Teaching English Speaking in NepalArun Kumar Kshetree, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor Butwal Multiple Campus, Butwal

Abstract: The present article is a report of a small survey of how the speaking skills are taught in Nepalese English Language Teaching (ELT) classes. In the survey of a government aided school and an institutional school of Tilottama Municipality, the students participated were 40 and there were four teachers teaching English to them. The study was focused in observing the teaching of speaking skills on the basis of the model of teaching speaking presented by J. Harmer. The results showed that the teachers were not using the model though they have studied about it. The study also found that the listening skills are still not emphasized in the classroom teaching in the schools though it is one of the four major language skills and it is the basic, primary language skill. The teachers were found to be thinking that the students would develop speaking schools if they were good at reading and writing skills of English.

IntroductionLanguage teaching and learning in the past used to be very

complex and the common people would think that anyone who knows many languages was genius and one who knew to teach language needed extra talent as they used to think that language teaching was an art, and innate capability. But in course of teaching this idea about language teaching and learning got changed and the aims and objectives of teaching a language were also changed. Many concepts about language, language teaching and language learning got changed with time changes and the changes in the aims and objectives. Today, language teaching and learning is thought to be the combination of the skills of language and aspects of language. It is the learning of some activities which are the skills of language; listening, speaking, reading

and writing. These four language skills should be integrated while practising a language. However, considering the time factor the researcher mainly focuses on speaking skill development.

In Nepal and some other countries the teachers used to emphasize in teaching and learning of reading and writing skills and there used to be too less content in the development of listening and speaking like basic or primary skills of language. The traditional teachers used to think that the teaching of reading and writing was very important in language teaching and learning because at that time the main aim of learning any other language used to be able to read what is written in that language and acquire the hidden knowledge in the literature of that language. But in course of time the aim of learning any language has been changed and the language is now-a-days learnt to be able to communicate in the language. This has changed the way language is taught and almost equal emphasis is normally given to all the language skills so that someone learnt any language would be able to communicate orally and in written form.

When we talk of a person who knows a language, we usually tend to mean that that person is able to produce meaningful sentences in that language; in other words whether s/he can speak that language. Thus the claim that s/he knows English usually includes the statement that s/he can speak English. The teaching of a second or foreign language therefore, one way or other should cover the teaching of speaking skills. It is safe to assume that many learners starting to learn a foreign language usually seek an improved competency in their productive skills; namely writing and speaking. These learners assess their progress in the target language in terms of their ability to speak fluently in communication and being able to express things they like like to express, in the written form.

To be competent over a language, a speaker needs to have command over the language skills. Language skills refer to those skills which make communication perfect by the use of language. We know that language is a means of communication and it is possible in two mediums in language; spoken medium and written medium. In spoken medium listening and speaking go side by side. These two

skills, i.e. listening and speaking, are the basic or primary skills of language in the sense that even an illiterate person can communicate using these two skills. In other words, only through the spoken medium, communication is possible and very common among those who cannot read and write. In written medium reading and writing skills are essential skills. Reading and writing are the intellectual tasks. Only the literate person can practise them. Therefore, these two skills, reading and writing, can be considered as the secondary skills in language learning.

According to Longman Dictionary, speaking is the utterance of intelligible speech or seeming to be capable of speech. Speaking is the process of orally expressing thought and feelings of reflecting and shaping experience, and sharing information. Speaking is a complex process, which involves thinking in the language and using many social skills. The speaker combines words to sentences and paragraphs and use a language style that is appropriate to a social context. Speaking is aimed at the development of the relationships between a speaker and the hearer.

Kurum (2016) describes that there are three areas of knowledge that composes speaking ability which can be stated as follows:

-Mechanics (pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary): Using the right words in the right order with the correct pronunciation

- Functions (transaction and interaction): Knowing when clarity of message is essential (transaction/information exchange) and when precise understanding is not required (interaction/relationship building)

- Pragmatics, Social and cultural rules and norms (turn-taking, rate of speech, length of pauses between speakers, relative roles of

participants): Understanding how to take into account who is speaking to whom, in what circumstances, about what, and for what reason.

