Teaching teenagers can be challenging. In a new series of posts, the authors of Interactive – Jo Budden, Helen Hadkins, and Samantha Lewis – will be offering advice. In today’s post, Helen suggests some tips to get your teenagers speaking.
Some teenagers are too shy to speak much in class; others never shut up! Getting students speaking in English and keeping them on-task isn’t always easy, but you can nearly always find a way by experimenting with different techniques and activities. Here are some tried and tested ideas for starting teenagers off, and then keeping them speaking in English.
Preparation helps make perfect.
Before a speaking activity, have students plan what they are going to say in pairs. That will give them time to ask about useful vocabulary or look up words, and even rehearse and practise pronunciation. Then change the pairs for the main speaking activity. If you have students arranged in pairs, half the class can just turn round and speak to the person behind them (the other half speaks to the person in front).
Fun drills
Do you want students to use recently-taught functional language in a speaking activity? Try different kinds of fun drills of the language first: very slowly and sleepily, very loudly and angrily, frightened and whispering etc, and finally using natural intonation. When the students do the speaking activity they are more likely to remember the phrases, and more likely to use intelligible pronunciation.
Keep it in English!
Problems with keeping your students speaking in English? Make sure you have examples of the language they need at hand, on some kind of a handout, on the board or on the wall. For example, phrases for agreeing and disagreeing which are useful in many situations: “Actually, I think…” / “Yes, you’re right.”
Carrots or sticks?
The use of rewards systems can increase the use of English. For example: the best English-speaker of the week gets to choose next week’s song. Groups who do best get to choose a fun activity (from a choice that you give). For younger teens, try team points or stickers. ClassDojo is an app for online classroom management which you could also use for praising speaking achievement, effort, etc. Again, for younger teens.
Reflect and repeat
This technique usually boosts performance. After a speaking activity in pairs, e.g. telling a short anecdote, get the students to reflect on how they did. Ask them to think about the structure of their story, the tenses they used, the vocabulary they used, their fluency, pronunciation, etc. Next, get them to change partner and repeat the activity; then get them to reflect again. Students will almost always think they have done better the second time. (Make sure you monitor carefully, so you can tell them that they are right!)
Variety is the spice of life
Introduce variety into your speaking lesson by partner-swapping. If the classroom allows, arrange the chairs in two circles (an inner and an outer circle / horseshoe) with the students sitting in pairs facing each other, one in each circle. Give the students a question to discuss and a time limit. When the time’s up, get the students on the inner circle to move round a chair and discuss a new question with a new partner. The questions can be dictated or on the board. Repeat indefinitely!
Fun intonation practice
Liven up a role-play by getting students to act it out first using mime and just one word, e.g. “raspberry”. You can demonstrate with an extrovert student first. Explain that the idea is to get feelings across, not to try and mimic actual sentences. Get the students really thinking about the intonation of the dialogue by exaggerating their one word. Finally, they repeat as a normal roleplay.
Spanner in the works
Before a speaking activity, give one student in each pair a secret characteristic, e.g. ‘you’re in a rush’, ‘you can’t hear very well’ or ‘you like interrupting’. This will make the exchange more unpredictable and more like authentic communication.