Speaking Skill

What is Speaking?

Speaking is the delivery of language through the mouth. We can say that speaking means expressing thoughts and feelings in spoken language. Talking often involves conveying information. To speak, we create sounds using many parts of our bodies, including the lungs, vocal tract, vocal cords, tongue, teeth, and lips.

Speaking skill is developed through exposure and practice. Speaking follows a cognitive process: We formulate ideas in our mind, decide for sentence structures and words, and express them. Speaking is an interactive skill, which involves both listening and speaking. 

Stress and intonation along with speaker's gestures and facial expressions help to convey and understand the meaning.

There are certain reasons why people find it difficult to speak English. There are some factors responsible for this are the limitations of the study program and the time that restrict the development of this ability in classrooms. Also another factor are overcrowded classrooms where students do not have the opportunity to speak.

However, in this blog you can find websites that will help you practice speaking skills.

Best English Websites 

Listening websites

1. TED-Ed Lessons Series

Link: https://ed.ted.com/series

Level: B1 - C1.

Age: 10+
TED-Ed has several videos that are very interesting to watch, as they address topics such as science, technology, history, nature and much more! Each video develops students' listening skills and is accompanied by comprehension questions to check understanding, as well as open-ended questions and links to explore more on the topic. Most of the videos are quite short, so students can easily watch them twice if necessary, and you can also find the transcript.

2. Speechyard

Link: https://speechyard.com/video-exercises/
Level: A1 - C1.

Age: young adults.
Speechyard exercises will help you practice listening by watching videos and doing interactive exercises. The page allows us to choose the category of the videos and the level you want. Here you will have to write, build words and sentences, and find the missing word. Before starting the video, instructions are given on how to do each exercise. Students can listen more than once until the video is understood.

3.  Elllo

Link: http://elllo.org/index.htm
Level: A1 - C1. 
Age: 8+
English Language Listening Library Online (ELLLO) is a web page that contains activities to help develop students' listening skills. The page contains audios and videos with speakers from all over the world, which is a great advantage for a student to hear different accents. On this website, students can listen to audio or watch a video, read the script, take an interactive quiz, and learn vocabulary. These activities are listed by difficulty in grammar and vocabulary according to the CEFR.

4. Lyrics Training

Link: https://es.lyricstraining.com/
All levels.
Age: 10+

LyricsTraining helps train the ear when listening to songs. It is also an entertaining way to learn the lyrics of students' favorite songs. You can choose the difficulty from beginner to advanced. There are two different modes of practice, the first is writing mode and the other is selection, in which according to the student can choose.

5. ESL Video

Link: https://eslvideo.com/series.php?id=Easy%20English
Level: A1 - C1. 
Age: 8+
Esl Video allows students from 8 years old to explore questionnaires by level, from A1 to C1 according to the CEFR. The videos on this site are hosted on YouTube and next to each one has a short quiz. This page contains printable fill-in activities to practice listening skills in the classroom. In addition to offering videos with practice activities, it is a very useful tool for teachers since they can create their own questionnaires in the Create tab. Just enter, add a title, description, video embed code, and a thumbnail image. Then add questions and share the quiz with students.