Thus, language learners and teachers should be careful about how to develop the speaking skills and what is most important in developing speaking skills. Likewise, Heaton (1988) presents four components of speaking skill which are accuracy, fluency, comprehensibility, and content.

a. Accuracy in speaking means when someone can produce correct sentences in pronunciation, grammar and word choice so it can be understood. There are three components of accuracy. They are pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

b. Fluency is the ability to converse with others in normal and natural way. Longman dictionary defines fluency as the feature that gives speech the qualities of being natural and normal. Meanwhile, Simon and Schuster in Amin (2006: 22) defined fluency as: the quality of flowing, smoothness, freedom from harshness, and the ability to write or to speak easily, smoothly, expressively, readiness or smoothness of speech.

c. Comprehensibility is the process of understanding of the utterances sent by the speaker done by the listener. Also comprehensibility in speaking means that people can understand what we say and we can understand what they say. Harmer (1998: 107) says that if two people want to make communication to each other, they have to speak because they have different information. If there is a ‘gap’ between them, it is not a good communication if the people still confuse with what they say.

d. Content is what we speak and it is also very important component of speaking. Jacob (1981) explains that content should be clear to the listener so that they can understand what the messages convey and gain information from it. Content refers to how suitable or

substantive the explanation toward the object to be explained. To have a good content in speaking, the contents should be well unified and completed.

In this way the teaching and learning of the speaking skills needs to be directed towards the development of all these four components of the listening skills which are of equal importance. Whenever someone speaks the fluency of speech matters much to the listeners as the one who cannot speak naturally in normal way will be judged to be incompetent speaker. In the same way, accuracy, comprehensibility and the contents are also very important components. Because what someone says and how accurately things are said decide the comprehensibility of the speech.

The Problematic Situation

Though the curriculum of different level education of Nepal gives a prestigious space to English, the teaching and learning of English in Nepal is still not satisfactory (Kshetree, 2000).The society evaluates the teaching and learning from the performance point of view of the products who complete different degrees with major English but are not much competent in communication specially oral communication. They cannot even speak simple things in English. This is the situation that encouraged me to study the situation of teaching speaking skills to the students of schools of Nepal.

The Methodology

For the present study I decided to observe the teaching and learning of speaking skills mainly on the basis of Harmer's model of teaching speaking skills. The study also covers the views and attitudes of four English teachers and forty students studying in grade IX from two schools of Tilottama Municipality; one government aided and the

other an institutional school. The required information was gathered from the observation and a brief interview with the teachers and a set of questionnaire with ten questions to know the views of the students about the importance and teaching of speaking skills.

The Harmer's Model for Teaching Speaking

Jeremy Harmer (2007) presents a model for teaching and development of speaking skills. An instruction unit to teach speaking skill should consist of the following stages:

Introduction: Explaining learners the purpose of the current lesson and asking them to lay out their background knowledge on the topic is very important. For example, if the topic of the lesson is purchasing a plane ticket to go abroad, students can be asked to guess the content of a possible conversation taking in a travel agency.

Presentation of the Task: In this stage, the teacher explains what is expected from the activity being done in the class. For example, if the teacher wants the students to make a dialogue with their partners on a given topic, s/he can make a similar dialogue with a student as a first step. To check whether the task is understood clearly by the students, they can be asked to repeat the process. This can be done in English or Nepali depending on the level of the students. In addition, students should be given all the necessary role cards, pictures, listening and reading texts, etc. about the task.

Observation: The teacher has to keep on observing the track of the activity going on in the class. Teacher intervenes whenever required. This intervention does not necessarily involve the correction of errors, but rather ensuring the students’ progress according to the objective of the lesson.

Feedback: To make the students learn about their performance at the end of the activity. In this stage, a feedback on the content of the activity rather than the grammatical accuracy would be more appropriate. Informing students what they have achieved is better than saying them what they have failed. Such a feedback would contribute to their inner motivation, sense of achievement and self-confidence.

Follow up Activity on the Topic: Finally a follow up assignment to reinforce the activities in the lesson can be given. For example, if the topic of the lesson was about Teaching Speaking Skills activities on purchasing a plane ticket for an abroad flight, the homework could be a research on how to purchase the same ticket on the internet and presenting the data on the following class. We can summarize the above mentioned instructional stages in the following figure:

Figure 1 The Stages in a Speaking Class (Harmer, 2007).

The study was focused on observing the teaching of speaking skill according to the stages modeled by Harmer (2007) and not only this

the study also consulted Penny Ur (1996) states the characteristics of successful speaking activities as below:

- Learners should be given plenty of opportunities to talk at a time that has been allocated to communicate in the classroom. Pollard (2008, p. 7) suggests 80% of the instructional time given to students to communicate and 20% is the time for the teacher to speak. - Participation in class discussion should not be dominated by only minority talkative students, but all students should have the same opportunity to speak, and contribute fairly.

- Choosing an interesting and new topic of learning so as to motivate students to contribute in achieving the learning objectives.

