Speaking

UR

Unit one: Successful oral fluency practice

Box 9.: Characteristics of a successful speaking activity

1. Learners talk a lot: As much as possible of the period of time allotted to the activity is in
fact occupied by learner talk. This may seem obvious, but often most time is taken up with
teacher talk or pauses.
2. Participation is even: Classroom discussion is not dominated by a minority of talkative
participants: all get a chance to speak, and contributions are fairly evenly distributed.
3. Motivation is high: Learners are interested in the topic and have something new to say
about it, or because they want to contribute to achieving a task objective.
4. Language is of an acceptable level: learners express themselves in utterances that are
relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and of an acceptable level of language
accuracy.

Box 9.2: Problems with speaking activities

1. Inhibition: speaking requires some degree of real-life exposure to an audience. Learners

are often inhibited about trying to say things in the classroom: worried about making
mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face.
2. Nothing to say: you often hear learners complain that they cannot think of anything to
say: they have no motive to express themselves beyond the guilty feeling that they should
be speaking.
3. Low or uneven participation: only one participant can talk at a time if he or she is to be
heard; and in a large group this means that each one will have only very little talking time.
4. Other-tongue use: in classes where all the learners share the same mother tongue, they
may tend to use it: because it is easier, because they feel less ‘exposed’ if they are speaking
their mother tongue.

What the teacher can do to help to solve some of the problems

1. Use group work

This increases the sheer amount of learner talk going on in a limited period of time and also
lowers the inhibitions of learners who are unwilling to speak in front of the full class.

2. Base the activity on easy language

The level of language needed for a discussion should be lower than that used in intensive
language-learning activities in the same class: it should be easily recalled and produced by
the participants, so that they can speak fluently with the minimum of hesitation. It is a good
idea to teach or review essential vocabulary before the activity starts.
3. Make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest

The clearer the purpose of the discussion the more motivated participants will be.

4. Give some instruction or training in discussion skills

If the task is based on group discussion then include instructions about participation when
introducing it. For example, tell learners to make sure that everyone in the group contributes
to the discussion.

5. Keep students speaking the target language

You might appoint one of the group as monitor, whose job it is to remind participants to use
the target language, and perhaps report later to the teacher how well the group managed to
keep to it.
When all is said and done, the best way to keep students speaking the target language is
simply to be there yourself as much as possible, reminding them and modelling the language
use yourself.

Unit two: The functions of topic and task

Topic - and task-based activities

The main difference between the two activities in Box 9.3 is that the first is topic-based and
the second task-based. The first simplu asks participants to talk about a (controversial)
subject, the main objective being clearly the discussion process itself; the second asks them
actually to perform something, where the discussion process is a means to an end.

Topic. A good topic is one to which learners can relate using ideas from their own
experience and knowledge. Some questions or suggested lines of thought can help to
stimulate discussion. Leave room for their own initiative and originality, is proposed and
opposed by prepared speakers, discussed further by members of the group, and finally
voted on by all.

Task. A task is essentially goal-oriented: it requires the group, or pair, to achieve an

objective that is usually expressed by an observable result. This result should be attainable
only by interaction between participants: so within the definition of the task you often find
instructions such as ‘reach a consensus’, or ‘find out everyone’s opinion’.
A task is often enhanced if there is some kind of visual focus to base the talking on: a
picture.

Which is better?

The task-centred activity scores higher with most groups on all criteria: there is more talk,
more even participation, more motivation and enjoyment. When asked why, participants say
things like: ‘I knew where I was going, there was some purpose in speaking’.
Thus, it is probably advisable to base most oral fluency activities on tasks.
It is important to note that there is usually a small but significant minority who do prefer a
topic-centred discussion: ‘I found it more interesting: you can go into things more deeply
without the pressure of having to reach a decision’. Such learners also need to be catered
for so occasional topic-centred discussions should be included in a balanced programme.

Unit Three: Discussion activities

Box 9.4

1.Describing pictures: Each group has a picture. They have two minutes to say as many
sentences as they can that describe it; a ‘secretary’ marks a tick on a piece of paper
representing each sentence. At the end of the two minutes, groups report how many ticks
they have. They then repeat the exercise with the second picture, trying to get more ticks
than the first time.

2.Picture differences: The students are in pairs; each member of the pair has a different
picture. Without showing each other their picture they have to find out what the differences
are between them.

3. Things in common: Students sit in pairs. They talk to one another in order to find out as
many things as they can that they have in common. At the end they share their findings with
the full class.

