In my teaching, I always make an effort to ​design communicative speaking activities​,

provide corrective feedback​, and ​create an friendly, safe, and authentic learning environment​ for

learners.

Communicative Speaking Activities

To achieve the communicative goal for C1 adult learners, I’m dedicated to designing

speaking activities that help them develop solid speaking skills. In this unit, we were talking

about free time activities. Based on different language foci, I demonstrated two speaking

activities--one is for vocabulary and adjectives, and the other is for grammar.

1. Sports Vocabulary and Descriptive Adjectives--Debate

In the first activity in Video 1, the language focus is about the vocabulary of sports and

the adjectives to describe the sports. Therefore, at I made students do a small debate. First, at

19:30 in Video 1, I had students create a sentence such as “Playing soccer is dangerous” in pairs,

where students can do collaborative learning. Then, students stood up to choose to stand on the

“agree” side or the “disagree” side. Finally, from 24:30 to 40:50, students had to ​give reasons

why they made their decisions. During the process, students not only ​practiced the language

focus​ but learned how to ​express their opinions with equal chances to speak up​. For adult

learners, integrating the advanced debating element in the activity also helps them ​develop

critical thinking​, which can be applied in future academic or working places.

2. Modal ​Can​--Unique Ability Competition

In the second speaking activity in Video 2, the grammar point “can” is elaborated by

focusing on the use of “ability”. After introducing the meaning and form of affirmative, negative,

and question formation, I asked students to come up with some unique things that they can do; if
on one else in class can do the thing, the person scored the highest. The ​competition​ starting

from 15:20 to 27:18 helped ​increase students’ motivation​; when they were practicing the correct

use of modal “can”, the activity simultaneously elicited creativity and added humor to the

learning. ​Technology​ was used to help explain the words that students may not be familiar with

and to draw ​visual aid for multimodal input​ (Video 2--23:17).

Various Types of Corrective Feedback

For all the speaking activities, I provide both ​immediate​ and ​delayed​ corrective feedback.

I believe that through the corrective feedback, learners can notice their errors and improve

learning. In addition to the language focus in a certain activity, I give corrective feedback on

other pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary as well. The following are some examples of the

delayed feedback that I provided after students’ pair/group discussion.

1. Pronunciation: ​Video 2--09:05--the distinction between ​b​ik​ e​ and ​b​a​ke

2. Grammar: ​Video 2--10:35--the use of ​too​, ​either​, and ​neither

3. Vocabulary: ​Video 1--41:20--the meaning and use of ​surround

What’s more, I used ​backchannel cues​ to show that I’m listening (Video 1--12:36), ​asked

extended questions​ as well as gave ​words of encouragement/positive feedback​ (Video 2--26:50),

and helped ​summarize their points as the final recast​ (Video1--29:30).

Friendly, Safe, and Authentic Learning Environment

Last but not least, creating an authentic, safe, and friendly learning environment is the

must in my teaching philosophy. I started the class with the ​discussion of Thanksgiving holidays

(Video 1--02:02), which was related to their real life. We even had a nice chat about one

student’s sharing his son’s photo and life before the class started (Video 1--beginning). Since
students come from different cultural backgrounds, I’m devoted to creating a learning

environment in which they ​are treated equally, feeling safe and comfortable to share their

cultures and thoughts​. The activities are ​contextual-oriented​ rather than mechanical-driven, too,

which matched the communicative and authentic goal of CLP.