Chapter I. The importance of language teaching
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partner to the class. One other way of getting students to speak is roleplaying. Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In roleplay activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are Ali, you go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and what they think or feel 8 The twenty-first century has brought drastic changes in all walks of life and there is no wonder to say that it has changed the entire way of people's living. In this process, there are drastic changes in the field of communication also. As speech is considered the best way to communicate with others, it plays a predominant role in the contemporary society as a tool to express the opinion of the people. It is evident that the need to acquire language teaching has become the order of the day. Due to lack of communication skills, the young learners of today are facing numerous problems in expressing their thoughts and ideas properly in English even if they know and express the same in their mother tongue. Now the responsibility mainly is on the shoulders of the English language teachers to train the learners properly and systematically in applying these skills for their bright career by adopting innovative and novel techniques and strategies in the classroom. This paper brings out the importance of language teaching and their advantages in this competitive world to grab the opportunities in terms of education, business, employment, technology, and what not. This paper also focuses on the process involved in these speaking activities of the learners. 4 Furthermore, this paper tries to discuss various possible teaching techniques and strategies to teach language teaching to the learners of English as a foreign language or English as a second language. Language learning is a constant process that begins at birth and continues till the end of life. Language learning is an active process by which human beings develop their language skills in order to use them effectively in their social life as well as their professional life. Through language learning, people communicate their thoughts, opinions, information, experiences and feelings and learn to understand themselves and understand others. They even establish their relationships with the members of their family, friends and others. Young learners enhance their language learning skills by utilizing what they know 4 "Role Play and Simulation in Nursing Practice" edited by Annette McIntosh-Scott and Tom Mason, 2009, p-19 9 in more complex and novel contexts and with a more range of increasing sophistication. These learners develop their language proficiency and fluency by learning and incorporating various new language structures into their repertoire. It is a known fact that people cannot communicate without a language and even if they communicate, it does not make any sense. Hence there is a necessity of learning language skills in order to communicate with others in the society. To acquire good communication in any language, one must get a good command over the four language skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among these four skills, speaking is considered the most important skill as communication plays a vital role in our daily life. After learning these four skills well, it is better to switch over again to language teaching as they play a key role. In this regard, it is apt to say that oral language carries a community’s values, customs, traditions, stories and beliefs. Language teaching enhance the learners’ language fluency and accuracy and they also boost the learners’ confidence as well. As the demand for language teaching increases day by day, the learners try to concentrate on these skills as communication is the main aspect of the present global market. According to Oxford English Dictionary, “Speaking is the action of conveying information or expressing one’s feelings in speech”. We need to communicate well with others in order to fulfil our goals or life ambitions. Without having good language teaching , it has become impossible even to get a good job in the existing society. Nowadays, it has become a tradition to respect and honour a person who has with good speaking or communication skills and he/she occupies the highest position in a company where they need people with excellent fluency and proficiency of the English language. In this scenario, there is a need for the development of learners’ language teaching and it has to start from the classroom itself. It is because once the learners leave their educational institutions after they complete their studies, they cannot learn these language teaching in a day or two. Learning a language and getting mastery over language teaching require regular practice and classroom is 10 the main platform to acquire all the skills that they need. Hence it is the responsibility of the teachers to teach all the required skills, especially language teaching , for the learners to develop their communicative competence, make them self-confident and win the hearts of people wherever and whatever they perform. From the above diagram, we can understand that the importance of communication is the main factor as it is useful in many ways like it reduces stress, it saves time, it manages things well, it understands the needs of today’s world, it increases productivity and it enhances reactions with teachers and peers. Moreover, it is useful in sharing ideas, in better understanding and finally in learning new things. Hence the teachers should concentrate more on communication skills especially, language teaching since the present job market demands these skills from job seekers or young graduates 5 . Thus, language teaching serve many purposes of the learners. To improve the language teaching of the learners at the initial or primary stage, the teachers should start with some simple and interesting activities like transformation of sentences, for example, an affirmative sentence into a question, or an affirmative into a negative sentence. Further the teachers can continue with functional situational drills like giving an advice, making a request, expressing wishes, etc. Then the teachers can proceed to the ‘Ranking activities’ that consist of a list of items about the topic given. The most important activity that needs to be introduced in the development of the learners’ language teaching is by introducing language games as language games are very much useful for the English language teachers to liven up a lesson. The teachers can also introduce some activities like ‘guessing games’ by keeping an object in a closed box and by asking the learners to guess what the object is there in the box. After getting the right answer, the teacher can ask the learners to describe the object. Undoubtedly, the learners’ participation in these activities are encouraged and appreciated. 5 "Role-Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor in the Representation of Reality" by Andrew Sofer, 2004, p-48 11 Moreover, the learners feel more comfortable and confident with these activities while they perform a conversation in the English classroom and the learners use their language teaching more perfectly and effectively in order to hold perfect conversations, discussions, debates, presentations, group work, pair work and some more related activities. The learners need to achieve mastery over grammar and a very good knowledge of vocabulary in order to acquire the language teaching of a foreign or second language. In this context, many learners are interested in participating in speaking activities, but unfortunately they fail to do these activities as they think that they are not able to find suitable vocabulary items to perform these tasks or they have not got enough vocabulary in their linguistic repertoire. In language teaching , it is not only vocabulary but also grammar competence plays a vital role to convey the meaning appropriate to the context. So, the main important thing that the learners have to do is to combine words, phrases, sentences, etc. correctly to communicate. It is true in the words of Littlewood “The learner must attain as high degree as possible of linguistic repertoire” The English language teachers need to implement various innovative activities in the classroom in the process of teaching language teaching . These activities enhance the language teaching of learners and help them in their personal as well as professional development. Let us discuss these activities in a detailed way for a clear understanding for the English teachers to implement them successfully in order to achieve communicative competence among the learners. The most important speaking activity that is very much suitable for the English language classrooms, at the initial stages, is ‘Session’. This session is really a blessing for the learners where their English language proficiency and fluency will be developed to unimaginable heights. The main purpose of these sessions is to prepare the learners to give a talk on a topic for a full 60 seconds or one minute without any pauses in between. Moreover, the learners are supposed to speak without any hesitation, repetition and deviation. In the English language classrooms, teachers introduce this activity to promote the 12 learners’ language teaching . Here, first of all, the teachers have to ask the learners to choose topics of their own choices or sometimes then can give the learners some topics they are familiar with. At the initial stages, the English language teachers are suggested to choose simple topics that are easily performed, like: ‘About Myself’, ‘My Likes and dislikes’, ‘My Hobbies’, ‘My Family’, ‘My Favourite, etc. and then he has to gradually move on to some difficult topics related to the issues on current affairs from national to international 6 . While introducing this kind of activities in the classroom, the teachers should announce the rules and principles of the game to the learners so that they will follow all the rules when their turn comes. Initially, the teachers have to divide the classroom into two teams and initially the active and energetic learners are invited to give a short speech on a certain topic. Here the teacher notes down the mistakes of the learners and once all the students complete their talk, the teacher highlights the common mistakes made by the learners. The teachers should also encourage the learners by filling the gaps when they are unable to get the right vocabulary or grammatical structure. Yüklə 255,66 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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