4. Shopping list: Imagine there is a miracle store that actually sells the commodities shown
in the table below. The owners of this store will, however, only stock the items if they are
convinced there is a demand. Students each choose three items they want to buy, and try to
find for each at least three other ‘buyers’ - that is, students who have also chosen it. They
mark the names of the other students in the appropriate column; if your people want an item,
this is enough ‘demand’ to justify the owners of the store acquiring the stock. The aim is to
get the owners to stock all the items you have chosen.

5. Solving a problem: The students are told that they are an educational advisory
committee, which has to advise the principal of a school on problems with students. What
would they advise with regard to the problem below? They should discuss their
recommendation and write it out in the form of a letter to the principal.

-- aca hay comentarios sobre estas actividades 9ero no me parecio importante ponerlo, esta
en la página 128--

Unit Four: Other kinds of spoken interaction

Comment: Different kinds of interaction

1.Interactional talk

This is to some extent a matter of learning conventional formulae of courtesy: how to greet,
take leave, begin and end conversations, apologize, thank and so on. It is culture-linked:
how the interactional function of speech is realized in different languages depends as much
on cultural convention as on knowledge of the words of the language.

2.Long turns

The ability to speak at length is one which adult, more advanced or academic students will
perhaps need and therefore needs cultivating; for other types of classes it may be less
important.

3.Varied situations, feelings, relationships

It is certainly arguable that learners will need to function in a wide variety of such contexts,
and it makes sense to give them opportunities to try using the target language in situations
of at least a selection of them.

Box 9.5: Types of spoken discourse

Extract 1
Interactional uses of language are those in which the primary purposes for communication
are social. The emphasis is on creating harmonious interactions between participants rather
than on communicating information. The goal for the participants is to make social
interaction comfortable and on-threatening and to communicate goodwill.

Extract 2
A short turn consists of only one or two utterances, a long turn consists of a string of
utterances which may last as long as an hur’s lecture.

Extract 3
The use of role play has added a tremendous number of possibilities for communication
practice. They can be shopkeepers or spies, grandparents or authority figures. The language
can correspondingly vary along several parameters: according to the profession, status,
personality, attitudes or mood of the character being roleplayed.

Teaching these kinds of interaction in the classroom

2.Long turns
Some activities that help students to practise speaking in long turns are:
- telling stories
- telling jokes
- describing a person or place in detail

-- solo puse lo de “long turn”, xq de los demás me parece muy de lo mismo la explicación--

Unit Five: Role play and related techniques

Role play is used to refer to all sorts of activities where learners imagine themselves in a
situation outside the classroom.
Dialogues

The learners are taught a brief dialogue which they learn by heart. They then perform it;
privately in pairs, or publicly in front of the whole class.
Learners can be asked to perform the dialogue in different ways: in different moods; in
different role-relationships. Then the actual words of the text can be varied: other ideas
substituted for ‘shopping’ or ‘it’s stopped raining’; and the situation and the rest of the
dialogue adapted accordingly. Finally, the learners can suggest a continuation: two additional
utterances which carry the action further.
The dialogue is a good way to get learners to practise saying target-language utterances
without hesitation and within a wide variety of contexts; and learning by heart increases the
learner’s vocabulary of ready-made combinations of words or ‘formulae’.

Plays

These are an expansion of the dialogue technique, where a class learns and performs a
play. This can be based on something they have read; or composed by them or the teacher;
or an actual play from the literature of the target language.
The results can contribute a great deal both to learning and to learner confidence and
morale.

Simulations

In simulations the individual participants speak and react as themselves, but the group role,
situation and task they are given is an imaginary one.

Role play

Participants are given a situation plus problem or task, as in simulations; but they are also
allotted individual roles, which may be written out on cards.

E.g. Role card A: You are a customer in a cake shop. You want a birthday cake for a friend.
He or she is very fond of chocolate.

Normally, the groups or pairs improvise their role play between themselves, simultaneously,
with no audience. Volunteers may perform their role plays later in front of the class.
This is virtually the only way we can give our learners the opportunity to practice improvising
a range of real-life spoken language in the classroom.
Factors that can contribute to a role play’s success are: making sure that the language
demanded is well within the learners’ capacity; your own enthusiasm; careful and clear
presentation and instructions. A preliminary demonstration or rehearsal by you together with
a student volunteer can be very helpful.

Unit Six: Oral testing

When testing the oral proficiency of learners we may simply interview them and assess their
responses; or use other techniques like role play, group discussion between learners,
monologue, picture-description and so on.
HARMER

A Elements of speaking

If students want to be able to speak fluently in English, they need to be able pronounce
phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation patterns and speak in connected
speech. Speakers of English will have to be able to speak in a range of different genres and
situations, and they will have to be able to use a range of conversational and conversational
repair strategies.

