Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Eaching Speaking
Eaching Speaking
in a Second Language
Hayriye Kayi
http://unr.edu/homepage/hayriyek
kayih[at]unr.nevada.edu
University of Nevada (Nevada,USA)
Introduction
Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and
non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts" (Chaney, 1998, p. 13). Speaking is a
crucial part of second language learning and teaching. Despite its importance, for many
years, teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have
continued to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues.
However, today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve
students' communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express
themselves and learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each
communicative circumstance. In order to teach second language learners how to speak
in the best way possible, some speaking activities are provided below, that can be
applied to ESL and EFL classroom settings, together with suggestions for teachers who
teach oral language.
After a content-based lesson, a discussion can be held for various reasons. The
students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions
in their discussion groups. Before the discussion, it is essential that the purpose of the
discussion activity is set by the teacher. In this way, the discussion points are relevant
to this purpose, so that students do not spend their time chatting with each other about
irrelevant things. For example, students can become involved in agree/disagree
discussions. In this type of discussions, the teacher can form groups of students,
preferably 4 or 5 in each group, and provide controversial sentences like “people learn
best when they read vs. people learn best when they travel”. Then each group works on
their topic for a given time period, and presents their opinions to the class. It is essential
that the speaking should be equally divided among group members. At the end, the
class decides on the winning group who defended the idea in the best way. This activity
fosters critical thinking and quick decision making, and students learn how to express
and justify themselves in polite ways while disagreeing with the others. For efficient
group discussions, it is always better not to form large groups, because quiet students
may avoid contributing in large groups. The group members can be either assigned by
the teacher or the students may determine it by themselves, but groups should be
rearranged in every discussion activity so that students can work with various people
and learn to be open to different ideas. Lastly, in class or group discussions, whatever
the aim is, the students should always be encouraged to ask questions, paraphrase
ideas, express support, check for clarification, and so on.
Role Play
One other way of getting students to speak is role-playing. Students pretend they are in
various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. In role-play activities, the
teacher gives information to the learners such as who they are and what they think or
feel. Thus, the teacher can tell the student that "You are David, you go to the doctor and
tell him what happened last night, and…" (Harmer, 1984)
Simulations
Simulations are very similar to role-plays but what makes simulations different than role
plays is that they are more elaborate. In simulations, students can bring items to the
class to create a realistic environment. For instance, if a student is acting as a singer,
she brings a microphone to sing and so on. Role plays and simulations have many
advantages. First, since they are entertaining, they motivate the students. Second, as
Harmer (1984) suggests, they increase the self-confidence of hesitant students,
because in role play and simulation activities, they will have a different role and do not
have to speak for themselves, which means they do not have to take the same
responsibility.
Information Gap
In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the
information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their
information. Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem
or collecting information. Also, each partner plays an important role because the task
cannot be completed if the partners do not provide the information the others need.
These activities are effective because everybody has the opportunity to talk extensively
in the target language.
Brainstorming
On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time. Depending on the
context, either individual or group brainstorming is effective and learners generate ideas
quickly and freely. The good characteristics of brainstorming is that the students are not
criticized for their ideas so students will be open to sharing new ideas.
Storytelling
Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand,
or they may create their own stories to tell their classmates. Story telling fosters creative
thinking. It also helps students express ideas in the format of beginning, development,
and ending, including the characters and setting a story has to have. Students also can
tell riddles or jokes. For instance, at the very beginning of each class session, the
teacher may call a few students to tell short riddles or jokes as an opening. In this way,
not only will the teacher address students’ speaking ability, but also get the attention of
the class.
Interviews
Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people. It is a good
idea that the teacher provides a rubric to students so that they know what type of
questions they can ask or what path to follow, but students should prepare their own
interview questions. Conducting interviews with people gives students a chance to
practice their speaking ability not only in class but also outside and helps them
becoming socialized. After interviews, each student can present his or her study to the
class. Moreover, students can interview each other and "introduce" his or her partner to
the class.
Story Completion
This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students sit in a
circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or
she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the
previous one stopped. Each student is supposed to add from four to ten sentences.
Students can add new characters, events, descriptions and so on.
Reporting
Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in
class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news. Students
can also talk about whether they have experienced anything worth telling their friends in
their daily lives before class.
Playing Cards
In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic. For
instance:
If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible questions:
This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story
taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the
teacher as a rubric. Rubrics can include the vocabulary or structures they need to use
while narrating.
Picture Describing
Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give students just one
picture and having them describe what it is in the picture. For this activity students can
form groups and each group is given a different picture. Students discuss the picture
with their groups, then a spokesperson for each group describes the picture to the
whole class. This activity fosters the creativity and imagination of the learners as well as
their public speaking skills.
