Some speaking activities

Here are some more activities, some of which you can use with little or no prepararion. These are activities that I have found by dredging my computer directories. I there fore do not know the sources fo these activities. I would be happy to give any credit where it is due.

Lying: an icebreaker

air off students. It’s a good idea to pair off the students off oneself, as they might be a bit bashful in pairing off with a partner they don’t know. Students have to tell their partner three things about themselves which are true, and three things which are lies or false. One partner tells whilst the other takes notes, they them swap roles. They repeat this operation two or three times, but they must talk about the same subjects they started with, but telling different lies each time. When the students report back they report on to of their partners and the class has to deduce which sentences are the correct ones. To round off, each person tells the truth about himself or herself. From Recipes for Tired Teachers Christopher Sion

We’ll answer for you

1. Tell the group that you are willing to answer questions about yourself. The questions can be as deep as they like and they need not restrict themselves to superficial questions such as “What are your hobbies?” Each student should write five questions they would like to ask. They can ask their partners for help if they wish. Go round, monitoring, and correcting. N.B.; correct them most recent questions first, as the first questions will now be a long way from them emotionally.

2. Whilst monitoring choose several students who you feel will most able to answer for you and ask them to sit behind you telling them that they will have to answer the questions that the other students ask.

3. Silently react to the students’ answers indicating whether they are correct or incorrect. From Recipes for Tired Teachers Christopher Sion

Mime stories

Level: pre-int upwards

Time 45-60 minutes, including written follow -up.

Aims: Language practice, memory, having fun.

Standard Version, Whole class + whole story.

This is very similar to pictures stories in that it is an effective way to build up a story with the whole class.

1. Invent a story, or use one of the ones given, ones with simple “punch lines” work

2. Preteach signs and signals for instructions you’ll repeat often. Ex. Repeat, tell the story from the beginning, repeat etc.

3. Build the story with the whole class: ELICIT a number of alternative words/phrases/sentences for the mimed bit from the class. SELECT the one you want. CORRECT the language as appropriate. ESTABLISH it by drilling around the class RECAP by going back to the previous sentence/beginning of the story as appropriate. As you recap get them to use various discourse markers (suddenly, so on, then, etc.), You could supply new grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation as you write it on the board.

4. Follow-up, students write up the story. This works better for fluency rather than accuracy. It is an enjoyable way of getting a class, especially a boisterous one to work together.

One very important ground rule: don’t speak once you’ve begun the mime, it destroys the atmosphere a mime creates. Stage two tends to be done reluctantly, try silent dictation techniques, to keep up the level of challenge.

Why not ask students to do mime stories of their own?

Sample scripts

Write on the board… doing up a shoelace… then mime:

• Sit down
• Bend over
• Bring your hands down to your shoe
• Cross left shoelace over right
• Bring the end of the left shoelace under the right one
• Pull left and right shoelace
• Make a loop with the left shoelace
• Bring right loop over left one
• Pull both loops

Write on board: last Saturday in London

• I was lost
• I unzipped my bag
• I took a map out of my bag
• I unfolded my bag
• I turned it the right way up
• I looked for the road
• I couldn’t find it
• I asked a police officer where to go
• I listened very carefully
• I walked across the road
• I walked to the end of the road
• I turned left
• I turned right at the traffic lights
• I turned left
• I stopped and looked at the name of the road
• I was still lost

Write on the board: yesterday I was in jail…

• In my jail cell there was nothing,
• no door (it had been bricked up)
• no windows,
• there was no bed,
• chairs,
• shelves,
• only and old table.
• How did I escape?
• I rubbed my finger
• on the table
• until I got a sore.
• With the saw
• I cut the table in half.
• As two halves make a whole,
• I put the table against the wall
• and climbed through.

One question behind

Demonstrate by getting students to ask you a first question. You answer “Mmmm”. Then they ask the second question and you then give the answer to the first one. The student asks the third and you give the answer to the first. The wrong combination can be quite funny… Students can make their own questions, or you can dictate or use the questions below.

• Where do you sleep?
• Where do you eat?
• Where do you go swimming?
• Where do you wash your clothes?
• Where do you read?
• Where do you cook?
• Where do you listen to music?
• Where do you get angry?
• Where do you do your shopping?

