Chaney (1998, p13) argued that “the process of constructing and sharing meaning through the use of verbal symbols and nonverbal gestures is also a speaking technique to develop ability through the meanings of symbols. Brown and Yule (1983) said that the most difficult skill for learners when communicating in English is speaking. Nunan (2003, p56-58) suggested a number of techniques including role-playing, jigsaw activities, simulation, or holes to help students develop their self-expression ability, facilitating contacts. Kayi (2006, p.24), mentioned some techniques in teaching speaking such as discussion, simulation, role-playing, brainstorming, information gaps, interviews, storytelling, reporting, story completion, images narrate, play cards, learn through games, find differences and describe pictures. It can be seen that these two researchers proposed quite similar methods to develop English learners’ speaking ability.
Here below is the description of some typical techniques.
Discussion
This technique is commonly applied in speaking lessons The teacher allows students to discuss the topic and allows each student to speak for a period of 5-10 minutes if the number of students is small, increase the speaking time, if the number of students is large. where time is limited, each session are be invited by class list or team so that students can exchange ideas and demonstrate speaking skills. The students can aim to come to a conclusion, share an idea about an event or find a solution in their discussion teams. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant to this purpose, so that students do not spend time chatting with each other about unrelated things. For example, students can participate in agree/disagree. In this type of discussion, the teacher can form teams
of students, preferably 3 or 4 in each team, and make controversial statements such as “people learn best when they read compared to other learners” best when they travel. Then, each team works on their topic for a certain amount of time and presents their ideas to the class. It is essential that the speaking portion be divided equally among the team members. In the end, the class decides the winning team defended the idea the best. For effective team discussion, it is better not to form large teams, because silent students may avoid contributing in large teams. Team members can be assigned by the teacher or defined by students.
Role play
This is a way for students to role-play. Students pretend that they are in different social contexts and have many different social roles. In role-play activities, teachers provide information to learners such as who they are and what they think or feel. Role-playing helps students actively prepare for their roles and they can develop their expressive skills and language skills to improve, but with weaker classmates, they do not have the desire to play the role instead.
Brainstorm
A short topic in a short period of time helps students think and find answers to that topic, which is a way to help develop English speaking skills. Activities related to brainstorming through topics help students quickly check the vocabulary that needs to be simulated, but certain activities are only promoted when the teacher assigns students to answer the question, not based on the topic on the student's speech confession
Telling stories
Students can briefly summarize a story or story they have heard before from someone, or they can create their own story to tell their classmates. The narration is like a role-playing activity that helps students develop their foreign language skills in front of a crowd, giving them the courage to speak, but if they don't learn English well, they don't have the main vocabulary.
Interview
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with a variety of people.
Teachers are directly interview by topic to help check students' vocabulary and language expression. The interview often happens unexpectedly, leading to the advantage of surveying students' vocabulary for the topic being interviewed, helping to test and improve students' vocabulary results.
Report
Before class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and in class, they report to their friends the news that they find most interesting. Students can also talk about whether or not they have experienced something significant with their friends in their daily life before class. The biggest advantage is to help students pronounce words more correctly, they find the means to listen and pronounce, even increase their vocabulary, but surveying knowledge about newspapers or magazines must be taught by teachers.
Learn through pictures
Students look at the picture to describe what they see or describe an object or event that the picture is reflecting. Learning from pictures is an advantage that helps students brainstorm they develop their ability to express and speak in front of a crowd, but the amount of time is short, so it is common for students not to find vocabulary happens to take time to learn a lot of vocabulary and speaking ability of other pictures
Learning through games
The game is not only entertaining for students but also gives students flexibility to find answers and puzzles by expressing English words.
To sum up, speaking is an important but difficult skill to learn. There are a number of techniques which can be applied to better students’ speaking ability and the application of each depends on the specific context and participants. The requirement to find out an appropriate technique for EFL learners in speaking lessons is always a challenging but intriguing task.