How To Make Your Students Speak

Teaching English is not a piece of cake, but what challenges teachers most is speaking, I believe.

We teach grammar.
We teach reading.
We teach listening.
We teach writing.

...but when we ask our students speak, they are either shy or half of their speech is errr, uhmmm, wellll, one word and again errr, uhmmm..

Thus, today I'd like to share a nice activity, which challenged my students and helped them in an enjoyable way. In this one, all you need is some piece of paper, a pen, and some creativity. I prepared my cards with some words that my students can talk about including computers, football, movies.

The rules are simple. One student starts voluntarily or you may know how to choose him/her :) Then, the one chooses one card among a group of cards, one word on each. The student has 30 seconds to think and then s/he is supposed to talk about the word on the card for a minute without saying errr, uhmmm, oh, welll.

I know this is not easy, but it is fun and when students accept the challenge, you can see them controling their speech and producing more accurate and fluent sentences. If you believe that your students will be frustrated, you can change the time interval - 30 seconds maybe or you can simple give your students 3 mistake chance and they will have a better opportunity to speak.

Have fun!
Ayca

A Speaking Activity: Can You Define It?

Hi all!

Today's activity is a speaking one and I remember being a part of it when I was in U.S. - Spring International Language Center. My experience was definitely amazing, so I wanted to share it with you. 

The activity is appropriate for any levels if you can adopt it based on the needs and abilities of your students. My version will work better if you work with at least intermediate level students who are at least secondary school students. Also, your class size should be 20 at most. You can also divide the class into 2 groups if you prefer that.

Here are the steps:

1. Prepare the class setting. You will need a wide screen TV or a projector. Also you need to arrange the seats. Considering that you have 10 students in your class. Place 5 chairs facing the screen and the others facing the opposite. 
2. Tell your students to have a seat. When they sit down, 2 students will be facing each other. (One is looking at the screen and the other is not!)
3. Turn on the projector and explain the procedure. 
4. The procedure: The ones facing the screen will watch a movie for two minutes and telling what is happening in the movie. After a minute, the students will switch their seats and the other student will continue talking about the movie. 
5. After they watch it, they will be summarizing the movie together discussing and filling the gaps in their minds if they have any. Or you can ask a possible ending!
6. At the end, you can re-play the movie or show the end, this time all the students are watching.

For the movie, I advise you to use Pixar's short movies. Here is a link!

Please share if you have any advice or concern,

Best,

Ayca