A1 Different speaking events

Scott Thornbury suggests various dimensions of different speaking events in order to

describe different speaking genres. For example, we can make a distinction between
transactional and interpersonal functions. Transactional function has as its main purpose
conveying information and facilitating the exchange of goods and services, whereas the
interpersonal function is all about maintaining and sustaining good relations between people.
Whatever the purpose of the speaking event, we can characterise it as interactive or
non-interactive. The conversation that takes place when we buy a newspaper at a news
kiosk is interactive, whereas leaving a message on an answer phone is non-interactive.
We might make a difference between speaking that is planned (such as a lecture or wedding
speech) and speaking that is unplanned, such as a conversation that takes place
spontaneously when bump into someone on the street.
Nevertheless, thinking of speaking in all six categories - and in different combinations of
these categories.

A2 Conversational strategies

Speakers use various discourse markers to buy time (ummm...well...you know…), to start a
turn (well… I’d just like to say…) or to mark the beginning or the end of a segment
(right...now...anyway…).

- Conversational rules and structure: categories of discourse, such as conversational

openings (How are you? That's a nice dog! At last some sunshine!), interrupting (Sorry to
interrupt, but...), topic shift (Oh, by the way that reminds me...) and closings (It's been nice
talking to you ... Well, I don't want to keep you from your work... we must get together
sometime).

- Survival and repair strategies: students need to be able to ask for repetition by using
formulaic expressions, repeating up to the point of conversation breakdown, etc. To these
repair strategies we might add such abilities as being able to paraphrase (It's a kind of...),
being able to use an all-purpose phrase to get round the problem of not knowing a word (You
know, it’s a what-d’you-call-it) and being able to appeal for help {What's the word for
something you play a guitar with?).
- Real talk: if students are to be involved in spontaneous face-to-face conversation outside
the classroom with competent English language speakers, they probably need to be
exposed to more than just the kind of questions that are commonly found in coursebooks.
These are sometimes well formed and take no account of ellipsis.

We would expect them to develop their conversational skills as their English improves.
Students need to be aware of what real conversation looks like and we should give them
help in using some of the more important phrases.
We can get students to analyse transcripts of real speech, directing their attention to how
speakers ask questions, respond to the questions of others, etc. We can get them to
transcribe small sections of authentic speech, too, and then ask them to produce a 'clean'
version.
If we want to try to get students to use typical discourse markers and phrases, we can write
them on strips of paper. Each student has to pick up one of the strips and they then have to
use the phrase on it in conversation.

A3 Functional language, adjacency pairs and fixed phrases

A lot of speaking is made of up of fixed phrases such as Catch you later, Back in a see.
Fixed and semi-fixed phrases crop up a lot in functional exchanges. For example, we can
offer people things, such as a drink, a coffee, etc., by saying D’ you fancy a ...?
Many functional exchanges work well because they follow a set pattern. One such pattern is
the adjacency pair. If we say D’ you fancy a coffee? the adjacency pair is either Yes, please
or No, thank you.
We need to make students aware of fixed phrases, functional sequences and adjacency
pairs. We can do this by teaching functional exchanges. We can have students look at
transcripts of typical exchanges and we can let them watch film clips of this kind of language
use.

B Students and speaking

Getting students to speak in class can sometimes be extremely easy. However, at other
times it is not so easy to get students going. A problem that occurs more often than any of
these is the natural reluctance of some students to speak and to take part. In such situations
the role that teachers play will be crucial.

B1 Reluctant students

Students are often reluctant to speak because they are shy and are not predisposed to
expressing themselves in front of other people. In such situations there are a number of
things we can do to help.

- Preparations: Wilson is describing the value of planning and rehearsal for speaking
success, and students, too, will perform much better if they have the chance to think about
what they are going to say and how to say it. This may involve just giving them quiet time to
think in their heads about how they will speak.
Marc Helgesen suggests a series of ten tasks that students can do on their own. For
example, when they are on a bus, they can imagine they are in a taxi and give the imaginary
taxi driver directions.
Paul Mennim describes how students record presentations they are going to make,
transcribe what they have said, correct it and then hand it over to the teacher for further
comment before finally making the presentation.
At other times, where students are going to take part in a discussion, we can put them in
buzz groups to brainstorm ideas so that they have something to say when the real
discussion happens.
There will be times when we want and expect spontaneous production from students, but at
other times we will allow them to prepare themselves for the speaking they are going to do.