Not only this, some research works accomplished in the area of teaching speaking skills were also analysed for the support of the present study. Oli (2003) has carried out the research on the proficiency in speaking skill of the 9th grade students with the objective of finding out the proficiency of speaking skill of the 9th graders from the public school of Dang and Rukum districts and to compare the speaking proficiency of the 9th graders of the Dang and Rukum districts. A test item was used as the research tools in the study. He found that situation of speaking (skill) proficiency of the students from the public secondary schools was not satisfactory and adequate to meet the specified objectives of the English curriculum. In the same way, Oli (2007) carried out an experimental research on The Impact of Information Gaps in Developing Speaking Skill with the objective of finding out the effectiveness of information gap activities in developing speaking skill. He found out that information gaps activities had better impact in developing speaking skills. Similarly, Pandey (2007) carried out a survey research entitled Teaching of Speaking at the Secondary Level: An Analysis of Classroom

Activities to identify the activities used in teaching speaking at the secondary level classroom. She found that group work, pair work and discussion were the most commonly used speaking activities.

The study was based on the practices and the views of teachers and students towards the development of speaking skills. On the basis of theoretical review the model steps given by Harmer and the characteristic features of speaking activities given by Ur and on the basis of some empirical research works, the questionnaires were designed and the interview guidelines were planned and the observation checklist was finalized.

After the data gathering tools were prepared, I visited the selected sample schools and requested the head teachers to provide me some time to visit he students and the English teachers. I built rapport and started gathering the required data. The gathered information was systematically tabulated and analysed using simple statistical tools like average, mean etc. and were presented with analysis and interpretation.

The Results and Discussion

The significant results derived from the analysis of the data gathered are presented in this article and how these affect the ELT of Nepal is also discussed.

It was found that most of the teachers were aware of the model given by Harmer to teach speaking skill to the students but they were not found to be using the model. Likewise, the teachers were not known about the features of successful speaking activities presented by Ur. This shows that the the sample teachers were not updated with the changes in the language teaching methodology. The three teachers who were known to the Harmer's model of teaching but not using it in

developing the speaking skills of the students said that the model was good but it was not easy to use in the Nepali classes of English. They said that the students were not competent enough to practice speaking English in their classes. Their views were almost common about how to teach English speaking as they said that they would give few students the task to be accomplished and they would practice speaking and they would correct where necessary and other remaining students would also learn from the dialogues. Likewise, a private school teacher said she used to play any related dialogue in the class and give some students the task of speaking and evaluate how much they were able to speak. She also said that she would give chance to different students in different classes. All of them were in the view that they had time limitations and they were unable to provide much time in developing speaking skills in the students as 'it was not much important from the exam viewpoint'. This was the most serious view of the teachers regarding teaching English as they thought that teaching English was only to pass the exams and one can get good marks in oral test of 25% marks in Secondary Education Examination (SEE) of English. It is the most dangerous concept in the teachers and students of Nepal that the teaching and learning is done only for securing better marks in the decisive examinations, not for gathering knowledge nor using language in communication in case of teaching and learning of languages.

The views of students were also analysed specially about the ways of speaking practice in their classes focusing on the model of Harmer. All forty students' responses regarding the use of different steps in developing speaking skills are presented here.

Activities of Speaking Practice

Govt. SchoolYes

Govt. SchoolNo

Priv. SchoolYes

Priv.SchoolNo

Remarks

Describing the task and its background

2 18 4 16

Presenting the task effectively and giving sufficient time

1 19 3 17

Careful Observation when they practice speaking

3 17 6 14

Effective feedback for improvement

4 16 8 12

Follow up activities for further practice outside the class

0 20 1 19

Table no. 1: Use of the activities of teaching speaking

The responses of students presented in the table no 1 show that the use of Harmer's model in developing the speaking skills in the schools was really poor. The teachers were not conducting the speaking skills properly as the results show in the table. It shows that only six students said that they realized that the teachers described the tasks to be presented and the situation where the tasks could be used were described by their teachers whereas 34 remaining students thought that their teachers did not give sufficient background knowledge about the task being presented. Likewise only four students said that their teachers' way of presenting the oral practice tasks was effective and their teachers gave sufficient time for practice whereas 36 remaining students responded that the time for practice and the way of presenting the tasks was not effective. In the same way, nine students out of 40 i.e. 22.5% of the students said that their teachers carefully observed them practising English speaking and 12

of the respondents i.e. 30% of the students said that their teachers would give effective feedback to them after their practice. But the students said that the feedback was normally negative complains about the errors committed by the students nothing for their developments and success of speaking English for some time. On the other hand, none of the students studying in the government schools said that their teachers used to give any tasks for follow ups i.e. out of class situation so that whatever they learnt in the class could be supported and developed. Whereas only one student reported that their teacher gave them some follow up task after the practice of speaking task. I was not sure if the student really understood what the follow up task meant here for them.