• What do you eat soup with?
• What do you cut your meat with
• What do you write on?
• What do you wipe your mouth with
• What do you blow your nose with?
• What do you brush your hair with?
• What do you sleep on
• What do you write with
• What do you wear in bed
• What do you wear in church?

Variation Divide the students into groups of four.

A: timekeeper.

B: question master

C & D: players.

Question master asks player C, which have to be answered falsely. The time3keeper notes how long it takes to finish the question and answer session. The question master now asks D the questions, who must answer truthfully. Again they are timed, the winner being the quickest. Rationale. The C & D students have to do three things at once which can often result in them giving better answers. It is a game which involves them doing mental gymnastics, making this drill like exercise more palatable.

• How old are you?
• Where do you live?
• Which colour do you like best?
• What time is it?
• How did you get here?
• what time did you get up today?
• What did you have for breakfast?
• Where does your best friend live?
• What sort of music do you dislike?
• How many brothers and sisters do you have?

Mistakes Mirror

Ask students to ham up an English speaker speaking Spanish, paying especial attention to the inflection, stress, and intonation. Then ask them to transfer these mistakes to a reading of a simple text, using the same hamming up mode. This exercise uses the mother tongue as a powerful distorting mirror. Variation Choose an average student composition and, after the asking permission, rewrite the text in the student’s own tongue, in a way that closely imitates the mistakes in the student’s work. Copy both texts so you can give them to the students. Rationale The point of this exercise is to mirror in a crude fashion the mistakes made in the original student’s work. N.B. It might be better to write one’s own text including common mistakes of the student group. L1 is a powerfully understood code and here we are trying to help the student see the L2 in the same intense way.

First Lesson [For all Levels]

• Teacher asks individual learners questions and elicits answers from them without revealing the truth.
• Learners write 8-20 questions [depending on level] to ask the teacher, perhaps in pairs.
• Monitor and correct as learners write.
• Learners interview teacher, who gives truthful answers.
• Learners interview two or three other learners using the same questions.

Personal Stories

Teacher describes a personal event. The language can be graded to a variety of levels. Learners complete a gap-fill text based on the story [target language: vocabulary or verb tense, for example].

Generative Situations

Set up a situation through a story. Put prompts on the chalkboard or whiteboard. Elicit target language. For example:

• My uncle’s tomato sauce [passive]
• The Party [past perfect active or passive]
• Uncle in prison ["will" versus "going to"

Learners repeat and write examples as necessary.

Cuisenaire Rods for Telling the Time

This can be a difficult area, and learners of even quite high levels make mistakes. Confusion can be avoided by building up a clock in stages using the long hand first, short hand second. Put out greed blocks to represent 12, 3, 6, and 9.

• Demonstrate o'clock, half past, quarter past, quarter two using long hand
• Learners draw a circle and add marks [not numbers] for 12, 3, 6, and 9.
• Give learners a long hand, and dictate expressions, which they show with their blocks.
• Extend to pairwork.
• Add white blocks to mark the five-minute divisions.
• Demonstrate 5 past, 10 past etc.
• Learners mark these divisions on their clock.
• Dictate expressions, which learners show with their blocks.
• Extend to pairwork.
• Introduce a short hand and show how this shows the hour.
• Dictate expressions [e.g. half past, o'clock, five] and learners choose hand and show it on their clock.
• Finally, introduce full time expressions, showing how we read the long hand first [except when we use o'clock].
• Dictate times, which learners mark on their own clocks.
• Extend to pairwork

Lateral Thinking Problems to Practise Question Forms

Give scenario: Anthony and Cleopatra are in a room. They are lying on the floor. They are dead. Also on the floor there is some glass and some water. There is also a dog that wants to leave the room but can’t. How did they die? Learners ask Yes/No questions to teacher who answers only if each question is formed correctly. There are many such stories that can be used to practise the question forms of different tenses.

Mingling Definitions

Learners are given a number from 1 to however many there are in the class.

• Next to his or her number, each learner writes down a recently taught word or expression. Alternatively, the teacher can supply these words to ensure no duplicates and [or] that the words are indeed appropriate.
• Learners mingle and ask each other for a definition of their word.
• Learners guess the word from the definition. When correctly guessed, the learner writes it next to the appropriate number.
• Learners can give definitions of any words that they have on their list.
• Continue until the words are complete.