- The value of repetition: Each new encounter with a word or phrase helps to fix it in the
student's memory. Repetition allows students to improve on what they did before. They can
think about how to re-word things or just get a feel for how it sounds.
When students repeat speaking tasks they have already done once, their first attempt is like
a rehearsal for the final effort. Each rehearsal gives them more confidence.
Repetition works even better if students get a chance to analyse what they have already
done. This analysis may come from fellow students or from the teacher. Paul Howarth
(2001a and b) describes this as process speaking, characterised by the pattern:
 plan -» perform -> analyse <—> repeat

- Big groups, small groups: a major reason for the reluctance of some students to take
part in speaking activities is that they find themselves having to talk in front of a big group. A
way of counteracting this is by making sure that they get chances to speak and interact in
smaller groups, too.

- Mandatory participation: in each group of four, for example, the students are asked
to assign a number from 1 to 4 to each member, without telling the teacher who has which
number. At the end of an activity, the teacher indicates a group and a number (1-4) and asks
that student to report on what happened. Neither the teacher nor the students knows who
will be called and, as a result, all the students have to stay on-task.
Mandatory participation also lies at the heart of jigsaw reading activities and story-circle
writing since both these - and other similar activities - only work when all the students take
part.

B2 The roles of the teacher

- Prompter: students sometimes get lost, can't think of what to say next or in some other
way lose the fluency we expect of them. We can leave them to struggle out of such
situations on their own. However, we may be able to help them and the activity to progress
by offering discrete suggestions. It will stop the sense of frustration that some students feel
when they come to a dead end of language or ideas.

- Participant: teachers should be good animators when asking students to produce

language. At other times, however, teachers may want to participate in discussions or
role-plays themselves. That way they can prompt covertly, introduce new information to help
the activity along, ensure continuing student engagement and generally maintain a creative
atmosphere. In such circumstances they have to be careful that they do not participate too
much, thus dominating the speaking and drawing all the attention to themselves.

- Feedback provider: When students are in the middle of a speaking task, over-correction
may inhibit them and take the communicativeness out of the activity. On the other hand,
helpful and gentle correction may get students out of difficult misunderstandings and
hesitations. Everything depends upon our tact and the appropriacy of the feedback we give
in particular situations. When students have completed an activity, it is vital that we allow
them to assess what they have done and that we tell them what, in our opinion, went well.
We will respond to the content of the activity as well as the language used.

C Classroom speaking activities

C1 Acting from a script

We can ask our students to act out scenes from plays and/or their coursebooks, sometimes
filming the results.

- Playscripts: it is important that when students are working on plays or playscripts, they
should treat it as ‘real' acting. We need to help them to go through the scripts as if we were
theatre directors, drawing attention to appropriate stress, intonation and speed. We ensure
that acting out is both a learning and a language producing activity.
Drama also helps, according to Mark Almond to build student confidence, contextualise
language, develop students' empathy for other characters, involve students in appropriate
problem-solving and engage them as 'whole' people. He points out that drama practises
gesture, facial expression, eye contact and movement, proxemics and prosody.

- Acting out dialogues: when choosing who should come out to the front of the class, we
should be careful not to choose the shyest students first. We need to work to create the right
kind of supportive atmosphere in the class. We need to give students time to rehearse their
dialogues before they are asked to perform them.

C2 Communication games

Two particular categories are worth mentioning here:

- Information-gap games: one student has to talk to a partner in order to solve a puzzle,
draw a picture (describe and draw), put things in the right order (describe and arrange) or
find similarities and differences between pictures.

- Television and radio games: when imported into the classroom, games from radio and TV
often provide good fluency activities, as the following examples demonstrate In ‘Twenty
questions' the chairperson thinks of an object and tells a team that the object is either
animal, vegetable or mineral - or a combination of two or three of these. The team has to find
out what the object is asking only yes/no questions, such as Can you use it in the kitchen? or
Is it bigger than a person? They get points if they guess the answer in 20 questions or fewer.
In other games, different tricks or devices are used to make fluent speaking amusing. In
'Fishbowl', for example, two students speak on any topic they like, but at a pre-arranged
signal one of them has to reach into a fishbowl and take out one of the many pieces of paper
on which students have previously written phrases, questions and sentences. They have to
incorporate whatever is on the paper into the conversation straight away.

C3 Discussion

- Buzz groups: these can be used for a whole range of discussions. For example, we might
want students to predict the content of a reading text, or we may want them to talk about
their reactions to it after they have read it.

- Instant comment: This involves showing them photographs or introducing topics at any
stage of a lesson and nominating students to say the first thing that comes into their head.

