Components of a Contextualized Language Lesson

Introduction Communication is known to be the single most important factor that fuels the interaction among individuals. it is defined as the sending and receiving of message through a specific channel (Brown, 1994). Communication is a necessity in every facet of the modern day world. Ranging from individual, to group and to organizational level, communication is plays irreplaceable role in ensuring that information passes from the source to the target. Over the past, communication has evolved through centuries and more and more means of communication continue to be discovered day in day out. Even though new communication means are being discovered, there are basic foundational communication channels that are irreplaceable by whatever new means. One of these foundational communication is verbal communication. This is known to be the single most important and the most widely adopted means of communication worldwide. Verbal communication however presents many challenges due to the fact that different people have different languages. This aspect of multi-linguistic society brings about language barrier since an individual may can never speak all the languages of the world. This in turn has led to the emergence of foreign language learning among many people. Individuals enroll to learn foreign language for several reasons. The most common reason among those who learn foreign language is to be able to adjust to the linguistic skills that are necessary in order to communicate in that particular language. The concept of foreign language has become so widespread due to the modern day globalization. Individuals are enrolling to learn new languages even in their adulthood so as to adjust to the societal requirements with regard to verbal communication. This essay presents the speaking skills that are important to an adult learner. It further discusses the functions needed, grammar, and the vocabulary that would be necessary to meet the competence. In the end it will describe the presentation activities that would be used to facilitate language used in real world context, meaningful practice activities, and application/ extension activities. Speaking and listening skills In the normal communication scenario, people listen twice as they speak. This means that listening dominates speaking (Rivers, 1981). However, the essence of communication is to send and receive message and as such, both listening and speaking have to happen concurrently to enhance effective communication (Bailey & Savage, 1994). In the classroom context, listening and speaking are used at an almost the same rate. This is because of the interactive nature of learning process. Both listening and speaking are crucial in ensuring that learning process is efficient and effective both to the learners and the teachers. Speaking Speaking is defined as the process of coming up with a meaning that involves sending, receiving and processing the information born in the speech. It is often times spontaneous and unpredictable. This aspect of spontaneous compels speaking to largely rely on several prevailing factors such as the audience or the participants to the speech, the context of the scene, and the parties’ collective experience (Carter & McCarthy, 1995). For an adult learning to speak, i...