Learning English As A Second Language Case Study

The need for developing the speaking skills is of primary importance in any language and it deserves even more importance in the case of learning English as a second language. This article explains the two prominent approaches of structural competency and the communicative competency in teaching and learning English. The various steps involved in teaching the spoken skills in English in the students through the structural approach as well as the communicative approach are dealt in detail. The ways in which these two approaches can be integrated to develop the spoken skills is also analyzed. Language learning through structural approach and language acquisition through communicative approach are explicated in this article.

The specific

Until recent years all study of language was based on the written rather than the spoken word. Where speech differed from writing, the usual attitude was and still is that speech is slovenly or careless. The feeling that good speech should conform to good writing was drummed into most of us, consciously or unconsciously from our childhood. It can be perceived that most linguists now prefer to study the spoken forms of the language. They justify the oral approach. The notion behind it is that speech must have preceded writing. They declare that writing must have been an attempt to represent the language that was spoken. So it is logical that the development of the skill of speaking should get primary importance in any language. The individual development of language skills and the differences between forms and functions and also the methods practised in these deserve a close study.

Perspectives of Developing Speaking Skills When we study people, it seems that some have acquired the art of conversational skills naturally by listening to others and through exposure where as some have developed it through practice and

So we have to exploit both their natural learning and their skill-learning capacities. Further these two kinds of learning might be integrated into one framework which can then form the basis of our methodology. Natural language acquisition of ones owns mother tongue seems to be an automatic and easy phenomenon. But when speech is formally taught in the case of a second language, it seems more difficult.

Contexts of Speaking In whatever contexts we talk, we need to keep in mind our audience and the effect our speech may have on them. Here two approaches to the development of oral communication skills need close attention. First, learning language as a skill in the classroom and second, developing spoken skills through exposure and use.

Learning Language as a Skill: Structural Competence This deals with three main aspects which belong to the learning of a skill.

1. Learners have to become aware of the key features of the target performance, so as to make the mental plans necessary to produce it.

2. They have to practice converting these plans into actual behaviour, so that in due course the basic concept plans can operate automatically, in response to higher level