Teaching speaking and listening to young learners

I. Speaking skills and young learners
1.1. Speaking as a speech activity and young learners in English

Speaking is a productive speech activity. Speaking is a skill of oral communication in sending an oral message. The main goal of teaching to speak is developing learners' abilities in accordance with their real needs and interests to communicate orally in different social and culture situations.

Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts". Speaking is a crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Despite its importance, for many years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of
dialogues.
Speaking as a skill of oral communication is considered one of the speech activities. Psychological content of speaking is expressing ideas. In a simpler way speaking as a methodological concept envelops: 1) the process of expressing idea;2) utterance; 3)oral speech; 4) statement. Answering a question or even a whole monologue can be the expression of idea. So speaking is an integral part of oral conversation. Speaking is the use of a certain lexical, grammatical or phonetic phenomena in the aim of expressing the idea. The proverb «First think then speak» proves this idea. So verbalization of ideas is speaking skill.
Psychological content of speaking is expressing ideas.
Speaking as a methodological concept envelops:
1) the process of expressing idea;
2) utterance;
3) oral speech;
4) statement.
Speaking has three functions:1) a means of communication 2)practical aim of teaching 3) a means of teaching
Speaking is the use of a certain lexical, grammatical or phonetic phenomena in the aim of expressing the idea.
At present, the value of learning speaking is general, that speaking is paramount, it is difficult to overestimate it. Not by chance, wanting to know whether a person knows one or another foreign language, he is asked: «Do you speak English?
Speaker chooses ready word or grammatical units from the memory. Usually materials o f mother tongue are always ready in memory. However interference is observed (order o f words in a foreign language and mother tongue).
The third part of speaking is performing or express an idea, pronouncing, namely, it consists of usage of it in outer speech. Realization o f all these three parts helps to make speaking process90.
Speaking skill should be taught integratively with other skills (writing, listening and reading). ¹ We can express our opinion verbally/orally in two ways namely monologue and dialogue. Teaching monologue and dialogue is one of the main requirements of the curriculum. The teacher should know the main features o f both forms. For instance the usage of complete clauses and structural forms are essential for monologue, but ready models or elliptical sentences are essential for dialogue.
For performing oral speech learners should gain some psychophysiological mechanisms. They are the mechanism of reproduction (some elements are used in a ready form some of them are reproduced in the process o f speech, for instance, prepared phrases consist of 25 % in the English speech), the mechanism of choice
(speaker should use different words and speech patterns during the speech and they can be found quickly or slowly in memory toward taking shape of associative relations), the mechanism of joining (in the process of joining the words and sentences, the speaker will form new combinations), the mechanism of arrangement (while feeling the language in comparison with the abstract model
operations o f text arrangements are made not remembering the theories of linguistics), the mechanism o f feeling beforehand (in order to speak fluently, it is important to feel the speech in advance what the speaker intend to say and be ready to continue the sequences, the mechanism o f feeling beforehand appears in two meanings: to use the language material and predict the maintenance), and the last one is discourse mechanism. The last mechanism is based on logical thought, when learner uses it, consciously he/she estimates the speech situation and understands the speech partners ideas and gets it nonverbal manner, response properly, he uses main point and situation of speaking knowledge.
The Nature of Speaking :Speaking is a complex cognitive process² , and an active use of language to express meaning (Cameron, 2001). It requires the language users to speak fluently, to be able to pronounce phonemes correctly, to use appropriate stress and intonation patterns, and to speak in connected speech (Harmer, 2007). In line with Harmer (2007), Chaney (cited in Kayi, 2006) defines speaking as a process of building and sharing meaning and information through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols in variety context.
According to ideas of some foreign language psychologists, speaking is not either a communication process or utterance but it is a means of statement or expression of the ideas³. There are certain genres of oral conversation. They are description (telling the details to an active listener), narration (telling the development of events), reasoning (telling one’s train of thought to an active listener), identification (talking about one’s likes and dislikes), language-inaction (people doing things and talking), comment (opinions and points of view), service encounters (buying and selling goods and services), debate and argument (seeking a solution and pursuing one’s point), learning (use of language in learning) and decision making (people working towards a decision)⁴. The ability to
perform these genres is a proof of the skill level.
In EFL context, the language users are also urged to speak in different genres and situation, and they will have to be able to use a range of conversational and conversational repair strategies⁵ Young Learners are individuals of very early age who are interested in many new things such as a foreign language, English.
Speaking skills are one of the most important skills we learn, as they allow us to communicate with others and express our thoughts and feelings. Speaking skills can be separated into formal and informal speaking skills, and we use both types of speaking skills in a variety of contexts throughout life.
Informal speaking skills are important for conversations with friends and family, helping us to form emotional connections. Formal speech, on the other hand, is necessary for workplaces, in presentations or for conversations with people you don’t know. Formal language is important as it helps us to make a good impression on people and communicate politely.
As an ESL or EAL student, speaking skills are considered the most important part of learning a language. In fact, many language learners measure their performance by how well they can speak it. As most effective foreign language learning takes place through interaction, it's a skill that can be honed to really build an understanding of the language and culture of English-speaking countries.
Yet it can be so easy to find speaking daunting or challenging. It isn't as straightforward as we may like. Teachers need to encourage students to speak as much as possible. They can make it as fun as the structure of their lessons will allow. This might be through role-play, group work or even projects.