Speaking in front of the class can be frightening. That’s why this latest set of speaking practice activities from Urs Kalberer focuses on pair or small group interaction.
Activity #1: Candy as conversation topics
Starting with a new class? Buy some sweets (candy, chocolate) wrapped in 6 different colours. Put your learners in small groups and ask them to choose 3 different coloured sweets each. Then explain that each colour stands for a topic of conversation which you would like them to talk about in turn in their group.
Example topics include:
blue = favourite food
green = best film they’ve seen this year
yellow = favourite music to listen to
red = last place they went for dinner
Activity #2: Find someone who
A classic speaking activity is ‘Find someone who…‘. Students mix with each other, asking questions formed from prompts they get on a paper. They try to find someone who can answer the question with “yes”. The first one to have completed their list is the winner. This activity is popular because it is very flexible and can also be used to revise grammar or vocabulary.
Activity #3: Human bingo
A similar activity to ‘Find someone who’ but allows for more personalisation is ‘Human Bingo’. Students mingle and ask questions using the prompts suggested by students at the start of a class. If the answer to their questions is yes, they write the name of the student who came up with the prompt. If the answer is no they continue asking. The first one to fill a straight line (horizontally, vertically, diagonally) wins.
Activity #4: Making lists
Another way of getting your learners engaged is through ‘lists’. Present a numbered list of, say, countries. Students then note the 3 countries they would most like to go to, and 3 they don’t fancy visiting. They mingle to find people with similar or different choices and exchange their views. Lists are very versatile – you can also replace the prompts by pictures.
Activity #5: Gap fills
In information gap activities you can design two versions of a gapped text based on the same source. Students then need to ask each other in order to fill the blanks on their card. Alternatively, you can use images of the “spot the difference” type.
Activity #6: The wheel
We want to give students enough practice to overcome their possible reluctance to speak. Position your class in 2 circles with 5 to 6 students in each. The students in the inner circle look outwards and face their partners in the outer circle. They speak to each other about a set topic, e.g. a list (see above), and then change partners by rotating in opposite direction (creating a wheel motion). Changing partners will have the benefit of rehearsing their dialogue and thus enabling them to become more fluent.
Activity #7: Interactive glue
We need to teach strategies to overcome a breakdown in conversation and buy some thinking time for the speaker. Mike McCarthy calls these chunks the “interactive glue” linking a fluent conversation. Cut out these words and phrases and hand them out to students before a dialogue:
Want ideas for single speaker or monologue practice? Read Urs’s previous post All by yourself: monologues in elementary speaking.