MANUEL Tomás Alexandre Diogo TCHAKAMBA1

Integrating the Lexical Approach with Activities to

Improve Speaking and Speaking Skills in year 2 students
of Nursing at the Faculty of Medicine in Benguela2.3

1
Master of Arts in English Didactics (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at
the Nova University of Lisbon/Portugal – 2012/2014) and Teacher-trainer at
Katyavala Bwila University/Angola, since 2011, having in charge curricular units
such as TEACHING PRACTICE, ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
METHODOLOGY and MORPHOSYNTAX.
2
This paper was originally designed and presented for the accomplishment of the
requisites for the second assessment in the English Didactics Masters’ Seminar
«English Language Teaching Methodology II», under the supervision of Dra.
Vanessa Boutefeu in the scope of a Master’s Program in English Didactics the
author did, at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities/Nova University of
Lisbon, during the 2012/2013 school year.
3
This work must be cited in the following way: TCHAKAMBA, Manuel
Tomás A. D. – " Integrating the Lexical Approach with Activities to Improve
Speaking and Speaking Skills in year 2 students of Nursing at the Faculty of
Medicine in Benguela ", English Didactics Assignment Series (May 2014),
Online available at https://pt.scribd.com.
ABSTRACT

As almost everyone would agree, most of interaction between people is done orally and
speaking and speaking skills are the tools more naturally used in communication. And
as such, teaching speaking in the classroom should be a compulsory part of every EFL
curriculum and needs to be addressed strategically. In this assignment, I discuss the
nature of speaking and speaking skills and how beneficial they are in
developing/improving learners' automaticity in communication. To do so, I integrate the
lexical approach with some practical activities in such a sequence that I believe to be
feasible for improving speaking skills with year 2 students of Nursing at the Faculty of
Medicine in Benguela. After research and having piloted the lesson plan in the coming
pages, it was concluded that Speaking is should be a considerable part of the syllabuses.
Particularly to the students under study who have to take care of patients and deal with
people from different culture and language as wells as with technical language and
electronic laboratory equipments, an acceptable ability to use English and speak it is
compulsory and if the teaching of speaking integrates the lexical approach the outcomes
may be more noticeable as students will need to learn and use chunks, patterns and
frequent words in their professional jargon

KEYWORDS: "Lexical Approach", "speaking skills", "Nursing", "Teaching

activities".

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INTRODUCTION

As almost everyone would agree, most of interaction between people is done orally and
speaking and speaking skills are the tools more naturally used in communication. And as
such, teaching speaking in the classroom should be a compulsory part of every EFL
curriculum and needs to be addressed strategically.

In this assignment, I discuss the nature of speaking and speaking skills and how
beneficial they are in developing/improving learners' automaticity in communication. To
do so, I integrate the lexical approach with some practical activities in such a sequence that
I believe to be feasible for improving speaking skills with year 2 students of Nursing at the
Faculty of Medicine in Benguela.
The assignment comprises of two sections. In the first section which refers to the
literature review, I talk about speaking and the subskills of speaking, the role of teaching
and assessing speaking in language learning, how the lexical approach can work for
speaking skills development, and a list of classroom speaking activities. In the second
section, which conforms to the factual contextualisation of the study, I describe the profile
and background of the intended target group for my study, discuss a bit about how
important addressing the speaking skills is for such learners, devise a series of activities
and tasks that could be applied for improving speaking skills with those learners, and in the
end briefly explain the rationale underlying the design and implementation of such tasks.
Considering that the learners in point have no learning materials specific to their
area of specialisation, with this assignment I aim at rehearsing an approach and tasks that
could be useful in developing/improving their language learning with a future prospect of
devising ESP materials that would reflect students’ real needs and provide them better
learning conditions that lead towards a more effective learning.

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SECTION ONE: The Nature of Speaking
Previous to tackling on the essential issues about the nature of speaking, let us reflect on
the following questions: what is speaking? What does it involve?

According to Lindsay and Knight (2006: 57), “speaking is a productive skill that involves
putting a message together, communicating the message, and interacting with other people.
From here, we can gather that speaking means communicating orally and that it is likely
the most suitable way through which people can interact, understand each other and
quickly assess communication effectiveness.