Women will do this activity if there are men present. They will either remain seated and wait till men approach, or do the activity with a small group of women pouncing on a solitary man or by freely mixing.

My Little Brother

This short poem can be extended to practise irregular past simple verbs in a number of ways.

• Tell story slowly and check understanding.
• Tell story at speed.
• Ask learners to order the events of the story.
• Say the rhyme and illustrate stress features.
• Learners practise rhyme.
• Teacher says incorrect version of the story and students correct: “I had a little sister.” “You didn’t have a little sister, you had a little brother.”
• Learners answer teacher’s questions about rhyme.
• Learners write the questions asked (board prompts can be used.)
• Learners write the rhyme with a guide template.
• Learners do parallel writing [i.e. they write a new, non-rhyming story, e.g. I had a large cat and its name was Arthur etc].

The Interview

• Each learner writes down a subject that he or she know a lot about at the top of a piece of paper.
• The paper is passed around the class. Each learner writes a question about the subject and passes the sheet on.
• When the sheet arrives at its owner, he or she gives it to their partner who then conducts the interview.

This is also useful for exam practice for the speaking paper. Each learner is given a topic [health, education, travel, hobbies, family etc] and questions on that topic are written. In this case the questions can be recycled with different learners.

Dungeons and Dragons

This is a very flexible role-play that works very well with small groups at all levels. It is essentially an extended role-play, but with the key difference that the teacher takes on a variety of roles. The original idea was from Dungeons and Dragons and was adapted and simplified for the classroom. It provides excellent practice of functional English. The range of situations is only limited by the imagination of the teacher and learners. Random elements can be introduced along with problems to be solved. Many of the situations can then be extended into writing and short grammar explanations can even be included during the exchanges. It is a very powerful technique. A typical exchange:

• Teacher: You arrive at the travel agent’s. (In role) Good afternoon. Can I help you?
• Student[s]: Yes, we’d like a ticket to London, please. Etc.

Later.

• Teacher: You get to the airport and discover that your plane is full. You are offered 500 dollars not to catch the flight. What do you do?
• Student[s]: [After some discussion]. We go to the manager to complain.
• Teacher: You don’t know where the manager is.
• Student[s]: We ask the person at the check-in desk.
• Teacher: I am at the check in desk. [In role] Yes?
• Student[s]: Where is the manager, please?
• Teacher: Go straight ahead, turn left, go up the stairs and you will his office. [Out of role] What do you do? Etc.

Soap Opera

This is a fun and very motivating activity that can generate a lot of discussion, and writing.

• Discuss Soap Operas and the typical themes they explore.
• Learners choose a photograph [same sex usually works best].
• Tell learners that they are the person in the photograph.
• Dictate the following and ask learners to write short answers.

What is your name?

• How old are you?
• What do you do for a living?
• Write three positive adjectives to describe yourself.
• Write two negative adjectives to describe yourself.
• Write three things you like doing.
• Write two things you don’t like doing.
• You have an ambition.
  • What is it?
• What is stopping you from achieving your ambitions?

Cuisenaire Rods for Telling the Time

Telling the time can be a difficult area, especially if your focus is on accuracy, and learners of even quite high levels make mistakes. Confusion can be avoided by building up a clock in stages using the long hand first, short hand second. Put out blocks to represent 12, 3, 6, and 9.

• Demonstrate o’clock, half past, quarter past, quarter two using long hand
• Learners draw a circle and add marks [not numbers] for 12, 3, 6, and 9.
• Give learners a long hand, and dictate expressions, which they show with their blocks.
• Extend to pairwork.
• Add white blocks to mark the five-minute divisions.
• Demonstrate 5 past, 10 past etc.
• Learners mark these divisions on their clock.
• Dictate expressions, which learners show with their blocks.
• Extend to pairwork.
• Introduce a short hand and show how this shows the hour.
• Dictate expressions [e.g. half past, o'clock, five] and learners choose hand and show it on their clock.
• Finally, introduce full time expressions, showing how we read the long hand first [except when we use o'clock].
• Dictate times, which learners mark on their own clocks.
• Extend to pairwork

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