The responses presented here indicated a lot of information about the way of teaching English speaking skills in the Nepali schools. The teacher who did not know the model given by Harmer for the practice of English speaking skills and the teachers who were known of the model were found to be using almost the same way of teaching speaking that were not much effective and that were not related to any other effective models of teaching speaking. The information in the table no 1 shows that the practice of speaking skills is not satisfactory among the students as well. The students were not satisfied with the ways they were presented the speaking tasks, the time they got too practise speaking, the proper care by the teachers while they were speaking and the feedbacks provided by the teachers after the task practice as well as the way of not assigning them any follow up tasks after the speaking skills practice. This is not a good sign from any angles.

In the same way when I observed the speaking activity teaching classes of the teachers I came to know that the class was merely for the practice of the teachers to speak English in front of ideal listeners

i.e. the students of their classes. The teachers took most of the time of speaking saying things about the tasks and repeating the model task to the students time and again. The students' time for practising speaking skills was very poor i.e. they rarely practised speaking skills in the class. Repeating the model dialogue many times the teachers would give few students the chance of practising speaking and whenever the teachers would find any error in their speaking practise, they would take a long time criticizing the students. A teacher nearly slapped the students when they were committing an error in using 'a' in place of 'an'. May be she wanted to show me that she was conscious of simple errors of her students in the class. A teacher was found to be positive towards students' development of English speaking skill; he said few words of improvement of their errors and more praising words for their way of performing the dialogue. I praised his way of feedback after the class. In average the teachers were unaware of any effective way of teaching speaking skill and they were teaching in the ways they were told to teach in their training sessions. But they were not giving sufficient chance to speak to their students in the English classes. In fact it's not the teachers who need to learn speaking English, it’s the students.

The Conclusions and Recommendations

After the analysis and interpretation of the information gathered, some conclusions were made regarding the situation of practising speaking skills in the English classes of Nepal. Most of the teachers were found to be thinking that teaching speaking skills was not much important for them as students got much marks in SEE with speaking properly. The teachers not being familiar with the teaching models of speaking effectively in the English classes was really

shameful in the situation where 98% of the teachers are supposed to have been trained. Not only this, the students were not found to be satisfied not with their teachers' way of teaching speaking but the way they talked for a long time criticizing them and not praising their way of speaking or performing the tasks of speaking in the class. They were not satisfied with the time allocated for them to practice speaking English and feel proud of being able to speak. Learning to speak in the class is a matter of pride to the students and they need some opportunity to speak and show their talent. The teachers were not aware of the characteristics of successful speaking activities presented by Ur as well. The teachers need to follow the model of teaching speaking activities given by Harmer and they are recommended to use the following activities suggested by David & Johnson (2001), to use cooperative learning in teaching speaking.

1) Jigsaw is grouping students into groups consist of five students in a group, each member of the group was given the task to study a topic and then teach it to members of the group, to help students work together in learning, and to determine what is important and how to teach;

2) Think-Pair-Share includes three steps of cooperative structures, during the first stage, each individual think quietly about the questions posed by the structure, the second step, each individual pair up and exchange ideas, and the third step, the pair share the responses with their group;

3) Numbered Head is a form of cooperative in which each member of the group is assigned the number 1,2,3,4, and then the teacher asked a question to the group. Each group works together to answer the question so that all group members may verbally answer the

question. Then the teacher called the number (example: two) and each member of the group numbered two were asked to give an answer;

4) Round-Robin Brainstorming is class divided into small groups, with one person appointed as a recorder, the questions require a lot of answers and students give time to think the answer is, after the "think time", each member of the group requested answers and responses another group with Round-Robin style, then the recorder write down the answers of the group members;

5) Three-step Interview is each group member chooses another member to become a partner. In the first step, each student interviewed their partners by asking clarifying questions, in a second step, partners exchange the interviewing roles, and in the last step, each member of the group share the responses with their partner in the group;

6) Team-Pair-Solo which students work on tasks given by the teacher as a team, then with a partner, and in the end, the task was done individually. It is designed to motivate students to solve problems that initially are beyond their capabilities so that students are able to do more things with the help of others on issues that they can do themselves, first as a team and then in pairs and individually.

Thus ,when the teachers would learn to give sufficient time for developing speaking skills and when they would realize that the language learning does not only mean to secure better marks in the decisive exams but also become able to communicate orally as well in the language the teaching learning of English speaking will be improved. Not only this, the teachers also need to know that the students are there to learn and they need to create the situation for them to practise more in the classes. If there are some positive

changes in the teachers' concepts, the situation of teaching English in Nepal will be improved soon.

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Author's Bio:Dr. Arun Kumar Kshetree is assistant professor in Faculty of Education, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He is interested in research works related to teacher professional development. He has written many articles and presented papers in national and international conferences. He has been encouraging English teachers for their professional development.Phone: 9779857033413, arunkshetree@gmail.comMailing Address: Dr. Arun Kumar Kshetree

Butwal Multiple Campus, Butwal-3, Nepal