Lindsay and Knight (2007:60) state that speaking involves a range of subskills
learners need to develop: “producing connected speech, the ability to interact, talking
round gaps in their knowledge, speaking in a range of contexts, and balancing accuracy
and fluency”. It also involves reasonable mastery of pronunciation, vocabulary and
grammar and socio-cultural rules for transaction, interaction, turn-taking and the relative
roles of the participants.

1.1. The subskills of speaking

Actually, there are many categories of speaking, also called subskills by some authors.
Below are some, I believe to be more relevant for this study.

 Pronunciation: Is “the way sounds are produced, emphasising the way they are
perceived by the hearer” say Richards & Schmidt (2002:429). For example, if the
words ‘important’, 'English' and 'grateful' are transcribed as ['impɔ:tnt], [in'gliʃ] and
[grei'tiful] instead of [ɪm'pɔ:tnt], ['ingliʃ] and ['greitiful] they are said to be
pronounced incorrectly. So, pronunciation is clearly the main speaking subskill for
through intelligible pronunciation people can understand the others and make
themselves understood more effectively. Incorrect pronunciation often leads to mis-
comprehension and breakdown in communication.

Pronunciation entails other categories worth considering in the study of

speaking – stress, intonation, rhythm and chunking (Thornbury, 2005:117) – and
they are relatively important to convey shades of meaning. And according to the
Common European Framework of Reference, learners are expected to develop their
ability to pronounce language “by exposure to authentic spoken utterances; chorused
imitation of the teacher, audio-recorded native speakers or video-recorded native

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 speakers; by individualised language laboratory work; by reading aloud phonetically
weighted textual material; by ear-training and phonetic drilling; […] by the use of
phonetically transcribed texts; explicit phonetic training [… etc.]” CEFR
(2001:153).

 Fluency: Refers, says Lazaraton (2001:104), to “the ability to link units of speech
together with facility and without strain or inappropriate slowness or undue
hesitation and natural language use” or to “the ability to articulate, to keep going,
and to cope when one lands in a dead end” CEFR (2001:128). Learners learn to
speak by speaking, i.e., they acquire speaking abilities as time goes, by receiving
significant input and practising the language freely. So, fluency is also one of the
main subskills of speaking as for a person to be able to interact and hold a
discussion they need to be reasonably fluent, and mainly in the classroom activities
to develop/improve speaking should be fluency based.

 Accuracy: Accuracy, also called grammatical competence in the CEFR (2001:113)

“is the ability to understand and express meaning by producing and recognising
well-formed phrases and sentences in accordance with these principles (as opposed
to memorising and reproducing them as fixed formulae).” It is also an important
subskill of speaking because according to the specifications of the CEFR, for a
speaker to reach the highest level of language proficiency they speech should be free
of error. So a relative balance between accuracy and fluency is to be considered.

 Spoken production and Spoken interaction: These are other important subskills of
speaking and they refer to the ability learners should develop to communicate. As
examples of spoken production we can name “prepared, long turns [and one's]
description of his/her academic field” (CEFR, 2001:179) whereas spoken
interaction involves “spontaneous, short turns, conversation, informal discussion,
goal-oriented cooperation” (CEFR, ibidem). What is interesting in interaction is that
interlocutors do the things cooperatively. “Each participant is both a speaker and a
listener; they construct the event together and share the right to influence the
outcomes – which can be both shared and individual” (Luoma, 2005: 20).

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1.2. Teaching and Assessing Speaking: why is it important?

Teaching and assessing speaking, in most schools and particularly in my context, is

usually undervalued. Teachers often teach and assess grammar, vocabulary and
writing just to fulfil the curriculum or obey the syllabus orientation.

However, there are countless reasons why speaking should be taught and
assessed. Speaking is the most natural language skill and a part of daily life (e.g.
expressing opinions, asking for more information, or requests, informing someone
about something, describing things, complaining about things, people, behaviour,
actions, etc.); it is the skill learners seem more interested to develop/improve; and as
Professor Boutefeu (2013:2) emphasises, speaking should be taught because it is “[…]
a useful and necessary skill for communicating, an enabling skill [and], a means to
develop other skills and language.” In addition, Lawtie (2004) says that we should
teach speaking skills in the classroom because speaking motivates learners to learn the
target language and is fundamental to human communication.