For this activity students can work in pairs and each couple is given two different
pictures, for example, picture of boys playing football and another picture of girls playing
tennis. Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the pictures.
Conclusion
Teaching speaking is a very important part of second language learning. The ability to
communicate in a second language clearly and efficiently contributes to the success of
the learner in school and success later in every phase of life. Therefore, it is essential
that language teachers pay great attention to teaching speaking. Rather than leading
students to pure memorization, providing a rich environment where meaningful
communication takes place is desired. With this aim, various speaking activities such as
those listed above can contribute a great deal to students in developing basic interactive
skills necessary for life. These activities make students more active in the learning
process and at the same time make their learning more meaningful and fun for them.
References
Celce-Murcia. M. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language
(3rd ed). USA: Heinle&Heinle.
Chaney, A.L., and T.L. Burk. 1998. Teaching Oral Communication in Grades K-8.
Boston: Allyn&Bacon.
Baruah, T.C. 1991. The English Teacher's Handbook. Delhi: Sterling Publishing
House.
Brown, G. and G. Yule. 1983. Teaching the Spoken Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Harmer, J. 1984. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.
McDonough, J. and C. Shaw. 2003. Materials and Methods in ELT: a
teacher’s guide. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell.
Nunan, D., 2003. Practical English Language Teaching. NY:McGraw-Hill.
Staab, C. 1992. Oral language for today's classroom. Markham, ON: Pippin
Publishing.
Blank stares. Two class troublemakers reaching for each other’s hands.
The shy kid in the class trying very hard to become invisible.
It’s no secret, getting students to work well in pairs can be hard, and it doesn’t stop with just
having them pair up.
ESL students doing pair activities can often try to skive off doing the activity at hand. Shyer
students can be tempted to let their partner do all the work.
As far as the teacher is concerned, it can be tough making sure that the students who are actually
working are speaking correctly.
Well, it’s time for all those problems to be ancient history. Here, you’ll find the ultimate guide to
perfect pair work.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take
anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Techniques for ESL Pair Work
The first mistake many teachers make when assigning pair work is letting students choose their
pairs.
While that may be fun for those in the class who are already friends, your job as the teacher is to
assess each student’s strengths and weaknesses and put them with someone they can work with
well. In other words: you make the pairs.
If you know that two students are particularly good at conjugation, it might be interesting to put
them together so that they have a real challenge. If one student is exceptionally shy, don’t stick
them with the class loudmouth; they’ll only be overshadowed.
The best way to set up pair work in the classroom is to allow no expectations amongst students
that they’ll be picking their own partners.
“We’re going to go about this activity in pairs! Sasha with Kevin. Lucy with Mary.”
By making it obvious that you’ll be the one deciding who works with whom, no one will get
upset or try to fuss.
Once the pairs have been established, it’s time for your most important role: monitoring pair
work.
While most pair work should finish with a group discussion or individual evaluation, the purpose
of the pair work is lost if you aren’t listening and gently correcting. While you should be wary of
over-correcting and silencing a student, do wander the room, listening for errors that you know a
student can correct him or herself. Then you can gently remind the student how to properly use
that language.
This serves two purposes: not only does it reinforce correct use of English, but it also ensures
that students know you’re listening. This way, they’re sure to give the pair work activity their
all.
7 ESL Pair Work Speaking Activities to Get Those Lips
Flapping
Not all classroom activities are designed for pair work. The best time to use pair work is during
oral activities, as these activities allow students to get more speaking time than they would in a
class setting.
But you can’t just ask students to talk to each other for two minutes—you need a bit
more structure than that!
Here are 7 great ESL pair work activities that you can use in a variety of ways to get your
students talking.
1. Investigative Journalist
It can be used in a variety of scenarios and tailored according to specific grammar or vocabulary
points that you’ve been reviewing in class.
The basis of investigative journalist is for students to interview one another in pairs and present
their findings. It can be used for groups at all skill levels from beginning to advanced, as long as
you tailor it to their levels.
Beginners may do a simple version, asking their partners about their family structure, favorite
colors and foods, pets and hobbies. Intermediate students could use investigative journalist to
practice past tense structures by asking about their interlocutor’s childhood. Advanced students
might benefit from a murder mystery version of the game, where each student is assigned a
character to play and the game concludes with the “murderer” being sussed out as a result of the
questions.
A great way to prepare students for this versatile activity, no matter their level, is with authentic
videos of English conversations. Tools like FluentU offer fun, real-world English videos they
can watch either once you’ve paired them up, or ahead of class for homework.
