Speaking

Things to think about

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

• Discussion strategies, from Cult of Pedagogy

• How to teach conversational English - from BusyTeacher.org  

Activity ideas

• All kinds of ideas for speaking lessons, by The Teaching Kitchen

• 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.

• Discussion / debate prompts  from Kialo.org

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. 

In an in-person class, you could just hand each group a different piece of paper. In online class, you could 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.