Back to Square (?) One: Practicing Speaking in Class. (Mike Orr)

This workshop is based on the idea that if we ask our learners to speak English in class, they need something to speak about and they need support so that they can both practice and develop their speaking. Support can be given in a number of ways, but should be at least visual and/or auditory and/or kinaesthetic.

It is not uncommon for learners to be asked to stand up and say something in front of the class as part of a lesson which aims to practise grammar. For example:

• Tell us what happened while you were going home last night
• Tell us what you’d do if you won a million dollars
• Tell us what you’re going to do this summer

This can be quite intimidating as there is often a focus on getting the grammar correct and the teacher will point out the errors made, withholding approval for the few who can produce something accurate.

Teachers are necessarily pragmatic and, despite knowing the arguments in favour of communicative language practice in class, they choose to give their students exercises that will help them with the kind of tests that they are required to pass. If teachers have to give a mark for oral ability, it is often an impression mark based on the few occasions the student has spoken in class.

Teachers, being pragmatic, are often nervous of group work. It is often relatively free in terms of what students should say and thus it may be difficult to be sure the students are speaking in English. Much speaking practice ends up being teacher led even though other types of activity would provide more opportunities for assessing speaking.

We’re going to look at two traditional teaching techniques which seem to have fallen out of fashion for no good reason: drilling, and (flash)cards; and one not so traditional technique, board games. In the process, we’ll consider how we can make it easier for more of the students to actually say more for more of the time. The activities that follow treat speaking as being of several types: imitative; limited creative; and extensive creative.

Drilling (imitative)

Often disapproved of for its association with an audio-lingual style of teaching, drilling can be fun, memorable and build confidence as students learn to say interesting sequences of language which will be available to them for later analysis and experiment. Drilling is basically a matter of repeating the chosen piece of language over and over but it can be more than just “listen and repeat”.

Example 1. Backchaining

Imagine you were drilling, “Huh! Try doing that with a class of forty four!”

Starting at the end of the sentence, the teacher helps the class to build up to repeating the whole sentence.

Teacher: four class: four

Teacher: forty four class: forty four

Teacher: of forty four class: of forty four

Teacher: class of forty four class: class of forty four

etc. etc.

Backchaining allows you focus on the intonation and weak forms, as well as making it being easier to repeat longer chunks than if you start from the front.

Example 2. Miming

Students learn to interpret mimes quite fast. As you take them through the mime, they make guesses, and you have to go back to the beginning from time to time, repeating over and over what they have already managed to decipher.

How would you mime, “Three days ago, I went to see my wife’s mother in hospital”?

Example 3. Disappearing text.

Present a suitable (short) text on the board. Have the students listen and repeat while you read it aloud, chunk by chunk. Dialogues are good, but poems are excellent as they are intended to be read aloud. They also engage feelings and make the language more memorable. Rub out two or three words and replace with a line. Ask a volunteer to read the text aloud as if it were complete. Continue the process, rubbing out two or three more words each time. As one student is reading aloud, you can be sure that the others are saying it to themselves or, at least listening carefully.

If you can choose a text which can first be mimed or elicited by drawing pictures on the board, so much the better. Here’s one to try.

	Prepare this on the board and use mime to elicit…..
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____		????	????	The first time we met as strangers
____ ____ ____ ____				We parted as friends
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____				The second time we met as friends
____ ____ ____ ____				We parted as lovers
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____				The last time we met as lovers
____ ____ ____ ____				We parted as friends
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____				We did not meet again We are now not even friends

(poem by Gerald England)

Example 4. Chants.

With a little practice, you can write rhythmic chants for most language areas you want to focus on.

Present the chant on the board or on copies for the students. Have two groups take alternate lines. Use different colours of fonts to make it obvious.

Round 1, each group listens to the teacher as s/he chants the text.

Round 2, each group listens to the teacher and repeats their alternate lines.

Round 3, each group chants their lines with the teacher.

Round 4, each group chants their lines without the teacher.

It’s a good idea to have the groups stand up and for the teacher to clap the beat. Students get useful practice in stress timed speaking as they try to fit different numbers of words into the same basic beat.

Here’s one to try.

