• Unit   1 - Greeting  
• Unit   2 -  Introducing
• Unit   3  -  Weather
• Unit   4 -  My self
• Unit   5  -  Family
• Unit  6  - Describing people
• Unit   7  - Meeting someone
• Unit  8 -  Inviting
• Unit   9 -  Asking for Advice and Making Suggestions
• Unit 10 - Making Suggestions
• Unit 11 -  Intentions, Opinions and Promises
• Unit 12 - Complimenting or Wishing
• Unit  13 - Reminding, Apologizing, Thanking and Offering Help
• Unit  14 - Debates
• Unit  15 -  Asking for information
• Unit  16 - Conversations in different contexts
• Unit 17 - Inquiring
• Unit  18 - Talking about one’s designation
• Unit  19 - Telephoning : Answering and Calling
• Unit  20 - At a hotel

Second Language   teachers experience great difficulties in stimulating their students to speak the target Language. The main question asked by  many second language teachers is how to encourage students to make use of the target language in the classroom. Both new and experienced teachers often struggle and end up disappointed in developing their learners’ English language speaking skills.
      Even though, the development of this skill is not an easy task for the learners, there are many aspects that have to be taken into account in the learning process. Among them the important one is that the learner must be active and dynamic practising and exchanging patterns   that are important in the development of the skill.
During the process of learning speaking skills the learner must be exposed to a natural environment and natural speech of the target language that enable them to develop their awareness of conversational features and strategies. Therefore  the task of the teacher is to incorporate real communication in the classroom by promoting interactive and realistic activities in order to help students gain confidence and feel motivated. 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. 
It has long been my intention to design a book to suit the ESL learners’ needs to develop speaking skills and hence   ‘Developing Speaking Skills   in English’ emerges as a text book. 
This book consists of 20 chapters. Each chapter presents a new context of speech situation. Under each context of conversation there are examples and exercises for the learners to practice and learn on their own.

   Mrs.S. Ravindran
 SeniorLecturer                                                 
 English Language Teaching Centre                                                            
University of Jaffna