A teaching experience and a survey on methods of teaching speaking skills

Abstract

In my internship report, I tried to focus on a short investigation which I conducted while taking classes as a training teacher in an English medium primary school. My internship objective was to focus on how English speaking skill is taught in the school. I wanted to observe how the teachers teach the oral skills (the methods and techniques) in the classroom and whether it is facilitating effective learning for the students or not. I analyzed a short survey based on the interview of some English teachers and described my experience as their speaking teacher. My main motive was to examine the way they taught: whether it is the same traditional approach that has been followed since the colonial period or they are using some upgraded method to conduct speaking classes. I wrote this brief report where I found that most teachers preferred a traditional way of teaching speaking to the young learners and interestingly the students are quite habituated with it. This helped me understand why students fail to speak fluent English even after twelve years of schooling. While teaching, I tried to apply some of the speaking techniques, activities and practices that I learned as a student of English Linguistics. The literature reviews (secondary data), statistical demonstration of the survey, its methodology, teacher’s interview and discussion/findings along with my contributions are included in the paper. The paper also illustrates what difficulties I faced while teaching speaking in a different way. Besides, the limitations of this survey/observation report and recommendations of how to make students speak fluently in the classroom are provide in the conclusion.