Speaking

Things to think about

• Understanding the impact of task design on learners’ willingness to speak 

• Discussion strategies, from Cult of Pedagogy

• from Hopelink/East Side Literacy

• from BusyTeacher.org  

Activity ideas

• All kinds of ideas for speaking lessons, by ELT Buzz

• Share your screen or cut up a sequence story. Get students to take turns (or help one another) describe the images and put them in order.

• Use Creative Commons Images. Search for something, like "bears". One student needs to describe one of the pictures. The other students identify which picture they're talking about.  This can get at the subtleties of language and teach students to describe where the picture is that they're seeing. 

• Take a video recipe - it could be a beautiful one like this, or quick ones like these. Get students to learn the recipes and then explain them.

• Ask students to think of something they know how to do. Get them to explain to other students (in very small groups, if possible) how to do it. Other students have to ask questions. 

• Giving directions. Project a map. Give a starting point. One student has to say, "I want to go to ..." The other students have to give directions to get them there.

• 20 questions.

• Video discussion - you post a topic, and students can record video answers: info.flipgrid.com/ 

Video prompts

• Improv Everywhere - these are 2-3 minute clips that can generate discussion! (What would you do if you were there? Describe what happened? Should that be legal? ....) 

• Wordless videos - students can describe, narrate, talk about emotions, use verbs, nouns, etc, etc, etc

Information Gap Structure

• One time-honored way to get students speaking is to give different information to different students or to different groups of students. 

  • STEP 1: Divide the class into groups.

  • STEP 2: Give each group different information (words, a paragraph, a photo, ...)

  • STEP 3: Ask each group to discuss / study / read /describe some information or a picture. 

  • STEP 4: Bring all students back together or mix the groups differently. 

  • STEP 5:  Students need to explain their information to students who were in a different group. 

• For STEP 2, in an in-person class, you would just hand each group a different piece of paper. In online class, you could:

  • If you have an assistant or a lead student who can share their screen, send that person a link to what you want them to discuss / learn / describe in their room. You can send it in advance or in a private Zoom "chat".

  • Split students into breakout rooms. Give them some questions to discuss until you visit them. Visit the different breakout rooms to give them their different information (different images, recipes, paragraphs, parts of a story, etc.). If they are on computers and have phones nearby, they can take a picture of the screen that you are sharing. 

  • Send private "chats" to each student with their private information. 

  • (This is easiest when students are on computers.) Create 2 different Google docs in advance. At the top of each doc, list instructions - what do you want to students to do? 

    • Put the links to both docs in the chat, labeled as "Room #1: link" and "Room #2: link". 

    • Create the breakout rooms (don't open them yet). 

    • Tell the students which room they are in. 

    • Ask them to click on the link for their room. 

    • Then open the breakout rooms.  

    • Students follow the instructions on their doc. 

Keep them talking

Portland Literacy Council workshop, November 2, 2019

Link to the presentation (resources within!)