Book Report: How to Teach English

How to teach speaking (Book Report from: Harmer, Jeremy (1997) “How to teach speaking”, in How to teach English. Longman publishing group p.p.87-96.)

Students: Juan Pablo Arias María San Cristóbal.

Jeremy Harmer is a teacher, a teacher trainer, and an author of books and articles for both teachers and students of English as a foreign or second language. His book “How to teach English” is a complete manual of teaching English as a foreign or second language. It is complete because it deals with general issues about teaching and learning English as well as specific problems that English teachers frequently may find, focusing on examples of teaching and teaching practice rather than on detailed analysis of learning theory. This book is, therefore, appropriate for those who want a practical and easy to understand way of teaching listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

In general, the chapter we dealt with “chapter 9: how to teach speaking” states why teachers should encourage students to do speaking tasks, focusing on the kind of speaking activities, on the advantages of these type of activities and on the role of the teacher and the participation of the students. In order to do so, the author describes several activities in order to give examples of the theory he is trying to teach through his book. Finally, Harmer offers a synthesis about the importance of engaging the students into the topics of speaking activities to give and end to this chapter.

According to this chapter, the kind of speaking activities that students should be exposed to should concern with activate exercises, rather than with exercises that only have a “study function”. This must be done by using all of the language to perform some kind of oral task; in other words, all of the possible tools that the language can provide. Encouraging students to do speaking tasks is extremely relevant. Some reasons to do so are for example that speaking is a good opportunity to rehearse and to get the feel of what communicating in a foreign language really feels like. Also, because it provides feedback to students as well as to the teacher while students are improving their performance. On top of that, speaking activities can be very motivating when they actually engage the students into the topics. One advantage of speaking activities is that they can be very varied and interactive; there are several kinds of activities, for instance activities such as filling information gaps, describing & drawing, story-telling activities, surveys and discussions among others. In general, speaking activities share some common features. For instance, they can be used to ask and give information, using games as a study pool is possible and finally, one thing that all speaking activities should share is that they should have a real purpose for communication. Translated into practical matters this is reflected on activities in which the only way to solve problems is by asking information, on opinion exchange activities in which interesting experiences are shared –as in questionnaries and surveys-, and finally on activities that resort to the use of spontaneous fluent language, as in discussions. Discussions are speacially helpfull because people assemble their thoughts before starting with it, several opinions can be stated whithin the same group, discussions can be formalised into debates –in order to use this instance also as a formal speech learning activity- and because there are many possible discussion topics. The important thing to remember is that students need to be engaged with the topic through real-life situations, as in all speaking activities.

“How to teach speaking” also points out the fact that teachers should correct students rather than interrupting them while activities are going by. Nevertheless, it is very important at the same time to provide them the corresponding feedback. Yet, there are some occasions when students need the teacher’s guidance through sensitive prompting.

University of Concepción English teaching program June, 2008