Chapter I. The importance of language teaching

partner to the class. 
One other way of getting students to speak is roleplaying. Students pretend 
they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In roleplay 
activities, the teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and 
what they think or feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are Ali, you 
go to the doctor and tell him what happened last night, and what they think or feel 

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8 
The twenty-first century has brought drastic changes in all walks of life and 
there is no wonder to say that it has changed the entire way of people's living. In this 
process, there are drastic changes in the field of communication also. As speech is 
considered the best way to communicate with others, it plays a predominant role in 
the contemporary society as a tool to express the opinion of the people. It is evident 
that the need to acquire language teaching has become the order of the day. Due to 
lack of communication skills, the young learners of today are facing numerous 
problems in expressing their thoughts and ideas properly in English even if they 
know and express the same in their mother tongue.
Now the responsibility mainly is on the shoulders of the English language 
teachers to train the learners properly and systematically in applying these skills for 
their bright career by adopting innovative and novel techniques and strategies in the 
classroom. This paper brings out the importance of language teaching and their 
advantages in this competitive world to grab the opportunities in terms of education, 
business, employment, technology, and what not. This paper also focuses on the 
process involved in these speaking activities of the learners.
4
Furthermore, this paper tries to discuss various possible teaching techniques 
and strategies to teach language teaching to the learners of English as a foreign 
language or English as a second language. Language learning is a constant process 
that begins at birth and continues till the end of life. Language learning is an active 
process by which human beings develop their language skills in order to use them 
effectively in their social life as well as their professional life. Through language 
learning, people communicate their thoughts, opinions, information, experiences 
and feelings and learn to understand themselves and understand others. They even 
establish their relationships with the members of their family, friends and others. 
Young learners enhance their language learning skills by utilizing what they know 
4
"Role Play and Simulation in Nursing Practice" edited by Annette McIntosh-Scott and Tom Mason, 
2009, p-19

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in more complex and novel contexts and with a more range of increasing 
sophistication.
These learners develop their language proficiency and fluency by learning and 
incorporating various new language structures into their repertoire. It is a known fact 
that people cannot communicate without a language and even if they communicate, 
it does not make any sense. Hence there is a necessity of learning language skills in 
order to communicate with others in the society. To acquire good communication in 
any language, one must get a good command over the four language skills i.e. 
listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Among these four skills, speaking is considered the most important skill as 
communication plays a vital role in our daily life. After learning these four skills 
well, it is better to switch over again to language teaching as they play a key role. 
In this regard, it is apt to say that oral language carries a community’s values, 
customs, traditions, stories and beliefs. Language teaching enhance the learners’ 
language fluency and accuracy and they also boost the learners’ confidence as well. 
As the demand for language teaching increases day by day, the learners try to 
concentrate on these skills as communication is the main aspect of the present global 
market. According to Oxford English Dictionary, “Speaking is the action of 
conveying information or expressing one’s feelings in speech”. We need to 
communicate well with others in order to fulfil our goals or life ambitions. Without 
having good language teaching , it has become impossible even to get a good job in 
the existing society.
Nowadays, it has become a tradition to respect and honour a person who has 
with good speaking or communication skills and he/she occupies the highest position 
in a company where they need people with excellent fluency and proficiency of the 
English language. In this scenario, there is a need for the development of learners’ 
language teaching and it has to start from the classroom itself. It is because once the 
learners leave their educational institutions after they complete their studies, they 
cannot learn these language teaching in a day or two. Learning a language and 
getting mastery over language teaching require regular practice and classroom is 

