Tasks in Class : My 6th Discussion Forum

1. What aspects of language does "speaking" include? In another word, what do you have to teach in order to successfully develop an English speaking ability?
 
 First of all, speaking is in production part of language. It means speaking starts with coming up with something to speak. Then, we need to know how we can make that thinking into form of oral sound which is used to convey what we want to speak out. For this process, we need to acquire ability or knowledge of articulation, pronunciation, grammar rules, and sociolinguistic strategies.
 
 We need to teach speaking through many listening materials to teach knowledge of pronunciation or verbal expression. We already know that speaking starts from listening. For students in advanced level, teacher have to help them to talk with other students. Many students speaking doesn’t develop properly because of their feeling of fear or anxiety about making error. We must lower those negative feelings for student’s successful development in speaking.

 

2. Discuss speaking approaches that you have read. What are familiar or unfamiliar to you? What activities have you experienced for your school years?

 

 I am really familiar with role-play. Most textbooks had that kind of activities. Normally, there were two roles in each activity, and two students in pair took one and one respectively. I remember that it felt so boring, because it felt so contrived situations. By the way, I haven’t experienced or heard about “Playing Cards”. I read about it in very positive attitude because of its creativeness. Students will feel it is interesting, and participate in the game actively. I want to seek for more speaking games for demotivated students.

 

3. What is CMC? Discuss the characteristics of CMC from L2 pedagogic perspective.

 

 CMC is the acronym of Computer Mediated Communication. Its definition is variable. It can be simply defined as any form of organized computer-supported interaction between people. It also can be applied to language education. We can find one example of CMC easily. It is SNS. People communicate in SNS, so it can be included in CMC.

 

 Firstly, CMC removes the constraints of time and space in communication. That means we are liberated from temporal and spatial constraints. It gives us infinite possibilities of communication with various participants.

 

 The second feature is its impersonality. Communication in CMC is totally different from face-to-face conversation. We don’t have to know who the listener is or how old the listener is. This feature generates misunderstanding caused by lack of non-verbal communication like gesture, facial expressions, body language, and others.

 

4. How does CMC help foreign language learning?

 

 In Korea, students have little opportunities to speak English in real-world contexts. The lack of chance make students to feel fear when they try to speak out something in English. And normally, talking with native speaker is expensive thing in Korea. Then how we can find the opportunity? Maybe, CMC can be the solution. CMC can complement those lack of chance in public education. We can talk directly with native-speaker through Skype, or make Facebook friends and send message to them. This is really good chance for students to use English beyond the classroom.