Aim: To develop learners’ collaborative speaking skills

Level: A2
Time: 40 minutes to 1 hour
Materials and preparation: A2 Key classroom poster, with the language section at the bottom
covered up; Handout 1.

Procedure

Warm-up activity

1. To introduce the topic, ask learners to work in pairs and make a list of free-time activities. Elicit one or two
examples of free-time activities, in open class, to get them started, and to check that they have understood
the instruction. Tell learners that only one student in each pair needs to write. Check understanding by
asking the ‘writer’ in each pair to raise their hand. Give learners one minute to produce their lists,
encouraging them to write down as many free-time activities as possible.
2. Ask learners: How many free time activities do you have? Ask the pair with the highest number to read out
their list while the rest of the class listens and ticks any activities mentioned that also appear on their lists.
Praise learners’ efforts and refrain from correcting any grammatical or lexical errors at this point, with the
possible exception of providing subtle reformulations.

Lead-in to the speaking task

1. Draw learners’ attention to the poster and elicit the activity in the first picture by asking: What activity is
this? (playing musical instruments; playing the guitar; learning to play a musical instrument; taking music
lessons). The activity could be worded in a number of different ways but clarify that the topic being
represented is playing musical instruments. Ask learners to work in pairs to identify the activities
represented in the remaining four pictures (playing basketball; surfing; eating outdoors; shopping). Give
them one to two minutes to identify these before doing a quick whole-class check.
2. Ask learners: Do you like playing musical instruments? Nominate a strong or confident student to answer the
question. Prompt them to elaborate by asking why (not). Acknowledge efforts at elaborating, and write
reasons given for liking/disliking on the board, reformulating as necessary. So, for example, if a student says
(I like the guitar) is nice, write because it’s nice on the board. Encourage reactions from the rest of the class
by asking: Do you agree? Why (not)? Repeat for playing basketball, nominating a different student or
eliciting responses from volunteers. Again, put their reasons, focusing on adjectives, on the board, praising
all efforts at expanding utterances.

Focus on lexis (adjectives)

1. Pointing to the adjectives you’ve just written on the board, ask learners to think of more adjectives that they
could use to describe the activities in the pictures. If all adjectives on the board are positive, elicit one or two
negative adjectives in open class, and vice versa. Again, give learners one to two minutes to write down as
many adjectives as they can think of, in their pairs. Introduce an element of competition by asking: Who can
write the longest list of adjectives? Monitor to see which adjectives your learners are coming up with, and
also to make a note of any common misspellings you might choose to focus on, later.
2. Ask learners: How many adjectives do you have? Congratulate the pair with the most. Get pairs to swap their
list with another pair. Ask: Did you have the same adjectives? Did you have any different ones? To focus them
 on meaning, you could ask pairs to put a smiley face next to positive adjectives and a sad face next to
negative ones.
3. Uncover the language section from the bottom of the poster. Ask learners to compare their adjectives with
those on the poster. Ask: Who had ‘fun’ on their list? Do this for a few, but not all, of the adjectives. Target
those which you think your learners will be least familiar with, and use this as an opportunity to clarify
meaning by asking concept-check questions, for example: Do we use ‘awesome’ to talk about something we
like or don’t like? (something we like); Do we use ‘awesome’ to talk about something we like a little bit or
something we like a lot? (something we like a lot); Can you think of an example of something that’s scary?;
Are rabbits scary? (no); Are spiders scary, for some people? (yes).
4. Distribute Handout 1.
5. Optional: If your learners would benefit from more work on meaning, get them to write one or two
activities, things or places next to the adjective they would use to describe it/them. Alternatively, you could
ask them to invent emojis to represent each one.