The FluentU videos are all organized by level and come with interactive captions, flashcards and
exercises to help students pick up new words as they watch. Through these supercharged English
dialogues, news reports, interviews, movie clips and more, they’ll get comfortable with the types
of basic English conversations investigative journalist requires.
Have fun with this game, and remember: if you give your students the tools to succeed, they’ll
surprise you!
2. Debate
Debate is another classic that can incorporate pair or group work, depending on the size of your
class. Create groups and assign each group or pair a side of an argument. Use pair work time to
allow students to develop their argument and conclude with a class-wide debate.
Debate is made even more interesting when you present students with authentic materials to use
as support for their claims.
3. What’s Your Secret?
What’s your secret? is a pair work activity that truly involves the whole class. In this game,
which is a play on investigative journalist, each student writes a secret down on a piece of paper,
things like: “I play the clarinet.” or “I have a twin.” The papers are placed in a hat and each
student draws one: that’s where the game begins.
What’s your secret? can either be played by allowing students to mill about the classroom freely
or by setting up a speed dating scenario, where each pair has 1 minute to speak before rotating.
Students may ask one another yes/no questions—they may not ask directly if what’s on the piece
of paper is true about them or not.
Students then must guess to whom the secret they drew belongs.
Teach a class! is a fun activity for advanced ESL students. In this activity, you assign each pair a
grammar, vocab or culture point that they’ll have to teach to the class. The pair works together
to prepare activities and lesson plans and teaches the point to the class.
Unlike many of these other activities, the conclusion portion of this activity is built right in:
when the pair teaches the class, the teacher should play the role of the student, but you
may evaluate the lesson at the end and feel free to correct any mistakes the “teachers” make!
5. Following Directions
Following directions is an interesting game that offers a change from classroom routine.
In this game, each student in the pair draws a picture, keeping their paper shielded from the eyes
of their partner. Ideally, pictures should be fairly geometric. Once the picture is complete, they
explain to their partner, using words only, how to replicate the image.
For example, if a student has drawn the stereotypical square house with a triangle roof, he might
say: “Draw a square in the middle of the paper that’s about a third of the size of the paper. Draw
an equilateral triangle on top of the square, using the top side of the square as the bottom side of
the triangle.”
The goal of this game is for each partner to replicate the other’s drawing going by these spoken
directions.
6. Games! Yes, No
Many pair work activities can feel like games, but sometimes it’s fun to introduce some real
games into the mix.
Yes, no is a game where the only two words that students aren’t allowed to say are yes and no.
Pair students off and play. When a student loses, he or she is out and the winning partner is
paired with another winning partner. In this way, you can create a tournament of yes, no.
Other versions of the game also forbid “maybe” and “I.” Consider these versions when the game
is lasting too long or students need an extra challenge.
Students draw the name of a famous person out of a hat (you’ll need to prepare these slips in
advance!) and their partner tries to guess who’s on the paper by asking a series of yes/no
questions.
Like yes, no, guess who can be turned into a tournament-style game.
There should be a brief introduction, letting students know what you expect them to do during
the activity.
There should especially be a conclusion. Be sure to budget it into your class time or the pair
work activity will be useless.
During your conclusion, you should gather the information gleaned during the activity and go
through it as a group. This will allow you to correct errors and it’ll also allow students to learn
from their peers.
Many pair work activities also benefit from being followed up by an individual activity such as a
written response, worksheet for homework or short oral presentation to the group presenting the
student’s findings.
Once you’ve mastered the art of pair work, your students will be speaking up (and correctly!)
before you know i
Rich
more
This collection of fun games and role play activities for English language teachers should arouse
some enthusiasm after a vocabulary drill or new grammar study. As the sequel to the previous
article 10 Fun Classroom Activities to Help Students Practice Speaking English, these
exercises are aimed at helping your students get to know each other better and practice speaking
with confidence in the ESL classroom. English classes of all sizes and ages can get involved,
meaning adults, children, parents, tutors and school teachers can all participate. The activities can
be used as time allows or if you want to focus on learning a specific skill such as speaking or
practicing new vocabulary.
Source
Face Game
If your students do not know already then first teach them the following parts of the face: forehead,
chin, ear, eye, nose, mouth. Now, ask the students to make fists with both hands and touch their
ears. On the first round, you play the role of the leader and say: ear, ear, ear – forehead (or a
different part of the face from the list above). The third time that you say ear, say it more slowly, so
that other players know that you are about to switch. When the new part is called out (in this
example, forehead), everyone must quickly move both of their fists from ear to forehead at the same
time. If anyone, including the leader, touches any part of the face other than the forehead is the loser
and takes over as the new leader. As punishment, the loser must share their views on any subject of
your choosing with the class.
