Choose relevant and interesting topics.  Learners will be more motivated to participate in activities that they are interested in and that relate to their lives or experiences.

Be specific. Speaking activities with a clear communicative goal work best. For example, ‘Tell your partner what you did at the weekend and find one thing you have in common’.  Give learners a specific task and an end goal so that they know when they have achieved it. Vague activities like ‘Talk about things you like’ can leave learners wondering what a teacher wants.

Give support and preparation time. Sometimes, a speaking activity falls flat because learners simply don’t feel ready to speak. Make sure they have the language they need and give them a bit of time to prepare. This could be time to read instructions for a role play for example. Making notes can help, but writing a speech interferes with fluency.

Allow learners to work together If learners talk in pairs or groups, they get much more speaking practice than when you are asking questions to one learner at a time. You could demonstrate the speaking activity with a strong learner first, to make sure that learners are clear about what you want them to do.

Provide a clear purpose Activities where learners have to exchange information in order to complete an activity provide a real reason for speaking. These are sometimes known as ‘information gap’ activities. This could be a simple question and answer activity, or something more complex like a group activity where learners have different information which they have to share in order to solve a puzzle.