HOW TO GET YOUR STUDENTS SPEAKING IN CLASS<\/p>\n
Author: Katherine Stannett<\/a><\/p>\n Reading Time:\u00a04\u00a0minutes<\/p>\n How can we get our learners talking? A combination of factors can often inhibit our students from speaking out loud \u2013 fear of making mistakes in front of their peers; not knowing what to say; not feeling motivated or interested in the topic. If we want to engage our students and get them talking in the classroom, we need to create a structured, safe environment, where they can talk about topics that interest them and things that they can relate to their own lives and culture.<\/p>\n So here are my\u00a0top seven tips\u00a0for avoiding those deadly silences \u2026<\/p>\n 1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Preparation. Don\u2019t expect your teens suddenly to have an opinion about recycling, favorite festivals, healthy living or whatever your topic of the week is. Use a reading or listening text to act as your prompt and elicit reactions from that. Or have your students do some independent research first and then share their findings in groups.<\/p>\n 2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pair work (or small group work). Students who may be nervous of speaking out loud in front of the whole class, often feel much safer when working one to one with a peer. But make sure that one person isn\u2019t dominating the conversation. Monitor pair work activities, walking around the classroom and checking that students are sharing the talking.<\/p>\n 3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Prompts. Giving students some written prompts can help to encourage reluctant speakers. For example, you could provide the starting words for each sentence and then have students complete the sentences with their own ideas. Let\u2019s imagine you want students to talk about a festival from their country. You could write prompts like these on the board:<\/p>\n This gives students a safe and structured way to start the speaking activity and helps to direct their conversation.<\/p>\n 4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Points. Students love competitions, so work some point-giving tasks into the speaking activity.\u00a0 For example, if you\u2019re having a class discussion about the environment, brainstorm related vocabulary onto the board first. Divide the class into teams and then ask a discussion question:\u00a0How do you help to recycle at home?\u00a0Have each team discuss the question for a few minutes and then go round the class, eliciting ideas from each team. Teams win a point for every word on the board which they manage to include in their spoken responses.<\/p>\n 5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pictures. Great pictures and photos are a powerful way to evoke responses from students. In the National Geographic Primary course,\u00a0Look<\/a>, we open every unit with a thought-provoking photo and ask some discussion questions about the picture.<\/p>\n This picture is from Level 5, Unit 1. We ask students to look at the photo and discuss the following questions:<\/p>\n 1 Where are these people?<\/p>\n 2 What are they doing? Why?<\/p>\n 3 Why do you think they can\u2019t use their phones to make phone calls?<\/p>\n 4 How do you communicate with the following people: your school friends; your family; people who live far away?<\/p>\n\n