My Experiences of Teaching Conversational Skills

I have been teaching English in Taiwan for about 7 years now, and for the last two years I have been a teacher at Happy Marian. I teach P classes at a comparatively small branch, which makes for a great family-like feeling amongst staff, students , and parents. During my time at Happy Marian, I have mainly taught the older classes - P4, P5, and P6.

Over the years, when employing role plays, debates, topic discussions, etc., in class, I have noticed that some students are often quite timid in expressing their viewpoints. This seems to be due to a number of reasons :

•  Students don't have an opinion on the subject ;

•  Students have an opinion, but are worried about what the other students might say or think ;

•  Students have an opinion, but don't feel they can say exactly what they mean ;

•  Students begin giving their opinion s , but then stop because they want to be able to state them in the same eloquent manner that they are capable of in their native language ;

•  Other, more actively participating students, feel confident in their opinions and express them eloquently making the less confident students more timid ;

Pragmatically, conversation lessons and exercises are intended to improve conversational skills. For this reason, I find it helpful to first focus on building skills by eliminating some of the barriers that might be in the way of production. Having been assigned roles, opinions and points of view that they do not necessarily share, students are freed from having to express their own opinions. Therefore, they can focus on expressing themselves well in English. In this way, students tend to concentrate more on production skills, and less on factual content. They are also less likely to insist on literal translations from their mother tongue.

Implementing this approach can begin slowly by providing students with short role plays using cue cards. Once students become comfortable with target structures and representing differing points of view, classes can move onto more elaborated exercises such as debates and group decision making activities. This approach bears fruit especially when debating opposing points of view. By representing opposing points of view, the students' imaginations are activated by trying to focus on all the various points that an opposing stand on any given issue may take. As students inherently do not agree with the view they represent, they are freed from having to invest emotionally in the statements they make. More importantly, from a pragmatic point of view, students tend to focus more on correct function and structure when they do not become too emotionally involved in what they are saying.

Of course, this is not to say that students should not express their own opinions. After all, when students go out into the "real" world they will want to say what they mean. However, taking out the personal investment factor can help students first become more confident in using English. Once this confidence is gained, students - especially timid students - will be more self-assured when expressing their own points of view.

James Morrison Sheffield Hallam University
P4/P6 teacher
Jin-Hu Branch