Actually, many language learners regard speaking as the most important skill
they can acquire, and they measure their progress in language learning in terms of
their ability to speak and interact in the target language. And as Lindsay and Knight
(2007:57) state we teach speaking for learners to socialize with people, to do
something for someone or request someone to do something for them, to respond to
someone else’s call, to talk about their feelings and opinions about a fact or
predictable events, etc.

Luoma (2005:1) states that “speaking skills are an important part of the
curriculum in language teaching, and this makes them an important object of
assessment as well. And despite “assessing speaking is challenging […] because there
are so many factors that influence our impression of how well someone can speak a
language, and because we expect test scores to be accurate, just and appropriate for
our purpose” (Luoma, op. cit.), teachers and examiners should ensure a reliable and
valid speaking assessment. As speaking is the skill that more naturally drives learners
into the motivation of learning a language, spoken production and interaction should
be a crucial part of language learning and assessment.

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 1.2.1. Correcting spoken errors
Should spoken errors actually be corrected? Why, how and when?
Despite the fact that error correction, specially overcorrection, can make
students self-conscious and discourage them from speaking as we can see in the
extract below, errors can be fossilised if not corrected. What is important, though, is
to balance between fluency and accuracy, says Harmer (2007:142).

Extract 1
Teacher: Where do you live, John?
Student: I live in Graça.
Teacher: What is your occupation?
Student: I am student.
Teacher: (writes the sentence on the board and risks it) It is wrong.
. You should say ‘I am a student’. Repeat!
Student: I am student, teacher.
Teacher: Use the article ‘a’, ‘a student’. Repeat!
Student: I a student.
. Source: Author’s data

Snow (2007:124) states that correction should mostly be necessary when

learners’ errors interfere with communication. For example, consistent misuse of plural
forms, frequent grammatical agreement errors (e.g. I goed, we is, he go school
yesterday) and errors that reflect context wrongness (e.g. good night instead of good
evening), etc.

Harmer (2007:145) describes two strategies to give feedback during fluency

work: gentle correction and recording mistakes.

 Gentle correction or reformulation: This consists on reformulating or

repeating correctly what a learner said wrongly said, prompting them to realise
the error and produce the correct form. The advantage of this is that from a
learner's error the whole class may learn the correct pattern.

Extract 2
Student 1: I stand up seven.
Teacher: Ok … I get up at seven o’clock?
Student 1: Ok, teacher! I get up at seven o’clock.
. (Pointing at a colleague) And you?
Student 2: I get up at six o’clock.
. Source: Author’s data

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  Recording mistakes or errors, i.e., acting as observers, watching and
listening to students and taking notes to give feedback afterwards, Harmer (2007:146), as
to avoid breaking down the flow of the spoken production/interaction. This strategy is
good because it enables the teacher to note down all grammar, pronunciation, appropriacy
or other types of errors and at the end of the activity say how well learners have performed,
the errors they have made and devise follow-up improving exercises.

1.3. Speaking skills and the Lexical Approach

The lexical approach, according to Lewis (1993:3), is a language teaching and learning
approach based on the premise that “language consists not of the traditional grammar and
vocabulary but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks”. Richards & Schmidt (2002:304)
argue that the lexical approach is an approach “based on the view that the basic building
blocks of [language] teaching and learning are words and lexical phrases rather than
grammar” or as Lackman (2011:2) says, it is an approach whose primary focus is on
helping learners to acquire vocabulary.
In other words, the lexical approach is an alternative to the traditional grammar-
translation and the PPP (presentation - practice - production) sequences, and it favours
learning of lexical chunks and items (e.g. collocations, idioms, fixed or semi-fixed phrases)
rather than explicit grammar rules. For example, instead of presenting a table with rules for
conjugation of verbs in the simple present for daily routine, a teacher could simply make
up combinations of words like go to school at, leave school at, have
lunch/breakfast/dinner at, get up at, go to bad at, I usually/often/always, in my free times I,
etc.
The main proponents of the lexical approach such as Michael Lewis, Dave
Willis & Jane Willis hold the view that ‘language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised
grammar’, i.e., lexis is the central component in language learning and as such the concept
of things depends upon the high content words and not on the grammatical form in which
they are structured. Just to illustrate, an error of grammar (e.g. * He yesterday goed school)
may still enable listeners to build up meaning in context, but an error of vocabulary will
likely result in ambiguity or even communication breakdown.
Using he lexical approach is beneficial to developing/improving speaking and
speaking skills because it is easy for learners to activate and reckon language patterns if
they learn them as chunks than if they learn them as separate bits. The lexical approach

