This is the second blog post in my two part series about speaking – I hope you enjoyed the first one! Today, I’ll be giving you some practical classroom ideas that will ensure accuracy and fluency in spoken English.
For me, speaking is best developed alongside listening. It’s especially effective if there’s the opportunity for the speaker and listener to exchange roles. Reciprocal speaking and listening, or two-way speaking and listening, is intrinsically more complex and challenging for learners because of the unpredictability of language… that’s what makes it so effective.
How did I discover reciprocal learning?
I was working with a group of teacher trainers in Oman, and I came across reciprocal reading. I watched a group interact and saw how they deconstructed a text using summarisers, questioners, clarifiers and predictors. A huge support network formed off the back of the discussion and I felt inspired. So, I decided to apply the reciprocal idea to speaking and listening. My ultimate aim was to show teachers how a reciprocal listening activity can help them to develop speaking fluency.
How can you incorporate the reciprocal approach into your classroom?
Firstly, choose a listening text. Narratives work well, as do dialogues. The listening text should be one that students have not heard before, and one that can be readily split into shorter sections. You should try to select a text that has four or more distinct parts. Obviously, the length of the whole text will depend on the level of your students. Then, get them to listen to the sections one after the other.
Split your class intro groups of four and get each student to take on a particular role. If you are unable to create groups of four, give your stronger students more than one role.
Here are the four roles:
- Summariser: Provides a summary of the listening input.
- Questioner : Asks one or two questions about the content of the listening.
- Clarifier: Answers the questioner’s questions and clarifies anything necessary.
- Predictor: Predicts what the next part of the listening will contain.
Remember that all students are listening to exactly the same listening text; however, the way in which they interact with it will be different. The aim of the activity is to make listening a shared and supported skill, rather than a private, individual skill. Make sure that everyone understands their role and tell the students that once you’ve played one listening section, they’ll have the chance to change their roles. Some of the roles are more/less challenging than others, so you may want to take this into consideration when you first allocate the roles to your class.
As students listen to the first part, they make brief written notes based on their particular role. Then, in their groups, they listen to what each person has to say. All the while, they help and support each other. During class feedback, students have the chance to listen to other groups’ ideas, and compare with their own. This will improve their speaking and listening skills. It’s important to remind your students that the listening exercise is not a solitary activity, but one that they share with each other.
Before you play the second part of the story, show your students the audio script of the text that they’ve just listened to. This will help those who need clarification and will also provide an opportunity for them to see the written form.
For the second part, students change their roles. They will now of course be more confident about what they have to do, having already experienced and understood the point of the activity. Go through feedback as before, giving students time to discuss and teach each other in their groups. Keep highlighting that they are not just listening, but sharing the listening, and at the same time practising their speaking skills.
For the final part of the activity, don’t play the final part of the listening text. Instead, get students working in groups to predict what happens in the end. Then each group has the chance to tell the other groups their ending of the story. You could even get your students to write their ending and then read it aloud. Finally, play the actual ending from the listening text so that students can see which of their endings is closest to the real one!
This approach to listening reinforces it as an active skill. Students interact with each other and negotiate their understanding through group discussion. While the importance of, and the need for, one-way listening practice (eg, listening to lectures, radio broadcasts, and so on) should not be underestimated, it’s essential to provide students with opportunities to integrate listening with speaking in a natural and communicative context. Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, learning simply cannot begin. Listening is fundamental to speaking!
If you missed Peter’s first article about speaking skills, make sure that you check it out!