- Formal debates: students prepare arguments in favour or against various propositions.

When the debate starts, those who are appointed as 'panel speakers' produce
well-rehearsed 'writing-like' arguments, whereas others, the audience, pitch in as the debate
progresses with their own (less scripted) thoughts on the subject.
Students need to be given time to plan their arguments, often in groups.
It is a good idea to allow students to practise their speeches in their groups first.
- Unplanned discussion: some discussions just happen in the middle of lessons; they are
unprepared for by the teacher, but, if encouraged, can provide some of the most enjoyable
and productive speaking in language classes. Their success will depend upon our ability to
prompt and encourage and, perhaps, to change our attitude to errors and mistakes from one
minute to the next.

- Reaching a consensus: one of the best ways of encouraging discussion is to provide

activities which force students to reach a decision or a consensus, often as a result of
choosing between specific alternatives.

C4 Prepared talks

One popular kind of activity is the prepared talk, where a student (or students) makes a
presentation on a topic of their own choice. Such talks are prepared, students should speak
from notes rather than from a script.
We need to give them time to prepare their talks. Then students need a chance to rehearse
their presentations. This can often be done by getting them to present to each other in pairs
or small groups first.
When a student makes a presentation, it is important that we give other students tasks to
carry out as they listen. Perhaps they will involve the students in asking follow-up questions.
The point is that presentations have to involve active listening as well as active speaking.

C5 Questionnaires

Questionnaires ensure that both questioner and respondent have something to say to each
other. They may well encourage the natural use of certain repetitive language patterns - and
thus can be situated in the middle of our communication continuum.
Students can design questionnaires on any topic that is appropriate.

C6 Simulation and role-play

Students simulate a real-life encounter (such as a business meeting, an interview or a

conversation in an aeroplane cabin, as if they were doing so in the real world. They can
act out the simulation as themselves or take on the role of a completely different character
and express thoughts and feelings they do not necessarily share. Thus we might tell a
student ‘You are a motorist who thinks that parking restrictions are unnecessary’
Simulation and role-play can be used to encourage general oral fluency or to train students
for specific situations.
They need to know exactly what the situation is, and they need to be given enough
information about the background for them to function properly. Of course, we will allow them
to be as creative as possible, but if they have almost no information, they may find this very
difficult to do.
In a different kind of role-playing activity, students write the kind of questions they might
ask someone when they meet them for the first time. They are then given postcards or
copies of paintings by famous artists, and are asked to answer those questions as if
they were characters from the painting.
Simulation and role-play have three distinct advantages. In the first place, they can be good
run and are thus motivating. Secondly, they allow hesitant students to be more forthright in
their opinions and behaviour without having to take responsibility for what they say in the
way that they do when they are speaking for themselves. Thirdly, they allow students to use
a much wider range of language than some more task-centred activities may do.

E Making recordings

E1 Getting everyone involved

Because filming usually involves one camera operator and may be confined to one narrator
and one overall director, there is a danger that some students may get left out of the video
making process. However, there are ways of avoiding this danger.

•The group: if more than one video camera is available, we can divide a class into groups.
That way each member of each group has a function.

•Process: we can ensure participation in the decision-making process by insisting that no

roles (such as actor, camera operator, director) are chosen until the last moment.

•Assigning roles: we can assign a number of different roles as in a real film crew. This
includes such jobs as clapperboard operator, script consultant, lighting and costumes.

SCRIVENER

Conversation and discussion classes

You have been asked to include a regular discussion lesson or conversation class in your
course.
How could a lesson like this be organised? The following points give some suggestions:
- Topics and cues: you would possibly bring to class a topic as well as a cue hat will serve
to help spark conversation. Most of the lesson would then be taken up with discussing this,
stating and comparing views. There might be little or no explicit ‘teaching’ of grammatical or
vocabulary points. In planning the lesson, it would be a good idea to prepare a number of
further cues (e.g. a follow-on article or question) to keep in reserve in order to move the
discussion forward if it starts to drag.

- Structuring talk: your main role will be to structure the talk, makig sure tha all learners get
a chance to participe, trying to prevent it getting boring, occasionally addng to the discussion
himself in order to keep it interesting.

- Avoiding the talk-talk loop: there is a danger of getting locked into a ‘talk-talk loop’, in
which you say something, but because there is no response from the learners, you say
something else, and again with no response you add something else,etc. It takes a little
courage initially, but you will usually get far more conversation out of a class by asking one
clear question and then shutting up - and patiently allowing even quite a long silence, while
learners formulate what they want to say. Repeatedly adding new comments or new
qustions can have the opposite effect to that intended, confusing the class and closing down
people who were planning to speak.