Guessing Game
Using vocabulary the students have learned recently, prepare some cards with one word written on
them. During class, select one of the cards without showing the students what is written on it. The
students will try to figure out what the word is by asking questions, which you will answer. They may
only ask “yes-no” or “choice type” questions such as: is it something you can eat? Is it made out of
paper? Is it a thing or a person? Is it an animal? Can it move? Is it something we can use? The
students can guess what is written on the card whenever they think they have enough information.
Anyone who guesses right wins a piece of candy or another reward provided by you. Then go to the
next card.
Source
You can use this simple game as a get to know you at the
start of school or later as a get to know you better
activity. All you need is one standard die and six questions –
either ice breakers or ones that elicit opinions, experience or
other personal thoughts. Be creative and choose the ones
you’d like to hear your students answer. Give students a list of
the questions, and make sure they are numbered on the
paper. Then, have students take turns rolling the die. Whatever
number they roll, that is the question they must answer. You
could do this activity as a class, in smaller groups or as a public
speaking activity. For the latter, have students prepare answers
to each question as homework and then have them share in
front of the class after they roll.
2.2
3.3
This game works best for students who already know each
other fairly well.Work as a group to come up with a list of
several character traits a person might have. (Try to stick to
positive traits.) You might include adventurous, sympathetic
and generous. Then write these traits on small slips of paper
and put them in a bag. Each person takes a turn drawing one
character trait from the bag in front of the class. The student
must then announce who in class (and you are fair game, too)
possesses that character trait. Of course, a name isn’t enough.
The person must tell a story or give an example of why he
made his particular choice.
4.4
5.5
6.6
This activity is good for activating existing vocabulary or revising vocabulary studied in
previous lessons.
Procedure:
Choose a vocabulary topic (this can be vocabulary you have recently studied or a topic
you want to introduce). Tell students to write a list of 10 words they associate with this
topic. To make the activity shorter, reduce the number of words.
Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that.... You use it
for... You find this in.... It’s an animal / object / place... It’s the opposite of... etc.
Tell students to look at their lists and give them time to think of how they can define
these words (3 -5 mins).
Now students work in pairs (or groups of 3) to define their words. Their partner must
guess the word they are defining.
Each team writes a list for another team (students can also 3 or 4 words each on strips
of paper to draw out of a hat)
Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that.... You use it
for... It’s a film / book / object.... He/ She’s an actor / a politician.... He’s British /
American / Spanish...
Each team nominates one person to define the words to their team.
This activity can be adapted to revise a range of tenses (present simple, past simple,
continuous, future tenses) by changing the time prompts.
Procedure:
Write a selection of time prompts on the board e.g. yesterday at 6 o´clock, this time
last year, on September 11th 2001 etc
Tell students to choose some of the prompts and think of what they were doing at these
times. Tell students that they are going to tell a partner / small group.
Give students time 5 minutes to plan what they are going to say and ask for any
vocabulary they need.
Students tell their partner / small group. Encourage students to ask for more
information. E.g. –I was watching TV yesterday at 6. -What were you watching?
After speaking, students feedback and tell the class what they learnt. E.g. Marie was
watching TV at 6 o´clock yesterday. She loves chat shows!
Adjectives
This is a variation on the above activity and is great for practising adjectives. Students
personalise the discussion by talking about experiences and feelings.
Procedure:
Tell students to choose several adjectives (increase or decrease the number depending
on how long you want the activity to take). Tell them to think of a time when they felt
this way, and that they are going to tell their partner / small group about their
experience.
Give students time to plan what they are going to say. They can make notes and ask
for vocabulary if they want to.
There are many copyright-free comic strips, cartoons and unusual images available
online; you can also find cartoon stories in many EFL resource books. These can be
used in class in a number of ways.
Information gap and jigsaw tasks have been shown to be beneficial task types in terms
of promoting obligatory, as opposed to optional information exchange and as a way of
promoting collaborative dialogue in the classroom. In this activity, students work in
pairs and the information, i.e. the pictures are divided equally between them. Students
must work collaboratively to put the story together in the right order. Suitable for
strong Pre-intermediate students and above.
Procedure:
Before the class, find a cartoon with at least 4 vignettes. The cartoon can be with or
without dialogue. The more vignettes and more elements in the story, the more difficult
the task.
Print the cartoon and cut up the vignettes. Divide the vignettes equally between
student A and student B.
Give students time to think about how to describe their pictures and ask for any
vocabulary they need.
Pre-teach any difficult vocabulary that has not come up as well as phrases for talking
about pictures and sequencing: e.g. In my picture there is... I can see... I think this is
the first / second / last picture... Then.... After that....
Tell students to work together to put the story in the correct order.
Procedure:
Take a comic strip, a cartoon, or unusual image in which there are several people or
characters. If there is dialogue or captions, blank it out.