Speaking in class can be quite a chore

Listening to others for some is a bore

But with a bit of beat and a tap of the feet

And grammar they’ll meet in the test

Your students perk up and even the weak

Can be as good as the rest.

Poems are often good for chanting out loud. Choose a poem with several verses. Give copies to the class and make one group responsible for each verse. Give them ten minutes to prepare a performance of their verse. They should think about varying the volume, speed and length of pauses. The group is to chant (whisper, whatever…) as one voice. This is why they need time to work together and rehearse. Go round helping with pronunciation, and explaining the meaning if necessary. When the time is up, conduct the performance starting with the first verse and moving smoothly into the second and so on. Tell the students they are going to do it twice. As soon as the last group finishes, the first one should start again. After two performances there will be real sense of energy in the class.

(Flash)cards (limited/extensive creative)

Flashcards are large, easy to see cards with pictures or words which are “flashed” so that, “now you see it, now you don’t”. They can be used for oral practice of many language areas. If you draw your own (or use a photocopiable resource such as “1000 pictures for teachers to copy” by Andrew Wright and published by Collins) you can then make large flashcards for giving controlled practice or demonstrating an activity you then want the students to do in groups. You can also make packs of mini flashcards for group work.

Example 1. Picture cards.

Start a story on the board. “One day….”

Hold up a picture card. Someone continues the story using the picture as a prompt. Hold up another card. Someone else continues the story. Do this with 5 cards and then say, “last card, time to finish the story:” hold up the last card and have someone tell the end.

Shuffle the cards and do it again in the new order.

Discuss which story students prefer.

Show all six together. Have students put the pictures in the order they like and then tell the new story.

This type of activity can also be done as a card game. Make packs of 6 cards. Give them out to groups of three students. They deal the cards face down and then take it in turns to play a card and tell the story. Continue as before. Here’s an example using pictures from ClipArt.

Example 2. Difference cards.

Instead of pictures, put vocabulary items in pairs on the cards.

Mountain / Hill

Sleeping on the floor / sleeping in a bed

Wearing a seat belt / not wearing a seat belt

This time the students are instructed to say what the difference is, or why they prefer one to the other. Again, you can do this from the front of the class or in small groups. A pack of 12 cards will keep a group of three working for 15 minutes or more.

Example 3. Taboo cards

This popular game is good for practising vocabulary and creative speaking. The taboo card is a list of vocabulary associated with one topic.

Here’s an example.

Card games

Play

Poker

Casino

Take turns

One student is given the card which no-one else can see. S/he has to elicit the underlined word/s without using any of the words on the card. These other words are taboo or forbidden. As before, this can be a whole class or small group activity.

With all the activities in this section, you can further support your students by putting posters on the walls with samples of the kind of language they might use.

stories	differences	taboo
One day… After that… In the evening.. Etc.	A mountain is high and sometimes cold, while a hill is not so high. I prefer …. to ….. because it’s more… Etc.	It’s something you do with… People like/don’t like… You need a/some…

Students can use the posters for help as they try to speak. The teacher should be pointing to the posters if the student is making serious errors, but not being any more judgemental than that. For students, knowing that this visual help is available is often enough to actually give them the confidence to speak without using it. They begin to be more creative because they know the “safety net” is there if they need it.

Board games (limited/extensive creative)

A simple piece of A4 paper with a few squares on it can become a board game that gives speaking practice of whatever language points you wish. Students take it in turns to roll a dice and move along the squares on the board. In each square, you have written instructions.

An example is given below.

The advantage of board games is that the students learn to play them very quickly. If you have several blank versions (you might prefer to have the squares arranged in a more orderly way!) you can quickly make a new game for the language you’ve been teaching in the last few classes. Students will talk with more or less accuracy and fluency depending on the square they land on and provide you with opportunities to observe their oral production.

Conclusion.

The activities described in this workshop give students opportunities for practising their pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar and for learning chunks of language they can analyse and experiment with later. The activities attempt to combine the teacher’s need to prepare students for often very traditional tests, with their desire to help the learners speak. The activities use visual, and/or auditory and/or kinaesthetic input to help make them memorable. Finally, most of the activities can be adapted for whole class teaching or small group work in which the students will talk without prompting by the teacher.

15.

Talk for minute on: My last holiday