- Open questions: a key technique will be to use ‘open questions’ rather than ‘closed’
questions. For example, instead of ‘Is noise pollution a bad thng?’, you could ask ‘What do
you think about noise pollution?

- Playing devil’s advocate: one useful intervention you can make is to sometimes play
‘devil’s advocate’ (i.e. deliberately taking an opposing or contrasting viewpoint in order to
spur on conversation).

Fluency and confidence

One of the best ways fo you help learners activate this knowledge is to put them in ‘safe’
situations n class where they are inspired and encouraged to try using language from their
‘store’. These would not mainly be activities that teach ‘new’ language; rather, they would
allow learners to try out language thet they already understand and have ‘learned’, but not
yet made part of their active personal repertoire.
Many activities in class are suitable for fulfilling these ‘fluency and confidence’ aims.

Activities that lead to fluency and confidence

- Learners repeat sentences you say.

- At the start of the lesson, learners chat with you about their weekend plans.
- Learners look at a list of hints and tips for making business presentations.
- Learners listen to a recording and practice repeating words with the same difficult vowel
sound.
- Learners work in pairs and agree their list of the best five films of all time.
- Learners listen to and study a recording of a social conversation.

Ways to start a lively discussion

Which of these activities is likely to give learners a god opportunity to speak and encourage
as many to speak as possible?

- Small talk at the start of the lesson: the whole class chats about recent events, etc.
- You write a controversial question based on the day’s news on the board. The class work in
groups of four or five students to discuss it.
- Pairs of learners have different pictures cut from today’s newspaper. They compare their
views, initially describing their two pictures.
- Everyone is given the name of a famous person. The whole class stands up and walks
around, meeting, chatting and answering questions about recent events ‘in character’.

A few keys to getting a good discussion going

- Frame the discussion well: don’t just jump in the deep end. It usually helps to find ays to
lead in at the beginning and ways to close at the end. A lead-in may be no more than a brief
focus on a picture; it could be a text the everyone reads and which naturally flos into the
topic. It could be a personal recollection from you.

- Preparation time: your students may need some quiet time before the speaking activity, not
to write out speeches but perhaps to look up vocabulary in their dsctionaries, think through
their thoughts, make a note or two, etc.

- Don’t interrupt the flow: if at all possible, avoid classroom management techniques that
interfere with the natural flow of conversation. I’m thinking particularly about learners having
to put their hands up before they speak. Try alternatives such as keeping a watchful eye on
the class and noticing those small movements and looks that suggest someone wants to
speak, and then invite them to speak with a gesture or by a natural comment such as
‘Dasha, what do you think?’

- Specific problems are more productive than general issues: Rather than giving the students
a general topic to discuss, try setting a specific, related problem. In the oil pollution example,
you could divide the students into two groups: managers of Reddo Tankers (a large
multinational oil shipping company) and GreenEarth (a conversation group) and tell them hat
they must decide and agree how to minimise the risk of pollution in future.

- Role cards: giving students brief role cards sometimes helps, e.g. ‘You are a motorist who
uses Reddo petrol. It can often be easier to speak in someone else’s character than in your
own.

- Buzz groups: if a whole-class discussion seems to be dying on its feet, try splitting the
class up into ‘buzz groups’, i.e. quickly divide the class into small groups of four or five
students. Ask them to summarise the discussion so far, particularly considering if they agree
with what different people have said. After a few minutes, ask them to think of three
comments or questions that would be interesting to share with the whole class. The entire
buzz group stage may take only about three or four minutes, but can help inject a lot more
energy into a discussion.

- Break the rules: don’t feel that you can never bend the above rules; sometimes it may
make sense to go straight into the discussion (perhaps because you want them to get some
practice at unprepared speaking, or because the subject is burning so strongly that it just
demands to be started immediately).

Communicative activities

The aim of a communicative activity in class is to get learners to use the language they are
learning to interact in realistic and meaningful ways, usually involving exchanges of
information or opinion.

Some common communicative activities

Note that, in every case, we are primarily concerned with enabling and encouring
communication, rather than with controlled use of particular items of language or with
accuracy.
Picture difference tasks

In pairs, one student is given picture. A, one picture B. Without looking at the other picture,
they have to find the differences.

Group planning tasks

The first example is ‘planning a holiday’. Collect together a number of advertisements or

brochures advertising a holiday. Explain to the students that they can all go on holiday
together, but they must all agree on where they want to go. Allow them a good amount of
time to read and select a holiday and then to prepare a presentation in which they attempt to
persuade the rest of the class that they should hoos this holiday.