Display the comic / cartoon / image and elicit ideas from students about what is
happening in it. Who are the people / characters? What are they doing? What happens
next? What are they saying to each other?
Put students in pair or small groups. Tell them to work together and write the dialogue
and /or captions for the comic, cartoon or image.
Students practice their dialogues and read their version out to the class.
This activity is good for practising questions and for fluency practice on a range of
topics.
Procedure:
Write a list of questions (one per student in your class) relating to your chosen topic.
For example, if your topic is music, you could think of questions like: Who is your
favourite singer? What is your favourite music to dance to? What’s the best concert you
have ever been to? Who is a singer / group you hate? etc. Adapt the questions to the
level of your class.
Give each student a question. Tell students to write the answer to their question (not
the question itself) on a piece of paper or a sticky label. Tell them not to show anyone
their answer yet.
Tell the class the topic (e.g. music). Give students 5 minutes with a partner to
brainstorm possible questions related to this topic.
Now tell students to stand up and stick their label on their chest or hold their paper
with their answer in front of them. Students move around the room and ask each other
questions to try to discover the questions that the other students were originally asked.
Encourage students to ask follow up questions and try to have a conversation. -What’s
the best concert you’ve ever been to? -Michael Jackson -When was the concert? -Why
was it good?
At this age, the learners aren't motivated by new language, they're motivated by an
activity. It can be very difficult to get them to speak if they really don't see the point.
You can approach this by focussing on the following.
1. The function of the language and using an authentic or near authentic task (e.g. get
them to sit back-to-back to practise speaking on the telephone).
2. A motivating task, which uses the language you want them to practise (e.g. students
write questions on small squares of paper using the target language, then form the
papers into a board game to be played using dice and counters).
Here are some possible examples, which apply to one or a combination of the above.
A popular, well-known type of activity is the information gap. In this type of activity,
one group has half of the information required to complete the task and the other group
has the other half (or pairs of students). The two groups need to exchange information
to complete the task. Possible examples of tasks are:
Making an arrangement: Each group has a diary, with appointments already filled in.
They need to exchange information in order to agree when they can meet.
Giving/receiving directions: Two sets of maps, each with information missing, and
two sets of directions for these missing places. The students again need to exchange
information in order to complete their maps.
Crosswords: Each group has some of the answers. They need to make up appropriate
questions and then exchange, or ask appropriate questions. Hopefully, the students will
be more concerned about completing the crossword, rather than worrying about
speaking.
For a listening text, in which the students would normally listen to a tape in order to fill
in the gaps, why not give each group half of the answers? They are then given the
opportunity to exchange information. They can listen to the tape afterwards as a final
check.
Here are some examples of other activities I use with my younger learners:
Secretly put an object in a paper bag (or hide it behind me, or write the word, or draw
a picture). I then get the students to guess what's in the bag, by asking an appropriate
question. The student who guesses correctly takes over from me. Do this a couple of
times, and then let the students take over. Group vs group, or in pairs.
Find your partner. Information is written on slips of paper, which can be matched in
some way. Each student receives a paper, then the class mingle and exchange
information in order to find their partner. E.g. for a group of ten students, to practise
colours, colour in five slips of paper and write the words for these colours on the other
slips. Students ask each other, 'What colour have you got?' in order to find their
partner. (The point of this activity from the students' perspective is finding their
partner, not necessarily the practice of the language.)
The following example may be appropriate for more advanced students. I call this
activity 'Find someone who'. Each student writes the end of the sentence on their own
piece of paper. The students then mingle and hopefully conversations are started. (The
students can also use questions for this activity e.g. 'When was the last time you….?')
I hope that the suggestions and examples given are useful and practical for your
situation, or inspire you to invent others.
So you say, hi this is Jane Smith, and she actually moonlights as a jazz
pianist for the underground mafia. And you talk about her life, whatever it may
be.
So this is fun because it makes you been creative, it’s very easy to think of
these things on the spot and just roll with it. It’s generally pretty funny as well.
2. Impromtu Game
You basically just get up in front of people and somebody gives you
something impromptu to run with.
For example: They need to talk about climate change or they need to talk
about what makes a great teacher, or they need to talk about social media
changes or whatever. So that the impromptu game.
You can pretend it’s their life experience and how this impacted my life or they
can talk about why this image is important and what this image means or
what’s the story behind this image.
4. Continuous Story
This is best done with a group of people. Each person gets up and might
speak for anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute and they start telling a story.
And when their time is up, the next person has to get up and they have to
continue the story.
So, obviously each person doesn’t know what the person before them is going
to say and so they have to continue the story.