Focus on pronunciation

1. Ask learners: How many syllables are there in ‘fun’? (one); What about in ‘boring’? (two). Tell learners to
write down the number of syllables in each of the adjectives on Handout 1. Encourage them to work in pairs.
Allow about two minutes for this stage, and then do a quick check in open class.

i. Answers
one syllable: fun; two syllables: boring, scary, awesome;
three syllables: exciting, brilliant, amazing, difficult, dangerous, expensive, horrible;
four syllables: interesting

2. Elicit the stressed syllable in boring. Tell pairs to underline the stressed syllable in each of the adjectives, on
Handout 1. Give them a minute or two, encouraging them to try to say the word out loud as they do this, to
help them. (Stressed syllables appear in bold in the answer key, above.)
3. Conduct feedback in open class, modelling correct pronunciation to clarify answers. Drill and encourage
learners to repeat chorally, first as a class, then perhaps by row, then perhaps all girls/boys, etc. Drill chunks
rather than single items, e.g. because it’s fun. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate the stress.
4. You could encourage learners to make the face that corresponds to the meaning of the adjective as they say
it. Be prepared to demonstrate this yourself!
5. Another option is to get learners to clap on the stressed syllable as they repeat the word.

The task

1. Put learners into groups of three, and ask them to decide who’s A, who’s B and who’s C. Ask all ‘Cs’ to raise
their hands. Tell them that Cs are going to be the examiners. A and B are going to talk about the different
free time activities in the pictures, together, for about a minute. They must say if they like or don’t like each
activity and why. ‘Examiners’ must listen and put an A next to each adjective (on Handout 1) student A uses,
and a B next to each adjective student B uses. Adjectives can be used more than once – and each use will be
‘tallied’ – but adjectives must be used correctly. To clarify this, write the following on the board: 1 I like
surfing because it’s fun; 2 I like eating outdoors because it’s horrible. Ask: Is sentence 1 a possible correct
sentence? (yes); What about sentence 2? (no). Elicit/clarify that we wouldn’t generally use horrible to talk
about something we like.

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2. Tell A and B that they must talk together for at least one minute. Note: In the A2 Key/Key for schools
Speaking Exam, candidates are given a minimum of one and a maximum of two minutes to talk on their
own. In your lesson, if the majority of your learners are still talking at the one-minute mark, allow them to
talk longer. Stop them after about two minutes.
3. While learners are performing the task, write the closing question on the board: Which of these free time
activities do you like best? Draw C’s attention to this question after A and B’s turn has finished, and tell them
they should direct this question to A and B, in turn. Take feedback from C on the answers given by A and B,
in open class.
4. Tell Cs to count up the number of adjective uses by A and the number of adjective uses by B. Ask: Who used
adjectives the most, A or B? Praise the ‘winner’ in each pair.
5. Rotate roles and repeat the task. You could ask ‘new’ Cs to perform the same tallying-of-adjectives-used task
or you could ask them to focus on one of the following. Whichever focus you choose, ensure that the whole
class is aware of what the focus is, and monitor to gauge which areas of interactive communication,
language, and pronunciation your learners are strong on, and where more work is required.
a. Which of the ‘candidates’ asks questions most? Here, C needs a piece of paper with the names of ‘A’
and ‘B’ at the top. Each time they ask a question, C writes a tick under their name. Again, the learner
with the most ticks, wins. You may wish to do some language work on the questions that appear on the
poster, beforehand.
b. Which of the candidates responds to what their partner has said, most? Be explicit about what this looks
like. You could focus on the use of too, for example, so if A says I like shopping because it’s fun and B
responds with something like, I like shopping too or Me too, this counts as an incident of responding to
what your partner has said for B. This would serve as useful practice of the negative me neither or as a
springboard into introducing your learners to this language.
6. While monitoring, make a note of commonly occurring errors to focus on either during delayed error
feedback during this class, or to inform subsequent classes where the focus might be more language rather
than skills-based. Also, make a note of where your learners are succeeding – this could be from a skills
(interactive communication) or language (vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation) standpoint – and give
them positive feedback on this, highlighting the examples you noted.

Variation

Prior to repeating the task (See: The task point 5.), you could elicit a different set of free time activities from the
class for your learners to discuss. The language focus (adjectives) and the interactive communication focuses
suggested above will remain relevant.

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Handout 1

fun scary brilliant

interesting difficult boring

dangerous exciting expensive

amazing awesome horrible

Handout 1

fun scary brilliant

interesting difficult boring

dangerous exciting expensive

amazing awesome horrible