List sequencing tasks

Prepare a list of items that learners can discuss and place in a particular order according to
their opinions:

- What’s the most useful invention?

- What are the worst programmes on tv?
- Who’s the most important person of the last 100 years?

Pyramid discussion

A ‘pyramid discussion’ is an organisational technique that works particularly well with simple
problem-based discussion and especially with item-selection tasks, e.g. ‘What are the four
most useful things to have with you if you are shipwrecked on a desert island?’:

1. Introduce the problem, probably sing a list on the board or on handouts.

2. Start with individual reflection.
3. Combine individuals to make pairs, who now discuss and come to an agreement or
compromise.
4. Combine the pairs to make fours;again, they need to reach an agreement.
5. Join each four with another four or- in a smaller class- with all the others.
6. When the whole class comes together, see if you can to reach one class solution.

The technique gives students time to practice speaking in smaller groups before facing the
whole class. Even the weaker speakers tend to find their confidence grows as the activity
proceeds and they are able to rehearse and repeat arguments that they hav already tested
on others. Learners who would sually never dare state their views in front of the entire class
will still get a number of chances to speak.

Board games

Many commercially available board games lead to interesting speaking activities, though you
do need to check them out and ensure that they represent ‘good value’ in terms of how
much useful language they generate. It's also quite easy to create new board games
specially designed for your class and their interests.
Puzzles and problems

There are many published books nowadays filled with logic puzzles and problems. Many of
these make interesting discussion tasks, maybe following a structure of a) letting learners
spend s little time individually considering the problem, then b) bringing students together in
a group to try and solve the puzzle together. Some puzzles work well with the same stage a),
but then for stage b) having a full class ‘mingle’, during which learners can compare their
solutions with others.

How to organise learners in speaking tasks

It’s hard to talk to someone you can’t make eye contact with.
Learners usually need to be able to:
- make eye contact with those they are speaking to;
- hear clearly what the other person/people are saying;
- be reasonably close together.

Role-play, real-play and simulation

Role-play

In role-play, learners are usually given some information about a ‘role’. These are often
printed on ‘role cards’. Learners take a little preparation time and then meet up with other
students to act out small scenes using their own ideas, as well as any ideas and information
from the role cards.
A good set of role cards is often designed so that the participants will have distinctly different
points of view and natural disagreements. They can lead to excellent discussion- and
arguments- without anyone having to feel bad at the end because they got angry.
Role cards can be designed to offer students opportunities to practice specific pieces of
language (maybe grammatical points, functional areas, lexical groups, etc).

Running a role-play: some guidelines

- Make sure the students understand the idea of ‘role-play’. Do they know what’s going to
happen? Do they know what is required of them? Are they comfortable doing that or not?
- Make sure the cntext or situations is clear.
- Do they understand the information on their own card?
- Give them time to prepare their ideas befre they start- maybe encourage not-making- but
when the activity starts, encourage them to improvise rather than rely on prepared speeches
and notes.

Real-play

A powerful variation on role-play. In this case, situations and one or more of the characters
are drawn not from cards, but from a participant’s own life and world. Typically, one of the
learners plays him/herself, but in aconext other than the classroom. This person explains a
context to other learners, and then together they recreate the situation in class. The real-play
echniqu allows learners to practice language they need in their own life.
Rather than a set of role cards, the most useful tool for real-play is a blank framework- in
effect, a card that allows learners to create their own real-play role card.
When they are prepared, learners improvise a conversation as if it was a normal role-play,
quite possibly with someone else playing the role of the initiator. When it’s finished, it may
then be useful for the initiator to give feedback on how the characters and events seemed, to
‘fine-tune’ it (e.g. ‘My mother used to speak much louder than that’), in preparation for a
second go at doing the role-play, possibly- and revealingly- with swapped roles. You can also
provide helpful feedback and language help, perhaps suggesting some typicial phrases that
might be used.

Simulation

Simulation is really a large-scale role-play. Role cards are normally used, but there is often
quite a lot of other printed and recorded background information as well- newspaper articles,
graphs, memos, news flashes, etc. - which may come at the start of the simulation or appear
while the simulation is unfolding, causing all participants to take note of the new data and
possibly readjust their positions. The intention is to create a much more complete, complex
‘word’, say, of a business company, television studio, government body, etc.