The goal of this is to make the story make sense. This game helps people
engage in listening and learn to be creative enough to make the story
continue on and make sense.
5. Something In My Wallet
You can use your own wallet or (if people are comfortable enough and happy
to do it) you can get the person sitting next to you’s wallet.
Take an item out of the wallet and discuss what this item is and why its
important and obviously you are trying to elaborate and make it funny as
much as possible.
6. Action Story
This can be done in 2 ways.
A) You tell a story that has a whole great of actions in it and as a speaker you
have to do these actions yourself whilst speaking.
So you could say; I did a big stretch when I woke up in the morning. And
everybody has to stretch. And then you say, I put on my hat, and everybody
has to do the actions in line with that.
7. Make A Commercial
Get a bunch of things from your room or from your house, bring them in and
you need to make a commercial about these items.
8. A Fake Holiday
This one is done with images primarily and a set of images that are related to
each other.
So it could be a farm where you have images of animals, or the barn house or
something funny happening on the farm.
The speaker is required to tell maybe 1, 2 or 3 sentences for each image and
then you click forward to the next image.
Then they need to use the next image to continue the story.
So you are using these images as the key cards, as to where the story needs
to go so the person needs to adapt the story based on the images that are
given.
9. Alternative Ending
You take a well known TV show or a well-known movie. And what you do is
you create an alternative ending for it.
You can do this by either putting nouns on key cards shuffling them up and
picking 2 up at a time or you can use this random noun generator.
You get 2 nouns and you then have to create a story that connects that 2
nouns.
Then you have to create a story that connects those 2 nouns together.
So you can use the word ‘I’ and replace it with ‘oink’.
So you would say: “Oink went to the movies and oink bought some popcorn.”
And so you replace that word ‘I’ with ‘oink’.
This challenges your mind, and it makes that little bit harder to deliver a
presentation. And it’s pretty funny for the audience, as well.
This one is generally pretty easy to out work and a lot of fun as well. And you
will find that some students do it really well, but then some students just
fumble when they are tying to lie and its quiet humorous to watch.
A person gets up and tells 3 truths about themselves, but 2 of them need to
be true and one of them needs to be a lie.
So they get up and they tell 3 things about themselves and then the audience
needs to choose which one was a lie and they see if they were correct.
So this one is really quick, really easy and you don’t have to go into a great
detail about it but it can be really fun.
14. Definitions
Get really big words that nobody really knows what the meaning is. You can
do this using this big word generator or another tool (just Google it). Or you
can just go through the dictionary and pick some strange ones yourself.
The speaker has to get up – they are given this strange word and they need to
with confidence tell the class what this word means.
15. Endings
You give a person an ending. It could be a saying: “Diamonds are forever” or
an ending to a story ‘and the man cried for 3 days’.
You give them an ending and they have to create a story that matches up with
that ending.
A lot of being a great pubic speaking is about story telling. Teaching people
how to creatively think up stories on the spot is going to make them a better
public speaker.
I have previously talked about how public speaking rubric actually damages
the progression of public speaking skills. We need to continually practicing
public speaking (like riding a bike) and have it be fun if we want to teach
people to be great public speakers. Technique comes along with that.
So keep that in mind, keep public speaking fun and I hope that you enjoyed
these activities.
When working with world language classes or English language learners,
have you ever asked a question only to be answered with complete silence
and blank stares? It’s a common issue—nearly every teacher has struggled
with encouraging students to speak in a language they’re still learning.
A student may have a deep fear of making a mistake, or may be just plain
shy, even in their native language. Whatever the reason, here is a list of a few
fun activities to get your students to speak. This list is for more
advanced students.
All three claim that the fact is theirs, and the class then proceeds to question
them in an attempt to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying. Each
student is allowed to ask one question to one of the three students. After a
round of questioning, the students guess who is telling the truth.
For variation 2, separate the students into groups of four or five. Place a pile
of cards with random nouns in the center of each group. Have students take
turns describing a noun for their group members to guess. The group member
who guesses correctly keeps the card, so there’s competition to see who
has the most cards at the end of the game.
Variation 3 is for advanced speakers. Separate the class into two teams.
Students are given a word to describe to their teammates, in addition to a list
of words that they cannot use in their description. Each student should have
two to three minutes to see how many words their teammates can guess.
3. Descriptive drawing activity: Pair up the students and give each student a
picture, placing it face down so partners cannot see each other’s cards. They
must describe the picture for their partner to draw.
5. Secret word: Students are given a random topic and a random word that is
unrelated to the topic. The students must hide the word in a speech about the
topic—they’re trying to make sure the other students can’t guess
the secret word. The other students listen carefully to the speech and attempt
to guess the secret word.