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fosters communicative skills and fluency, and enables learners to learn and use vocabulary
and grammar in context.

1.4. Types of Speaking Activities

According to Lazaraton (2001:106), there are several types of speaking activities that can
be employed to develop oral skills in an EFL classroom. These activities vary from more
controlled by the teacher to freer ones, depending on whether the aim is to get the learners
to practise accuracy or develop fluency or other communicative aspects.

 Drills

Richards and Schmidt (2002:170) define drills as classroom activities based on guided
repetition or exercise which teachers apply to practise sounds or sentence patterns in
language. In drills, Lindsay and Knight (2006:61) argue, the teacher has a rigorous control
over what learners perform and, in general, learners are expected to respond to the teacher
or partners correctly and according to a certain pattern. However, in a speaking lesson,
drills can be used in lead-in and language focus stages for the practice of lexical items and
chunks, pronunciation and new structures for expressing language functions. Drills are also
suitable for large heterogeneous classes and can work as good warm up tasks to provide
learners things to say and develop confidence, mainly for getting beginners to try to speak.

 Dialogue

In Richards and Schmidt’s words (2002:156), a dialogue is “a model conversation, used to

practise speaking and to provide examples of language usage.” Dialogues consist of
simplified grammar and vocabulary, and this makes them look different from a lively
conversation, but yet they provide practice of various language items and when well-
designed dialogue may generate a good communication rehearsal.

 Information-gap Activities

Defined by Lindsay and Knight (2006:65), information-gap activities are classroom

tasks that simulate a situation in which learners have different information and by
asking and answering questions they share such information. In addition, Martin
(2003:4) puts it that information-gap activities force the students to communicate as
much as possible in the target language and express different functions. Types of

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information gap-activities include finding differences, asking for information, asking for
and giving directions and exchanging personal information.

 Simulation and Role play

As defined by Snow (2007:112), “role plays are a form of pair [and also small-group]
practice that allow students freedom to play, improvise and create.” Analogously, Doff
(1988:232) defines role play as an activity through which we bring real life situations
into the classroom, by asking students to imagine a role and a situation where they
improvise language to communicate. Simulation and role play differ in that simulations
are more elaborate and create a more realistic environment. Generally, learners receive
role cards, as in the example below.

Extract 3
Role card A: You are a customer and you get into a shop to buy some products.
Role card B: You are a shop assistant and you see the customer puzzled.
. Source: Author’s data

Harmer (2007b:353) and Doff (1988:239) support that simulations and role plays
have a lot of advantages: they are entertaining and increase learners’ motivation; they
increase hesitant learners’ self-confidence to express their opinions in a forthright way
using gestures, intonation and language naturally; they provide learners a chance to use
language in new contexts and for new topics as if they were acting in the world outside;
and they are suitable for large heterogeneous classes.

 Discussion Activities

Discussion activities are the most effective ways of getting learners involved in
communicative tasks. As Lindsay and Knight (2006:66) assure, they provide learners
opportunities to speak more freely and express themselves. This freedom to use
uncontrolled language to solve problems and talk about different situations gives
learners the chance to approach fluent language use. Below are some examples.

 Picture describing and difference: Picture describing and picture difference are
simple but productive ways of getting beginners to speak (Ur, 1996:128). They
can be performed individually, in pairs, in small groups or even engaging the
whole class, in case of large heterogeneous classes. For example, the teacher can

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 ask the learners to describe a person, their own classroom or houses, or a scene
from a picture or a real situation happening in the classroom or present similar
episodes for learners to find the differences. So the more description they make
the more they can activate and expand their vocabulary and grammar and
improve speaking.

