According to the experience of many teachers as well as students of foreign languages, most difficulties are found in the process of learning and teaching productive skills. Subsequently, the purpose of this study is to identify and suggest likely solutions for effective teaching of productive skills.
Problem Statement
Students may have to take notes, fill forms and write letters, reports, stories etc. This study aims to find out the challenges and possible solutions in implementing techniques for speaking and writing skills in English at SSC level.
Central Research Questions
As mentioned earlier, at the Secondary level, reluctance is shown for improving speaking and writing skills on English courses; present study seeks to find out effective implementation of appropriate techniques for teaching and writing at SSC level.
Significance of the Study
One government and two non-government schools in Jessore region were selected for data collection for this study; indiscriminate inclusion of other government and non-government schools and madrasa education could lead to dynamic findings. The claims and solutions of this study could have been stronger and more representative if only few schools had been surveyed.
Research Methodology
Literature Review
Communicative Language Teaching in Secondary Level
Four Skills of Language
The Importance of Language Skills
Speaking and writing are called productive skills because we use language to produce a message through speech or written text. In addition, they also consist of social values (ie judging what is submitted in writing or by fluency and delivering oral presentations).
Interrelation between Receptive and Productive Skills
- Speaking Skill
- Importance of Speaking
- Teaching Speaking Skills
- Why Activities are Provided
- Balanced Activities Approach
- Types of Speaking Activities
- Developing Classroom Speaking Activities
- Strategies for Using Speaking to Learn
- Necessity of Assessment in Speaking
- The Nature of Writing
- Aspects of Writing Skill
- Aspects of Effective Writing
- Stages of Writing
- Writing for Learning
- Writing for Writing
- Teaching Writing
- Process of Writing
- Approaches to Teaching Writing
- The Elements of a Successful Writing Lesson
- The Roles of Teacher in Writing
- Fluency or Accuracy
The teacher presents new vocabulary or grammar (this is based on form-oriented instruction) and then the students are given some practice. Planning or prewriting is a writing activity that aims to encourage and stimulate students to write. During the writing process, students should also focus on the content and meaning of the writing.
Each stage in the writing process will work in unison to help students compose the text. It is imperative that students be able to understand the writing conventions and genre limitations of certain types of writing. Motivate and provoke: The second task that the teacher performs while writing is to motivate and provoke the students.
Support: Supporting the students is the third task to be performed by the teachers. Evaluation: The last task the teacher does in the writing process is to evaluate the students' works. This will enable the students to be better writers, especially when they are reluctant to express the ideas.
It is a way for the teacher to show the students that they can write a little more correctly. In this case, the teacher can ask the students to talk about the problem in face-to-face interaction.
Research Methodology
- Research Design
- Instruments of Data Collection
- Written Questionnaire
- Interview
- Validity and Reliability
- Procedure of Data Collection
- Ethical Considerations
45 The questionnaire provides qualitative data, the interview provides qualitative data for the study. To conduct the research, the researcher used a questionnaire survey and also conducted an interview with school teachers in Bangladesh. The questionnaire is the most widely used research instrument, and Dornyei and Taguchi in Questionnaires in Second Language Research: Construction, Administration, and Processing (2010) stated, "Asking questions is one of the most natural ways of gathering information." (p. 1). Here, the author stated that the researcher can obtain the most natural response from the participants through the questionnaire.
The main participants of the study are 115 students and 12 teachers teaching in various schools in the Jessore area. All students have studied English since they started school, but overall their level is low, with a few exceptions. Data was collected from the students of three reputed schools in Jessore with due permission from the school authorities.
The researcher clearly explained the questionnaire and the purpose of the study to the participants. Before developing a research project, it is very important to understand the characteristics and the type of methods that will be used to obtain data, the context, the procedures, the nature of participants and the importance of participants' moral issues, which have an influence has the tribe of contributors. Before starting this research study, I asked permission from the relevant authorities of the schools, and more specifically from the teachers in charge of the group from which I selected the participants.
