Do you teach speaking with few or no materials? Here are some speaking activities that you can try with your classes. Read the rest of this entry »
You are currently browsing the archive for the speaking category.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is a suggested taxonomy for oral communication task types, not in any order of importance.
- Providing extended answers to oral questions.
- Asking and answering questions about diagrams or other visual representations of information.
automatic
- largely or wholly involuntary, especially as with a reflex
- acting or done spontaneously or unconsciously
automatize
- to make automatic [noun derivations: automatization the process of making automatic; automaticity the state or condition of being automatic]
This is an activity that requires no setting up and can be done at the drop of a hat just the kind of activity that I love to have in my toolbox! Essentially, the idea is to promote automatization through quick responses, under moderately stressful conditions.
Aim: learners will recycle vocabulary and/or create short sentences under moderately stressful conditions.
Materials: none - don’t you just love it 
… Read the rest of this entry »
- Developing ability to describe objects and processes
- Responding to various forms of questions and sustained questioning in appropriate contexts
- Interacting in real world speaking activities
- Performing one way and two-way information tasks
- Raising awareness of conversational structure [opening, turn-taking, sustaining a turn, negotiating meaning, nominating a topic, repairing a mistake, linking ideas, adjusting the message by rephrasing, or using circumlocutions, changing topics, & closing a conversation]
To complement the posts on speaking, especially regarding curriculum design, I have included a list of speaking sub-skills. Read the rest of this entry »
In this post the classroom ideas are marked with a:
Whatever type of approach you intend to use for a particular activity in the classroom, making the differentiation between fluency and accuracy is a very important one.
However, here are some things to think about. From Brumfit…
- Just because we are talking about fluency, it does not mean that accuracy cannot be present. Accuracy is a focus on issues of appropriacy and other formal factors.
- Overuse of accuracy monitoring can cripple language development, making the students lose confidence through the teacher’s over correction.
- Any language activity that involves the learners not working like native speakers cannot be called a fluency activity.
- The “quality” of the language is irrelevant.
- Because:
- work that focuses on language alone = accuracy work
- and work that focuses on the language of the native speaker = fluency work.
Some courses fail the learners in that they fail to distinguish between spoken and written language. The litmus test for this assertion is to ask whether the syllabus/curriculum treats spoken language as something distinct from written language with its own grammar, syntax and lexicon. If productive skills work is a vehicle for the teaching of structures rather than training for skill and sub-skill acquisition then the course would probably have to be described as a grammar based course, no matter how communicative it is hyped up to be.
Here then, are some of the features of spoken language as I have identified them. Read the rest of this entry »
This milling activity is very simple. Each student has a different sequential series written on a strip of paper. Their task is to find the participant wıith the exactly the same sequence as them self. For this to be a speaking and listening task, monitor the learners carefully to ensure they don’t show their sequences to people. Read the rest of this entry »
Recent Comments