How can I help students speak confidently, using correct grammar structures?

My other research questions:

My perception:

🟤 Why do I think teaching speaking 🗣️ is difficult for me❓

Students' behavior:

🟣 What do my students think about the way I teach speaking❓

Students' perception:

🔵What opportunities do my students have to speak after the lesson ❓

🟫 My own written reflections ✍️

🟪 Responses to questionnaire 📜

🟦 Students' works and projects on tasks 📝

I should help them build well-structured speech by providing them with interesting and easy instructions.

As a result of teaching them pronunciation more, they will feel free to speak confidently.

I should pay attention to the level of the tasks that I want them to do. Moreover, my instructions should be easy to follow and clear at the same time.

Finally, they will be able to achieve better outcomes while speaking in English with their peer, almost anyone.

My students' perception:

It was difficult for most of them to organize their ideas because of facing hesitations related to grammar.

They often felt shy and confused expressing their opinions in front of others since they had many problems with their pronunciation.

Sometimes the level of the tasks that I gave was a little higher than theirs.

My students' behavior:

While doing the given tasks, students had various feelings:

- Confident;

- A bit nervous;

- Confused.

✅ 1. Making grammar activities easier.

Reason: They can do the tasks easily, being involved.

✅ 2. Helping students improve their confidence using various methods.

Reason: They will try to speak more.

✅ 3. Including interesting tasks.

Reason: Students' motivation will increase considerably.

✅ 4. Trying to shorten the period of activity and allocate the time.

Reason: Students won't get bored.

My teaching context:

• My students are mostly 5th- and 6th-grade students;

• I conduct lessons for a group of 10 students at the A2 elementary level;

• My students had various difficulties while speaking in English:

  - Pronunciation;

  - Lack of confidence;

  - Grammar

  which led me to research those issues.

• As soon as I have done my research it was obvious that they started to pronounce the words correctly, using proper grammar with great confidence.

• I aim to help students learn the language without any hesitation but with motivation and fluency, which makes them confident and engaged while studying at the same time.

1. Online resources to improve English pronunciation – Live & Learn

   -Emphasized the importance of working with

   • Recording;

   • Interactive games.

     
     

2. ESL Speaking Activities and Worksheets – Elementary Level A2 | AmeriLingua

-Possibility to choose topics and learn from simple samples.

Therefore, I used some methods like

• pair-work;

• role-play;

• taking video of their answers to the questions.

  
  

  As a result of using these methods,

  They started to become quite confident gradually.

  
  

  What's more, they often mixed the tenses and couldn't use them correctly although they knew all the rules.

  Therefore, I asked everyone to prepare to teach the grammar in each lesson.

  It helped them to feel the responsibility for their learning.

  
  

  Also, I had a student who used to pronounce the words in the way they were written.

  
  

  I started to think about solutions for this issue.  I decided to use simple songs which were funny and engaging. My students started to pronounce e English words somehow correctly but not fully.

  
  

  Then I made small texts unutding the words which they mispronounced. They read the text 30 times and sent me the audios via telegram. Although I used those methods, it wasn't sill effective fully as it didn't help some students to increase their speaking skills. I am still confused what to do.

  
  

(* There are 10 students in my group).

First, I asked what their weak point was while speaking. Half of my class had difficulties with organizing their ideas, while grammar difficulties accounted for 30%. In 20% of cases, they didn't know the appropriate vocabulary for the given topic.

Then I asked about how they felt during speaking tasks in front of the class. 30% of my students said that they felt confident, sometimes a bit nervous and confused at 40% and 30% respectively.

My next question was about to find out whether they wanted to have more speaking tasks. 50% of them said "Yes" and "Not so much" and "A bit boring" at 30% and 20% cases respectively.

• Making easier grammar activities are helpful for both revising thier past knowledge and and can be an important factor meaning that in thier A2 level they can use easy and basic grammar structures.

• What's more, they can easily follow the tasks.

  
  

  Change in my students' perception:

• They have realized that step-by-step following the interactive methods given the teacher and doing some projects after the lesson can be helpful for them.

• Additionally, they found out that they could collaborate with their peers to improve their skills in English.

  
  

  Change in my students' behavior:

• They started to feel confident in their speech.

  They are much more motivated now, which led me to think that the research I conducted worked successfully!