6. Debates: Give each student a piece of paper with “agree” written on one
side and “disagree” on the other side. Read aloud a controversial statement,
and have each student hold up their paper showing the agree or disagree side
depending on their opinion. Choose one student from each side to explain
their position and participate in a short debate.
7. Impromptu speaking: Prepare a list of topics that students will be able to talk
about. Split the class into two teams, and have each student choose a
number—that’s the order they will go in. Each student will respond to a
statement without preparation. They must continue speaking for 45
seconds. As the student is speaking, the other team listens for moments of
hesitation, grammatical mistakes, and vocabulary mistakes. If the other team
can correctly identify an error, they get a point.
8. Desert island activity: Give each student a piece of paper and tell them to
draw an item—any item. Collect the drawings and pass them out again; no
student should receive their own drawing.
Next, tell the students that they’ve been stranded on a desert island, and only
half of the class can survive and continue to inhabit the island. The only thing
each student will have on the island is the item depicted in the drawing given
to them, and their goal is to convince the class that they should survive based
on that item.
9. Storytelling activity: Bring four students to the front of the classroom. Three
of them should sit in a row, and one should stand behind them and act as a
controller. Give the controller a stack of cards with nouns written on them.
The controller will hand a noun to one of the three students, who will start to
tell a story. The student continues telling the story until the controller decides
to hand another noun to another student, who will then take over the story.
10. Two Truths, One Lie: Each student should write three statements about
themselves on a piece of paper. Two of them should be true, and one should
be a lie. Students read their three statements, and their classmates question
them to try to determine which statement is a lie.
11. True/false storytelling: Give each student a piece of paper with either “true”
or “false” written on it. Each student should tell the class a story that is true or
false, depending on which word they received, and the class must guess
whether it’s true. To add to the activity, you can allow the other students to
question the student telling the story.
12. I Have Never...: All students in the class should start this activity holding five
fingers in the air (you can use less fingers to do this more quickly). The
student who goes first tells the class one thing that they have never done. The
students who have done that activity should put a finger down, and tell the
class a story about this activity. A student is out of the game when all of their
fingers are down.
This piece was originally submitted to our community forums by a reader. Due
to audience interest, we've preserved it. The opinions expressed here are the
writer's own.
Thinking Hats
This speaking activity is based on a system designed by Edward de Bono with an ESL twist.
Basically, 6 Thinking Hats is a tool for group discussion and individual thinking involving 6
colored hats. Just like de Bono’s idea, each color represents a mode of thinking which
allows the students to expand their views on a particular thing or issue. I love this speaking
task because it helps students to think logically and become better speakers.
Just like other speaking activities, Would You Rather will be a success if the questions are
age and proficiency level appropriate. Due to file storage issues, I can only upload a sample
copy. However, you can find more Would You Rather questions here and use the template I
created to see how it looks like.
Activity Type: Individual, Pair
TED Ed Riddles
This one uses video prompts such as the riddle videos from TED Ed. These are brain
teasers presented in a professionally animated video that hook students and keep them
engaged in our speaking activities! Each riddle is divided into two parts – the problem and
the answer. I show my students the first part, pause the video and make sure that they
understand every detail of the riddle. I provide them a mini-whiteboard and give them time
to discuss the problem in their group and come up with possible solutions. When the time is
done, I ask each group to discuss their answer to the whole class.
You can find a lot of TED Ed riddles on YouTube but you may check out my
favorite Hat and Bridge riddles to start with.
Activity Type: Group
Missing Dialogues
This is a drill conversation activity where you pair your students up to practice the dialogue
you show on the screen. Simply show your slide and have students read out loud. After two
rounds, you will start deleting words in the dialogue and replace it with blanks. Do this in
sequence until the entire dialogue is just a series of blanks.
You get the idea, right? You can also see these 3 beginner sample dialogues on
PowerPoint then you can go ahead and create your own missing dialogues based on your
lessons! This speaking drill is absolutely effective!
Activity Type: Pair
Picture Sequencing
In this story telling activity, students must put a series of pictures in order. They color the
pictures and write descriptive words using adjectives, adverbs and expressions of time and
sequence. When they finish, they go in front of the class to tell their story.
By doing picture sequencing before the speaking activity, students are able organize
information and ideas efficiently thereby enhancing necessary skills such as reasoning and
inferring.
FlipGrid is video discussion platform where you can (1) create a grid for your classroom;
and (2) add a topic to spark discussion. Students can respond with short videos (up to 1
minute and 30 seconds only) without creating an account as long as they have the code to
access your topic.
FlipGrid allows you to create unlimited topics/discussion and unlimited video uploads for all
your speaking activities and tasks!
