Mind Your Language: 8 effective tips to enhance English speaking skills for students

Studying a foreign language can offer a multitude of benefits beyond just enhancing communication and memory skills. It can also broaden your cultural knowledge and boost your self-confidence while navigating the world. Considering that English is the most widely spoken language globally, it makes for a fantastic choice as a second language.

Recent media reports suggest that only 10 per cent of the Indian population can speak English, while 45 per cent can speak Hindi, which is not even the country’s official language. Nevertheless, India claims to be the world’s second-largest English-speaking country. It is worth noting that out of the world’s total population of approximately eight billion, roughly 1.35 billion can communicate fluently in English.

And that is the reason why Indian parents want their children to speak the language fluently – with correct pronunciation and no grammatical errors; they want their children to have an edge over others. For this, according to Sapna Sondhi, an English teacher at Apeejay School, Pitampura, we have to start from the beginning and that means introducing the toddler to correct English from the nursery class.

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“While the teacher must encourage the students to speak in English, he/she must also give feedback to the students if they are being grammatically wrong. This exercise will not only improve their spoken skills but also the students’ grammar”

–Sapna Sondhi, English teacher at Apeejay School, Pitampura

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“First, speak English in front of the toddlers. Kids love to mimic their elders (teachers), they will follow what you do. So, teachers need to be very careful about how they speak while interacting with the students. The teacher needs to ensure that her pronunciation is correct. She must encourage her students to express themselves in English. Children love to speak Hindi because it is their native language and comes naturally to them. To improve their speaking skills, the teacher must tell the student that she will only respond if they speak in English,” Sondhi said.

Here are eight ways to improve speaking skills.

1. Have story-reading sessions. Reading drastically improves speaking skills. For the nursery kids, it can be rhymes or short stories that they can read.

2.  Read the stories out loud to them and ensure that they listen carefully to how you (the teacher) speak and pronounce words. The children will learn to speak the language faster as they are very observant at that age.

3. When the children go into higher classes, the reading sessions should continue. But here, the teachers can have a small competition where whoever reads the chapter/page perfectly will be given a prize – a book that they may want to read.

4. Encourage the students to learn from peers. Tell them that when they are talking among themselves, they must converse in English.

5. Recommend some TV shows like those on History TV18, Discovery Channel, and even National Geographic. These listening activities are important; so the more they listen to such shows, the better they will speak.

6. When you speak a language, four skills come into play — reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Therefore, the teacher must inculcate these habits among the students.

“Take an example. When I was in school and the teacher found us speaking in Hindi, we would be fined (nominal amount). At the end of the month, there would be a class party from the money so collected. The teacher would then give out the name of the person who had been fined the most. This discouraged us to speak in Hindi while we were in the school,” Sondhi recounted.

7. While the teacher must encourage the students to speak in English, he/she must also give feedback to the students if they are being grammatically wrong. This exercise will not only improve their spoken skills but also the students’ grammar.

8. Never overlook a mistake that the students make while writing an answer. When a teacher checks their notebooks, correct those mistakes and point the same out to the student so that he/she doesn’t repeat them.

Sondhi, also said that it is a myth and a person can never learn to speak English properly. “With hard work anything is possible. If a student puts in that extra effort, he/she can learn how to speak fluent English. We, at Apeejay, have EWS students. They don’t have an English-speaking environment at home and yet with sheer hard work, they speak well. The reason is simple. They’re making that extra effort because they want to excel,” Sondhi opined.

Another way to imbibe good speaking skills among students is to tell them how this language can help them in the future. “It is not just about learning another language. Learning a different language makes you sharper. Justify why a student must learn English,” Sondhi said.

What can parents do to encourage their children to speak English?

If the parents want their child to have fluent speaking skills, they need to put in the effort themselves. “Have reading sessions with them; give them books that they can read to improve their language and vocabulary. Parents have to spend time with their children and do activities as a family to help them. Remember extra effort never goes to waste,” Sondhi said in conclusion.