Jovana expoze:

First of all I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the

members of this committee for participating in this, for me, very
important event. Furthermore I would like to give special thanks to
my mentor prof. Vera Savic who has been very supportive. I would
also like to thank the chairman of this board for her willingness to
participate in this event. I extend my deepest thanks to prof. Ivana
irkovi Miladinovi who has been with us every step of the way and
has been of great help to me durring our schooling in the
methodology of teaching English language.
This paper is dedicated to the development of young learners
and, more precisely to the development of their knowledge of the
English language. The English language has established itself in the
twentieth century as a global tool of communication. The aim of
teaching English to young learners is to prepare them to freely
communicate on a global scale. English language has four main skills
that learners need to develop in order to learn the English language
properly. These skills are: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
The general goal of the paper is to explore to what extent and how
speaking communicative activities are used in teaching English to
young learners through theoretical and empirical research. Young
learners are at a delicate age where they have very specific learning
needs and the teachers must be aware of them. The first part of this
paper refers to the characteristics of young learners. Young learners
are children from age seven up to about twelve. By

this age students have not yet fully mastered their native language so
it is very important to start teaching them a foreign language at this
stage because the experience of learning their own language is still
very fresh within the students. Young learners have a very short
attention span and they get tired quickly so it is extremely important
to properly motivate them in order to successfully complete the
lesson. aThe years that young learners spend in primary school are
extremely important for their physical, emotional, and social
development. They acquire skills that are necessary in order to
become active, productive and generally accepted members of the
society. Those skills are acquired progressively and are usually
dependent, which means that if one has not been sufficiently
developed, the acquisition of another may be obstructed or impeded.
Young learners learn trough experience. They learn their first
language first by listening, than by imitating the sounds, than by
understanding the words and finally they produce the spoken
language. In the first phase, they absorb the language without
understanding what is being said. This process remains the same
when they learn a foreign language. This is why it is very important
for children to learn how to learn and to develop a learning style that
suits them best. Young learners must be encouraged to construct
their learning habits on their own. The teachers need to encourage
their learners to learn and experiment with language outside the
classroom. Parents play a key role in these early stages of child
development. Parental involvement, interest and support can be of
immeasurable significance for childrens ability and will for learning.

This paper, also, covers the best theories of child development

given by one of the world famous theorist that specialise in
developmental psychology such as Piaget.
After that the focus of the paper switches to the speaking as a
language learning skill. Teaching speaking is a very important part of
foreign and second language learning. The ability to communicate in
a foreign language fluently contributes to the success of the learner in
school and success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it is
essential that language teachers pay great attention to teaching
speaking rather than leading students to pure memorization.
Providing a rich environment where meaningful communication
takes place is desired. With this aim, various speaking activities such
as those listed above can contribute a great deal to students in
developing basic interactive skills necessary for life. These activities
make students more active in the learning process and at the same
time make their learning more meaningful and fun for them.
Speaking communicative activities are the main tools of
developing speaking skills in young learners. They must be planed,
organized and carried out in a very special way. These exercises must
be planed in great detail: from the task of the exercise to the way in
which the materials will be administered and the feedback given. The
teachers should, also, choose the materials very carefully.
According to Richards & Rodgers communicative activities
should meet the following requirements:
* To enable students to achieve communicative goals of the
3

curriculum;
* To engage students in communication;
* To require the use of such communicative actions such as the
communication of information, gaining knowledge and
interaction.
Two types of communicative activities: Structured Output
Activities (information gap and jigsaw activities, on pages 17-18) and
Communicative Output Activities [role plays and discussions
(dialogue), interviews, picture narrating, picture describing, find the
difference(s), on pages 19-24].
Furthermore, we concluded that speaking communicative
activities are the majority of textbooks for the 4th grade. By
comparative analysis of the types of classes and prescribed forms of
teaching, it become clear that in classes frontal form coupled with
the individual generally dominate. We concluded that role play
activities are represented in textbooks as a dialogues, or less
commonly as a conversation. In some activities in the textbooks
there is no enough space for imagination. We concluded that role
play activities are considered a very interesting ones for children.
They are dreaming and become another persons. Learners respond
very well to the speaking communicative activities used in the
classrooms and the development of speaking skills plays an
important role in the English language classrooms in the schools.
By simply counting speaking communicative activities in the
above two textbooks, the following data become obvious: structured
output activities are presented in larger scale in textbook Sky Starter
4

then in Happy Street, but with communicative output activities is

reverse case. They are presented in larger scale in the textbook
Happy street. The most present communicative activities in both
textbooks are dialogues and disscusions. (table 1)- page 32
As already mentioned, speaking communicative activities are
generaly used in combination with listening and writing exercises.
The most common types of communicative activities that are in use in
teachers book for fourth grade are follows: Information gap, Jigsaw
activities,

Role-play,

Picture

describing,

Picture

narrating,

Discussions.
An empirical research was designed to show the ways of using
speaking communicative activities in primary schools in uprija and
Jagodina by analysis of the English textbooks for fourth grade of
primary education. English language teachers have not participated
in this research.