 Debates: This is kind of (Ur, ibidem) unstructured and more demanding

discussion activity in which the teacher presents a statement like ‘people are
better trained nowadays than in the past’ and lets students brainstorm and
discuss their opinions. It can be performed in small groups or involve the whole
class but not suitable for lower level learners. Debates are useful for generating
both excitement and interest in a topic, states Snow (2007:116). However, they
are demanding in such a way that learners may constantly lose their points. To
prevent this, teachers should “give students pre-discussion rehearsal time”
(Harmer, 2007a:128), help them with ideas, useful expressions, and encourage
questioning, paraphrasing, expressing support, clarification check, etc.

 Speaking marathon: Martin (2003:3) asserts that in speaking marathons learners

work individually or in pairs and have freedom to talk in English as much as
possible about anything they like or on a given topic. Like a communication
game, the individual or pair that can talk the longest wins the marathon. What is
particularly interesting with this activity is that it is relaxing and enjoyable and
learners are not demanded to build up very thoughtful ideas.

SECTION TWO: Factual Contextualisation

This is the practical part of this assignment. Here the focus is on a critical analysis of my
teaching/learning context and devising activities that would meet learners’ language needs
in terms of developing/improving speaking skills.

2.1. Background and profile of the target group

The target group for this assignment is made up of university students at the Faculty of
Medicine in Benguela doing Nursing. As they study English in the first two years of
their curriculum, I found it interesting to address my research to them, aiming at

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devising activities that would enable them improve speaking skills. The class is large
(nearly 40 students), heterogeneous and mixed-abilities. Presumably, they have had
English in their previous 5 years and despite this most of them have weak performance
and language background related to general English, and the average language level
according to the CEFR ranges from A1 to A2, for some approaching up to bands 3 to 4
of level B1.

According to the syllabus specifications, the students have two 45 minutes

lessons per week, usually on the same day. English is taught as an optional subject just
like French and learners are expected to develop the four language skills, competence
and performance, mainly speaking for interpersonal communication and writing for
reports, prescription, etc. regarding technical English for medical purposes, actually
they have nothing and the course books used by their teachers are not specific to their
course.

2.2. Why is speaking important in the actual research context?

Apart from all the reasons for teaching and assessing English explained in section 1.3
above, I think speaking is particularly important for these learners because they are
trained to take care of patients and during their intern-ship or actual practice they would
eventually often face patients who speak English only; because the language of
instructions in almost all their working tools, drugs manufacturing and drug
administration is English and obviously because much of the literature that exists about
medicine and nursing is in English and some are only available in English, basically
some useful words and expressions in the medical jargon. Speaking is also important for
these learners because through it they can explore and activate other language skills and
vocabulary.

Particularly with theses students who have English for Specific Purposes
(either professional or academic) the lexical approach has lots of implications and may
be a good source to practise and improve speaking. First, because it approach is
designed to fullfill learners’ characteristics and specific language needs as Jane Willis
suggests. And second, by focusing on tasks to notice and activate lexical items students
learn concordances and frequent words and expressions in their area of expertise more
obviously. So exposure to basic lexical notions of medical English, rather than

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grammar-focused instruction, will help them have more input and while they try to
recall and activate through interaction they will foster their speaking skills.

2.3. How could speaking and speaking skills be improved in the actual
research context?

Based on the theoretical description in the first section, I think the following sequence
of activities and tasks would be suitable for improving speaking and speaking skills.

STAGE 1: Warm-up

Activity 1: Speaking marathon

This activity has two tasks. In the first task, students are requested to work in pairs and
say anything that comes to their mind about getting and keeping fit, asking each other
follow up questions (e.g. Do you worry about being healthier? What do you do to
get/keep fit?). In task 2 , students also work in pairs but before sharing their viewpoints
they individually brainstorm on a given question – e.g. what contributes to a healthier
life? What should one do be keep healthier? The teacher writes some topic-related
expressions on the board and in trying to answer the questions, students are expected to
use lexical chunks such as a punishing diet, good nutrition, to get much sleep, the
practice of sports and physical exercises, seeing the doctor regularly, etc. The tasks in
this activity aim at enabling students to talk fearlessly as to activate the language they
already know, develop confidence and get motivated for the new lesson. This stage also
aims at introducing the students to the new topic overtly.