Fluency, accuracy and communication

Imagine a switch inside your head - it swings between two settings: ‘working mainly on
accuracy’ and ‘working mainly on fluency’.
I think that initially getting that switch installed and working may be a key skill for anyone
learning to be a language teacher.
Certainly here are activities in which you are arguably working on both accuracy and fluency
in relatively equal measure, but many everyday language-teaching lesson stages are
focused on one more than the other, and at any one moment, in any one activity.
It’s especially important to be clear about the differing aims - and consequently different
classroom procedures - of the two.

Running a fluency activity

If the main aim is to get the students to speak, then one way to achieve that would be for you
to reduce your own contributions. Probably the less you speak, the more space it will allow
the students. It could be useful to aim to say nothing while the activity is underway, and save
any contributions for before and after. In an activity mainly geared towards encouraging
fluency, you are likely to monitor discreetly or vanish.
A useful thing for you to do during Stage 4 above is to take notes f interesting student
utterances for possible use later on.

Ideas for correction work after a fluency activity

- You write up a number of sentences used during the activity and discuss them with the
students.
- You write a number of sentences on the board. You give the pens/chalks to the students
and encourage them to make corrections.
- You invent and write out a story that includes a number of errors you overhead during the
activity. You hand out the story the next day and the students, in pairs or as a whole group,
find the errors and correct them.
- You write out two lists headed ‘A’ and ‘B’. On each list, you write the same ten sentences
from the activity. On one list, you write the sentence with an error; on the other, you write the
corrected version. You divide the students into groups, ‘A’ and ‘B’. The groups discuss their
own list and try to decide if their version or each sentence is correct or not. If it is wrong, they
correct it. When they have discussed all the sentences, the groups can then compare the
two sheets.

Scaffolding

During a fluency activity, there may be a way to offer spontaneous correction that:
- does not interfere too much with flow of conversation;
- offers useful language feedback;
- actually helps the speaker to construct his conversation.

?Scaffolding’ refers to the way a competent language speaker helps a less competent one to
communicate by both encouraging and providing possible elements of the conversation. It is
the way a primary - school teacher might help a young child to communicate, or the way a
chat - show host might draw out a guest. The listener offers support - like scaffolding round a
building - to help the speaker create his own spoken structure.

Here are some notes on techniques that might be appropriate:

Scaffolding techniques

- Showing interest and agreeing: nodding, ‘uh-huh’, eye contact, ‘yes’, etc;
- Concisely asking for clarification of unclear information;
- Encouragement echo: repeating the last word in order to encourage the speaker to
continue;
- Echoing meaning: picking on a key element of meaning and saying it back to the speaker;
- Asking brief questions that encourage the speaker to extend the story;
- Unobtrusively saying the correct form of an incorrect word (but only if having the correct
word makes a significant positive contribution to the communication);
- Giving the correct pronunciation of words in replies without drawing any particular attention
to it;
- Unobtrusively giving a word or phrase that the speaker is looking for.

Different kinds of speaking

We need to consider what is involved in successful speaking, and particularly consider the
nature of different ‘genres’.

In everyday life, people speak in a variety of ways, depending on who they are with, where
they are, the nature of the situation.

Varieties of speech genre

- Giving an academic lecture

- Telling a joke
- Making a phone enquiry
- Chatting with a friend
- Giving street directions
- Explaining a grammatical point

Being more specific about genre

It is possible to specify types of speaking more precisely than by simply naming a genre if
we add information about why the speaking is being done, where it is being done and who
is listening or interacting with the speaker.

Why is genre important?

Imagine that you are nineteen years old and about to meet your girlfriend's/boyfriend's
parents for the first time. Even before you make a decision as to the exact words to say, you
probably first have to make a bigger decision as to the generally appropriate way of talking
to them. It’s possible that you can make this decision subconsciously in a fraction of a
second, but having made it, it colours everything else you decide to say when you open your
mouth. It determines the choice of grammar, words, how much you talk, how polite you are,
how much you speak and how much liste,etc. You can adjust your ‘genre’ as you take part in
the conversation, but again your new choice will colour all you say, and generally it is
unlikely that you’ll decide to switch dramatically into a genre that you earlier rejected as
entirely inappropriate.
It’s apparent that choice of genre is a vital decision a speaker makes before she proceeds
with almost any speaking act. A learner of a language needs to learn not just words,
grammar, pronunciation, etc, but also about appropriate ways of speaking in different
situations. For this reason, offering a range of communicative ‘fluency’ activities to our
learners is probably insufficient as a course is speaking. We must think about the range of
acts that a learner may be faced with and give them chances to practice selecting
appropriate genres and planning the appropriate language needed for a variety of different
speaking situations and audiences.
Successful speaking involves fluently communicating information or opinions in a clear
unambiguous manner in an appropriate way for a particular context.