Findings and Analysis
The Questionnaire
- Quantitative Data Analysis
This means that most of the respondents ensure that English is not spoken during their English lessons. A large number of respondents attach great importance to practicing speaking skills during their English lessons. The graph shows that only a very small number of the students enjoy writing their own essays as 21% of the students disagreed and 63% strongly disagreed with the statement.
It shows that most of the students can write correct and better sentences with the help of their English teacher. This means that most of the students agree that their teachers allow them to ask questions or give opinions while writing most of the times. In this case, 10% of students strongly agreed and 23% of them agreed, but 13% were neutral towards the statement.
Here it was found that 66% of students either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. This graph observation shows that 75% of teachers strongly agreed that autonomous learning helps students' speaking and listening and 25% agreed. The mean score is 4.33 which means that most of the teachers completely agreed with the statement.
Most of the teachers find that the innovative teaching techniques are important because they can create students' interests for writing in English. Most of the teachers use Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method while teaching is said by the teachers.
Discussion and Recommendations
Discussion on Findings
Most of the teachers are not willing to let the students get involved actively, act independently and individually in their classrooms, but rather the students are instructed as a collective group. So it is clear that teachers do not encourage students to improve their individual performance. Activities based on students' own thoughts will help them to be creative in productive skills.
All teachers should use the CLT method in their lessons and involve students more in classroom activities (i.e. pair work, group work, presentations and other conversational activities), which will gradually help students become fluent. The material should be taken out of its own context so that students can learn in an interesting way. The lesson to remove the shyness of both students and teachers should be given through training.
He should be kind, compassionate and on good terms with the students, and should have an affirmative attitude towards the students and encourage them from time to time if necessary. All institutes should pay special attention to planning the continuous development of students' speaking skills throughout the study program. A language club can be created and teachers can organize different classes where the presence and participation of all students is mandatory.
Recommendations for Improving Writing Skill
This kind of interesting and timely testing techniques encourage students to practice more about speaking skills and improve their awareness about them. The teachers and the parents should let the students write in their own language and discourage them by not motivating them to memorize. They can offer rewards, ask them to compete with each other, make groups, use technologies such as computer, projector or any other tool to get students' interests in the class to make the reading or writing activities successful.
Before adapting any new or interesting teaching technique in the classroom, teachers must have a comprehensive knowledge and understanding by attending workshops and reading books about the teaching methods. Otherwise, they may end up leading them to ultimate failure in any task or activity. Although some teachers try to use some creative techniques, they are not trained and fail to apply them properly. Therefore, there should be proper programs to train teachers in the new and innovative approaches to teaching reading and writing.
Not only the teachers or the students need to be aware of the modern and scientific learning process; The children's parents also need to get over the idea that teachers are the only speakers in the classroom and that the students are the silent recipients. It is said that parents are the first teachers of the students before the teachers start teaching the students. So if the parents at home do not motivate their children to work independently and do not expect them to actively participate in the classroom, nothing will work well.
Conclusion
84 On the other hand, the present study refers to the needs of writing skills for the students of Bangladesh and finds out that students are weak in writing and fully lack their interest in these important tools of learning. The study tried to identify these problems and examine the nature of the current teaching process in our country in certain details. The recommendations of the findings of this study discussed earlier in the previous chapter should be carefully considered, and steps should be taken to implement them in our classrooms.
If this is implemented, it is expected that the state of the teaching and learning of writing skills in our country will improve remarkably.
Speaking and listening exercises in English language learning through communicative language teaching at HSC level”. Teaching Speaking: Goals and Techniques for Teaching Speaking.” The National Capital Language Resource Center, Washington, DC.
Appendices
11 My teachers involve me in different activities (such as: group work, duo work, role play, presentation, etc.). This questionnaire is for a research assessment to review the scenario of students' speaking and writing material for a master's thesis in English. Read the statements carefully and provide your first response by choosing (√) an answer for each statement: (1) Strongly Agree, (2) Agree, (3) Neutral (4) Disagree, or (5) Strongly disagree.
