Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified in Missouri? Are you interested in teaching English in Stanberry, Missouri? Check out our opportunities in Stanberry, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English in your community or abroad! Teflonline.net offers a wide variety of Online TESOL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Here Below you can check out the feedback (for one of our units) of one of the 16.000 students that last year took an online course with ITTT!
Productive skills look at speaking and writing. Writing skills are more difficult than speaking skills, as this requires a greater degree of accuracy. As we all know, when we speak, any misunderstanding can be cleared up on the spot, whereas this is not possible with writing skills. Speaking, on the other hand, requires a greater fluency as the speaker will rarely have time to think and plan an answer. As teachers, we should bear in mind that in order to introduce a communicative activity to the students, we should bring in factors, such as communicative purpose and the student's interest in the language. However, as teachers, we must create the need and desire in the students in order to have an effective communication. If students don’t see the need and desire, then it’s less likely that the activity will be a success.
We should incorporate accuracy activities in the study phase. Accuracy looks at producing the correct language. Fluency, on the other hand, usually incorporate in the activate stage of the lesson. Fluency allows the students to experiment and be creative with language. However, we should bear in mind that accuracy and fluency are equally important in the productive skills.
Controlled activities are usually based on accuracy and are usually controlled by the teacher; such activities could be drilling and repetition of the correct pronunciation. Another controlled activity is prompting, which looks at pre-planned question and answer. Guided activities, on the other hand, are based more on creative and productive skills, however, the output is still controlled by a teacher, but the exact language is not controlled by the teacher, such activities are model dialogues and guided role play. Creative communication will base its activity on fluency. The scenario is usually created by the teacher; however, the content of the language is more created by the students, such as free role play, discussions, debates and communication games.
Many students will not be motivated to speak, because of lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes and lack of interest in the topic. However, as a teacher, we must try to overcome these hurdles and encourage student’s interactions. There are many ways to overcome this hurdles and encourage student’s interactions, by putting students to work in pairs or group work, and also plenty of controlled and guided practice before fluency activities.
Before the lesson, we should decide on the aim, work out instruction and also prepare any necessary material. During the activities, we should try to arouse student’s interest in the lesson through visual, a short lead or a newspaper headline. After the activity, we should provide feedback indicating how well the class communicated, such as their fluency of the language. Finally, writing skills look at handwriting, the spelling, they layout of the punctuation and the creative writing.