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the main platform to acquire all the skills that they need. Hence it is the responsibility 
of the teachers to teach all the required skills, especially language teaching , for the 
learners to develop their communicative competence, make them self-confident and 
win the hearts of people wherever and whatever they perform.
From the above diagram, we can understand that the importance of 
communication is the main factor as it is useful in many ways like it reduces stress, 
it saves time, it manages things well, it understands the needs of today’s world, it 
increases productivity and it enhances reactions with teachers and peers. Moreover, 
it is useful in sharing ideas, in better understanding and finally in learning new 
things. Hence the teachers should concentrate more on communication skills 
especially, language teaching since the present job market demands these skills from 
job seekers or young graduates
5
.
Thus, language teaching serve many purposes of the learners. To improve the 
language teaching of the learners at the initial or primary stage, the teachers should 
start with some simple and interesting activities like transformation of sentences, for 
example, an affirmative sentence into a question, or an affirmative into a negative 
sentence. Further the teachers can continue with functional situational drills like 
giving an advice, making a request, expressing wishes, etc. Then the teachers can 
proceed to the ‘Ranking activities’ that consist of a list of items about the topic given. 
The most important activity that needs to be introduced in the development of the 
learners’ language teaching is by introducing language games as language games 
are very much useful for the English language teachers to liven up a lesson. The 
teachers can also introduce some activities like ‘guessing games’ by keeping an 
object in a closed box and by asking the learners to guess what the object is there in 
the box. After getting the right answer, the teacher can ask the learners to describe 
the object. Undoubtedly, the learners’ participation in these activities are encouraged 
and appreciated.
5
"Role-Playing and Identity: The Limits of Theatre as Metaphor in the Representation of Reality" by 
Andrew Sofer, 2004, p-48

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Moreover, the learners feel more comfortable and confident with these 
activities while they perform a conversation in the English classroom and the 
learners use their language teaching more perfectly and effectively in order to hold 
perfect conversations, discussions, debates, presentations, group work, pair work 
and some more related activities.
The learners need to achieve mastery over grammar and a very good 
knowledge of vocabulary in order to acquire the language teaching of a foreign or 
second language. In this context, many learners are interested in participating in 
speaking activities, but unfortunately they fail to do these activities as they think that 
they are not able to find suitable vocabulary items to perform these tasks or they 
have not got enough vocabulary in their linguistic repertoire. 
In language teaching , it is not only vocabulary but also grammar competence 
plays a vital role to convey the meaning appropriate to the context. So, the main 
important thing that the learners have to do is to combine words, phrases, sentences, 
etc. correctly to communicate. It is true in the words of Littlewood “The learner 
must attain as high degree as possible of linguistic repertoire” The English language 
teachers need to implement various innovative activities in the classroom in the 
process of teaching language teaching . These activities enhance the language 
teaching of learners and help them in their personal as well as professional 
development. Let us discuss these activities in a detailed way for a clear 
understanding for the English teachers to implement them successfully in order to 
achieve communicative competence among the learners.
The most important speaking activity that is very much suitable for the 
English language classrooms, at the initial stages, is ‘Session’. This session is really 
a blessing for the learners where their English language proficiency and fluency will 
be developed to unimaginable heights. 
The main purpose of these sessions is to prepare the learners to give a talk on 
a topic for a full 60 seconds or one minute without any pauses in between. Moreover, 
the learners are supposed to speak without any hesitation, repetition and deviation. 
In the English language classrooms, teachers introduce this activity to promote the 

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learners’ language teaching . Here, first of all, the teachers have to ask the learners 
to choose topics of their own choices or sometimes then can give the learners some 
topics they are familiar with. At the initial stages, the English language teachers are 
suggested to choose simple topics that are easily performed, like: ‘About Myself’, 
‘My Likes and dislikes’, ‘My Hobbies’, ‘My Family’, ‘My Favourite, etc. and then 
he has to gradually move on to some difficult topics related to the issues on current 
affairs from national to international
6
.
While introducing this kind of activities in the classroom, the teachers should 
announce the rules and principles of the game to the learners so that they will follow 
all the rules when their turn comes. Initially, the teachers have to divide the 
classroom into two teams and initially the active and energetic learners are invited 
to give a short speech on a certain topic. Here the teacher notes down the mistakes 
of the learners and once all the students complete their talk, the teacher highlights 
the common mistakes made by the learners. The teachers should also encourage the 
learners by filling the gaps when they are unable to get the right vocabulary or 
grammatical structure.