carrying out any spoken activity. They were given a role-play to start a
conversation and they were video recorded at the same time they had to read the instruction
and begin with the conversation. During the pre-task they hardly used the strategies as it was
expected. The videos were analysed in order to get the number of strategies they used during
this first session. The information was registered on a chart to illustrate the results of this first
part.
Number of communicative strategies used in the pre-task
Strategy S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 total
Fillers 0 1 2 4 1 1 5 2 2 1 19
Circumlocution 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 2
Asking for 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
clarification
Expressing not 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 3
understanding
Total 0 1 2 4 2 2 5 2 2 2 25

Pre-task results
The pre-task showed that students used more the filler strategy than any other
strategy, despite mentioning that they did not know anything about them; fillers was the most
used in the pre-task session.
In the training task the strategies were introduced to the students one at a time, the
strategies were presented and explained through formal instruction. The students were given
a speaking activity to practice the strategy, every detail was recorded to keep more evidence
and avoid missing any detail. They did well since they used the strategy more than before;
the results are registered on the table below.
Communicative strategies used in the training
Type of strategy S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 Total
Fillers 8 8 1 1 5 8 5 3 5 11 55
Circumlocution 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 2 7
Asking for 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 2 3 9
clarification
Expressing not 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 4 7
understanding
Total 8 7 2 1 6 8 5 7 8 15 78

Training task results

After all the strategies presented they were given a post task to find out if the training
sessions were helpful to students and if they learnt about the strategies taught.
Communicative strategies used in the post-task
Type of strategy S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 Total
Fillers 6 7 2 4 5 2 6 7 10 10 59
Circumlocution 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Asking for clarification 0 1 4 1 3 0 4 4 0 2 19
Expressing not 2 1 1 1 0 1 1 3 0 3 13
understanding
Total 9 8 5 6 8 2 9 14 10 11 91

Post-task results.
If we compare the three charts and we count the strategies that each student used in
the pre-task, training sessions, and post-task we will see that the number of times each
strategy was used increases in every section of the workshop. The results will be described
below.

Conclusion
To sum up, this research project was a learning experience to everybody, and the
students involved. We all learned the effect teaching-learning strategies causes in our
academic environment. The students’ participations were focused on communicating orally
through real sets; all students interacted in a friendly atmosphere and helped others to speak.