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Unit 12 presents the productive skills - speaking and writing.
Although these skills are different in many ways they are both used to communicate with others. Therefore, when introducing a communicative activity to the students, the teacher should provide a context where the need and desire of communicating is created among the class.
There are to main types of activities that help improve a student’s communication skills:
Accuracy activities: design to promote a correct language usage, these activities are typically performed
with a higher degree of control by the teacher, and are usually part of the study phase.
Fluency activities: design to allow students to experiment and be creative with language. The focus is more
on producing effective communication and less on language correctness. These activities
are usually part of the activate phase.
Due to their immediacy and transient nature, speaking skills require more fluency and ease with vocabulary and language structures. As such, many students may be reluctant to speak in the classroom, especially at the beginner level. Unit 12 identifies some of the main reasons behind this reluctance and provides a small list of techniques to encourage spoken interaction within the class. It also gives a simple example of a straight arrow ESA lesson focused on free/creative speaking where both accuracy and fluency activities are used.
On the other hand, writing requires more accuracy and is more of an individualistic activity than speaking. This makes writing skills harder to practice in class and many teachers relegated writing activities to homework. However, just as with speaking activities, it is fundamental to make students invested in writing activities by appealing to their diverse interests. In terms of accuracy there are four main factors that should be considered in any writing activity: handwriting, spelling, layouts, and punctuation. In terms of fluency, teachers should encourage creative writing which has the advantage of being a perfect activity to be done in small groups.