Tongue Twisters
Well, everybody knows what a tongue twister is! It is a series of words or sounds that are
usually repetitive and are difficult to pronounce quickly and correctly. I use tongue twisters
as one of our speaking activities to develop my students pronunciation and accent; or
sometimes just for the sheer fun of doing it. I often get my students to memorize this and
ask them to say it out loud in class as a group and in pairs.
Information Gap
In this activity, you will create two different versions of a dialogue and hand out version A to
Student A and version B to Student B. The idea behind this is all the B section sentences
that are missing on version A appear on version B; and vice versa.
Example:
Version A
Student A: How are you today?
Student B: _____________________!
Version B
Student A: ____________________?
During the speaking task, students have to read out loud and listen to and write down
sentences from the other student’s paper. You have to make sure though that students are
really having a conversation and not just sharing and copying each other’s dialogues.
Conversation Cards
If you don’t want all your kids to have a conversation at the same time, then conversation
cards is just the answer! In this speaking game, you will only have up to 10 to talk in front of
the class per round. I usually use this activity when teaching positive/negative question or
sentence but I think you can adapt this one to your lesson.
To do this speaking activity, you need to prepare cards that have conversation starter
sentence or question, such as “What did you do last weekend?” or “Do you like watching
cartoons?” and so on.
To start the game, give 1 different card to 5 students and let them go in front.
Tell the rest of the class to close their eyes or put their heads down.
The 5 students you chose will quietly put their card on other students’ desks and then come
back to the front.
Tell the class to open their eyes.
One by one, ask the student who has a card on their desk to stand in front of the student
who they think has given them the card and read the prompt written on it aloud.
(You can change this last part according to your prompts) If the card does not match the
person who gave it, that person will give a negative response to the question or statement
and the other student will go back to his/her desk.
If the card matches that person, the person will say a positive response and the two people
will switch places.
Game Type: Pair
Talking Cards
Discussions or Brainstorming
In groups, students share ideas, ask questions or find solution to an issue or problem that
you give them. To make discussions work well, it is suggested to assign each member a
specific role such as leader, time keeper, recorder, challenger, etc.
Role Plays
Students pretend they are in a different social setting taking on a different social role. To
make role plays successful, it is important that students understand their role and the
context of the situation. For example, students can be the waiter and the costumers in “In
a Restaurant” role play, and so on.
Interviews
Students can interview foreigners about a certain topic to allow them to use the language
outside the classroom. Another way to do this is to provide an opportunity to talk with
some experts via Skype and have students prepare their questions beforehand.
Debates
Debate doesn’t have to be formal and serious. In my experience, ESL students don’t have
the drive to do extensive research about a topic and then talk about it at a later date.
I modify debate to make it easy and not tedious, for example, I do 30 seconds
Debate where I group the class into two: For vs Against. I flash interesting and sometimes
funny statements like “Soda should be banned” or “Students should not watch TV.” Each
student-representative from each group will give their stand in 30 seconds per round.
Class Presentation or Reporting
There are many ways to do class reports in the classroom. Students can do a presentation
about a project or you can provide opportunity for each student to teach the class about
whatever topic that he/she is interested in. I did this activity before where everyday, one
student got to talk for 5 minutes before I started the lesson. My colleague called this
activity as “Students Can Teach Too!“
Performance Activities
Sometime ago, I wrote about how I use Classroom Performance Activities. These are
activities which students need to prepare for before presenting in front of an audience.
Speaking Activities
1.Use picture prompts. Depending on the variety of visual resources and class level and ability, a teacher
can brainstorm with the class a variety of sentences, (key) words, and phrases around a particular
category or situational context that is the building block for a presentation.
2.Follow-up with a memory game or exercise. Students then work in pairs writing down or translating the
words they remember.
2.Play Adjectives All Around! Students have one minute to present all the adjectives they can in a
sentence.
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4.The other student then tries and guess who the person is. Make sure they include a minimum of five
adjectives and no more than seven or eight. A teacher can use this activity to draw the students’ attention
to the different categories that make up an adjective.
*Make sure you aim for a balance between speaking and listening.
*Have a back-up plan for the entire class and for individual students who are withdrawn.
*Always reflect on what can you do as a teacher to help students improve their speaking skills.
Remember, the more diverse and creative your speaking activities become, the easier it will be to train
your students to improve their speaking skills and speaking exercises will become much more automatic.
I’ll be giving away a FREE teaching report on how to improve fluency in English language learners to
those who leave a comment at the New Teacher Resource Center. Now…I hope you’ll visit the next site
on the blog chain sponsored by the National Writing for Children Center. That site is;
http://ireneroth.wordpress.com/. For a list of all the links on the chain, go to
www.writingforchildrencenter.com