STAGE 2: Lead-in + pre-speaking

Activity 1: Picture describing
In this activity, students are given the picture frame with four photos on page 29, which
illustrate an article on great ways to well being, and they are asked to describe each part
individually then in pair trying to predict from the given headline the suggestions made
in the article. Later they report their idea to the classroom. For thought-provoking
purposes, the teacher could ask some questions such as who/what is/are there in the
picture? What are they doing? Does it contribute to well-being? The focus of this

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activity is to keep students talk in the target language and develop fluency, without
worrying much about having the right answers or making mistakes.

Activity 2: Information gap for listening or reading comprehension + pre-speaking

In this activity there are two tasks. If electronic equipments are available the teacher
plays the audio track indicated on page 31, where six people talk about what they do to
cheer themselves up for the students to listen to or watch a video about obesity
epidemic, available online. If not, the teacher selects some sections of the article about
'great ways to well-being' available on pages 109-116 under which there is a short
glossary, preferably the sections entitled 'eat more curry', 'eat fish', 'drink water' and 'get
a hobby'. While they listen, watch or read they get focused to the contents and take
some simple notes.

In task 1, if the input was through listening/watching, the teacher presents some
gapped sentences for the students to complete with information from the track/video. If
they had to read the article, then the teacher assigns some questions to check
comprehension. The answers should be given in a spoken interaction.

In task 2, the students required to make a short summary and report to the class in
a free way everything they could get from the reading, listening or watching. Each
student should speak out at least three sentences.

The main objective of this activity is to provide students specific input on

vocabulary, pronunciation, etc., related to the topic so they can keep talking, have
further and more consistent ideas about the topic and prepare for the actual speaking
task(s). Between stages 1 and 2 there is expected to be a certain progression in the
students gathering the content of the lesson. Whereas the tasks in stage 1 focus on
getting the students to try to speak and get warmed for the lesson, in stage 2 the tasks
aim at keeping students to talk but covertly focusing and making use of the materials
and contents introduced for the lesson and explore more language input.

STAGE 3: Language focus and speaking task(s)

Activity 1: Noticing, memorising and generalising chunks

In this activity, the main aim is to prime and raise students’ awareness of lexical items,
their patterns and use so they can generalise them during the speaking task(s). As such, the

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teacher introduces the notion of collocations, chunks, fixed and semi-fixed phrases by
writing on the board and gives some examples. He may also refer to the examples in the
previous tasks and show their lexical patterns, as in this table below and also present some
chuncks for giving advice, for example 'you should take …', 'you shouldn't do/eat/drink
much...', etc.

Activity 2: Open discussion

In this activity, the students have to use the input they received during the previous tasks to
engage in an open classroom lively discussion for as long as they can. The topic of
discussion could be 'great ways to well-being' and the teacher could raise some questions
to launch the students into the discussion and go around the class giving support when
needed. The aim of this activity, which is the central one should be to get students stitch to
English, using expressions for agreeing, disagreeing, illustrating, supporting points and
generating more lexical chunks. During the discussion, the teacher should play the role of
observer and prompter. Involving all the students will optimise the practice time and let
every student work at their level as wells enable the teacher to have a better control of the
process and product.

Type of lexical item example Patterns

good nutrition
Collocations punishing diet Adjective + noun
blood pressure
healthier way
Fixed and semi-fixed phrases The practice of sports andNP + of + N/NP + and +N/NP
physical exercises
To get much sleep To + verb + det + N/NP
Prefabricated lexical phrases I find it easy to
I find it difficult to Pron + verb + pron + adj + to
I love it when
Lexicalised items Drink tea
Practice sports Infinitive + N/NP
Take a rest
Idioms To kick the bucket To + verb + NP
To come down with To + verb + prep
Formulaic expressions Stress and depression N + and + N
Painful and expensive Adj + and + adj

Source: Author's data

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STAGE 4: Feedback, post-speaking and extended practice

Activity 1: Drills + role-play + information-gap

This activity has three tasks. In the first task the teacher gives feedback on the students'
discussion, asks the students what they liked about the activities. Then he spots some
errors and highlighting some lexical items that emerged during the discussion. The
objective of this task is to let students evaluate their work and realise their weaknesses
for further improvement.

In case time is enough, for task 2, the teacher calls for a short number of
volunteers to role play about giving advice for shorts periods of time. One of the
students will play the role of a doctor and other the role of a patient who is getting fatter
and fatter and needs a prescription to get fit. The aim in here is checking that the
students can continuously interact in English, learn from feedback and priming them for
extended practice.

In the last task, the teacher asks the students to concentrate again on the
suggestions for well-being in the article above and in pairs they decide on whether they
agree or disagree, stating their reasons for agreeing or disagreeing. After this the teacher
underlines the lexical items, chunks, collocations, etc., in some of the paragraphs of the
article and for homework asks the students to do the same with the remaining parts of
the article. The aims in this last task is to keep learners involved in the speaking cycle,
consolidate their understanding of lexical item and have input for extended practice
outside the classroom.

2.4. Rationale underlying the design and implementation of the speaking activities
in section 2.3.

The activities used in the section above are a critical reformulation of a lesson from
face2face advanced by Gillie Cunningham, Jan Bell & Chris Reston (a book used to
teach English as an optional subject to years 1 and 2 in the context under study). I
decided to focus on unit 3, section B – A happy, healthy life (pp. 29-31, 109, 112, 115-
116) – because I believed this topic is relevant for the students’ needs. It deals with
nutrition, diet and medical care, language for giving advice amongst other issues,
things that make part of every medicine practitioner. As such, I thought this topic could
be exploited in a more methodological way as to engage the learners and develop in

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them abilities for spoken production and interaction, discussion skills and
communication strategies.

Regarding the methodology, instead of using a grammar focused approach as in the

unit's structure, starting the lesson with a vocabulary exercise (tasks 1a and 1b) to guess the
meaning of bolded phrasal verbs, reading comprehension, grammar about giving advice
and the use of adverbials (tasks 2, 3, 4a, 4b, 5a, 5b and 5c) and ending with some written
exercises (tasks 6a, 6b and 7) on correcting jumbled paragraphs and substituting adverbials
in given sentences, I decided to start off with a speaking marathon that would engage
every student to try to speak right from the beginning of the lesson and arise interest.
I divided the lesson in four stages (warm-up, lead-in and pre-speaking, language
focus and speaking tasks, and feedback, post-speaking and extended practice) and
devised different speaking activities and tasks in a way that from the beginning to the
end the students would stitch to English, starting with a less structured speaking task
and gradually engaging in more thoughtful speaking production and interaction. Despite
there was a clear intent to integrate speaking activities and the lexical approach for the
practice of lexical chunks, decided to keep to the minimum an overt step-by-step
exploitation of the lexical approach so the focus could continue to be improving
speaking rather than recognition of lexical item. However, introducing minimally the
students to the notion of lexical items and priming them to notice chunks in the text and
examples provided would still enable them to be aware of lexical item and use them in
context for speaking. Mainly because teaching language as chunks would grant the
students a wider background to generalise and generate sentences.

Regarding the materials, I mostly used some of the materials in the course book,
with a fairly complete adaptation to suite best my purpose. In an actual lesson I would also
use some materials from Tony Grice (English for Nursing 1, unit 6) where I would retrieve
some material about nutrition and a spoken-based grammar exercise using should/shouldn't
for giving advice.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

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Having discussed the literature underlying the teaching of speaking and demonstrated
basically how speaking and speaking skills could be improved, with particular reference
to nursing students at the Faculty of Medicine in Benguela, here are some concluding
remarks for reflection.

 Speaking is a fundamental language skill and the most natural way people use to
communicate and express their feelings and thoughts. It is an enabling skill and
likely the most desired by students as they want to ensure they are able to
interact in the target language as the product of having learned it. So, teaching
and assessing speaking should be a considerable part of the syllabuses.
Particularly to the students under study who have to take care of patients and
deal with people from different culture and language as wells as with technical
language and electronic laboratory equipments, an acceptable ability to use
English and speak it is compulsory and if the teaching of speaking integrates the
lexical approach the outcomes may be more noticeable as students will need to
learn and use chunks, patterns and frequent words in their professional jargon.

 In the Angolan educational system, speaking is not a compulsory assessed part

of the curriculum and due to it teachers do often disregard the teaching of
speaking and use rather a more grammar-based approach, with some focus on
reading and vocabulary. Consequently, most students take on 6 years of English
at secondary school and 2 at university but still they have a poor language
background and cannot effectively use English to communicate. This practice,
however, needs to be discouraged.

 Language should be taught considering learners specific language needs using

materials that are relevant and meet the objectives of their courses and
methodologies that raise awareness and engage them. As we could see from the
sequence of tasks and activities in section 2.3, focusing on speaking skills and
tasks in the classroom produces meaningful outcomes for language development
and makes learning a more interesting and enjoyable experience.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Boutefeu, V. M. B. (June 2013) 'Developing Speaking Skills', Powerpoint presentation
delivered in a seminar at FCSH-UNL, Lisbon.

Doff, A. (1988). Teach English: A training course for teachers. Cambridge: CUP

Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th edn). Longman

Lackman, K. (2011) Lexical Approach Activities: A revolutionary way of teaching, Ken

Lackman & Associates Educational Consultants, [online] available
http://kenlackman.com/files/LexicalActivitiesBook102.pdf [Dec. 20th 2012]
Lawtie, F. (Feb. 2004) 'Teaching speaking skills 2: Overcoming Classroom Problems',
Caracas: British Council

Lazaraton, A. (2001). ‘Teaching oral skills.’ In M. Celce-Murcia, (ed). Teaching English

as a Second or Foreign Language (3rd edn). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Lewis, M. (1993) The Lexical Approach, Language Teaching Publications

Lindsay,C. & P. Knight.(2006) Learning and Teaching English: A course for teachers.
OUP

Luoma, S. (2004) Assessing Speaking (Cambridge Language Assessment Series). CUP

Martin, D. (2003). Talk a Lot, Book 2, EFL Press: How to get your students speak 100%
English? Saitama, Japan. 1-10-19.

Richards, J. C., & R. Schmidt. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics (3rd edn). Longman: Pearson.

Snow, D. (2007). From Language Learner to Language Teacher: An Introduction to

Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc.

Thornbury, S. (2005) How to Teach Speaking. Longman: Pearson.

Ur, P. (2012). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and theory (2nd edn). CUP

APPENDIX I: Seven steps teachers need to succeed with simulation and role plays

 Prepare carefully: Teachers should clearly introduce the activity by describing

the situations and the roles to play, ensuring that the whole class understands;

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  Distribute the roles: This can be done by writing down role cards or simply by
saying the roles, so that the characters know their roles – for lower level and less
confident learners the best way is to write role cards, including some words and
expressions they may need;

 Brainstorm: Before starting the activity, let learners play in advance as a class to
predict what vocabulary, grammar or idiomatic expressions they will need;

 Provide enough time to prepare: The more the learners prepare, the better they
may perform. Therefore, before they actually perform the task, let them plan
their ideas and select the language to use either individually, in pairs or in small
groups;

 Be present as a resource: This means that as the activity progresses, teachers

should not interfere too much, correcting the errors or playing the roles
themselves. They should intervene only in case learners need help in ideas to let
the interaction flow;

 Allow learners to work at their own level: Because the class is of mixed abilities
and learners have different skills, they will not participate equally in the
interaction or all use efficiently the grammar and vocabulary the teacher has
taught. This is a good exercise for the teacher to assess what the learners already
know and what they still need to know;

 Do linguistic follow-up: After the role play is over, the teacher should give
feedback on grammar, pronunciation and other problems aroused during the
tasks.

SOURCE: Adapted by the author from Burkart (1998:11) in ‘Spoken Language: What
it is and how to teach it’

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