SPEAKING ACTIVITIES FOR ANY LANGUAGE CLASS

SPEAKING ACTIVITIES FOR ANY LANGUAGE CLASS

• BY MELCHOR BERNARDO

When it comes to classroom speaking activities, I try to give emphasis to real-life situation, authentic activities and meaningful tasks to promote communication. To develop this productive skill, students need intensive and constant practice.

But unlike other macro skills such as Listening, Reading and Writing including teaching vocabulary, it is more difficult to come up with speaking activities that are interesting enough to motivate students to produce the language. Sometimes, a little creativity from the teacher is needed.

So in response to the queries I’ve been getting from my blog readers, I listed down some speaking activities that I use in my English class including some downloadable PowerPoint to help you get started. These classroom speaking activities can be done in a variety of ways such as individual tasks, pair works or group activities.

Secret Zombie

This is a fun conversation activity that, although they talk in pairs, involves the whole class!

The scenario is that a virus has attacked the world and everybody is turning into a zombie! The virus is contagious – it affects everyone it touches – and students have to reach the safe zone before it’s too late!

First, prepare some strips of paper with either Z or H which stand for zombie or human; then let students pick their role. They shouldn’t let anyone know.

Students will go around the classroom asking and answering questions. After they have asked and answered, they will shake hands. The zombie will infect the other student by secretly scratching the inside part of the other student’s hands.

If a student shakes 5 people’s hands without getting infected, he/she enter the safe area and humans will win the game! Otherwise, zombies will take over the world! This is surely one of those speaking activities that students will have fun doing!

Thinking Hats

This speaking activity is based on a system designed by Edward de Bono with an ESL twist. Basically, 6 Thinking Hats is a tool for group discussion and individual thinking involving 6 colored hats. Just like de Bono’s idea, each color represents a mode of thinking which allows the students to expand their views on a particular thing or issue. I love this speaking task because it helps students to think logically and become better speakers.

Pin me! 6 Thinking Hats Writing & Speaking Strategy

You can see the PowerPoint I created with instructions on how to do this speaking activity. To ensure that every member participates during discussion and presentation, you may also use the role cards included in the member resources page.

Activity Type: Individual, Pair, Group

Would You Rather

This conversation activity is about student preference. Students are given a question that starts with “Would you rather…” followed by two equally good or equally bad options. For example, “Would you rather  be beautiful but poor or less attractive (ugly) but rich?” Answering “neither” or “both” is against the rules so students must choose 1 and justify their answer. Sometimes, students’ answers will crack you up! One student said that she’d rather be rich but ugly because if she’s rich, she could afford plastic surgery!

Just like other speaking activities, Would You Rather will be a success if the questions are age and proficiency level appropriate. Due to file storage issues, I can only upload a sample copy. However, you can find more Would You Rather questions here and use the template I created to see how it looks like.

Activity Type: Individual, Pair

TED Ed Riddles

This one uses video prompts such as the riddle videos from TED Ed. These are brain teasers presented in a professionally animated video that hook students and keep them engaged in our speaking activities! Each riddle is divided into two parts – the problem and the answer. I show my students the first part, pause the video and make sure that they understand every detail of the riddle. I provide them a mini-whiteboard and give them time to discuss the problem in their group and come up with possible solutions. When the time is done, I ask each group to discuss their answer to the whole class.

You can find a lot of TED Ed riddles on YouTube but you may check out my favorite Hat and Bridge riddles to start with.

Activity Type: Group

Missing Dialogues

This is a drill conversation activity where you pair your students up to practice the dialogue you show on the screen. Simply show your slide and have students read out loud. After two rounds, you will start deleting words in the dialogue and replace it with blanks. Do this in sequence until the entire dialogue is just a series of blanks.

You get the idea, right? You can also see these 3 beginner sample dialogues on PowerPoint then you can go ahead and create your own missing dialogues based on your lessons! This speaking drill is absolutely effective!

Activity Type: Pair

Picture Sequencing

In this story telling activity, students must put a series of pictures in order. They color the pictures and write descriptive words using adjectives, adverbs and expressions of time and sequence. When they finish, they go in front of the class to tell their story.

By doing picture sequencing before the speaking activity, students are able organize information and ideas efficiently thereby enhancing necessary skills such as reasoning and inferring.

You can download samples in the resources page.

FlipGrid

Have you always wanted to assess your students’ speaking abilities but you have no time to do it in your classroom? Then FlipGrid is for you! This activity is sort of a homework if students have access to computers at home.

FlipGrid is video discussion platform where you can (1) create a grid for your classroom; and (2) add a topic to spark discussion. Students can respond with short videos (up to 1 minute and 30 seconds only) without creating an account as long as they have the code to access your topic.

FlipGrid allows you to create unlimited topics/discussion and unlimited video uploads for all your speaking activities and tasks!

Activity Type: Individual

Tongue Twisters

Well, everybody knows what a tongue twister is! It is a series of words or sounds that are usually repetitive and are difficult to pronounce quickly and correctly. I use tongue twisters as one of our speaking activities to develop my students pronunciation and accent; or sometimes just for the sheer fun of doing it. I often get my students to memorize this and ask them to say it out loud in class as a group and in pairs.

You can download this tongue twister PowerPoint I created.

Activity Type: Pair, Group

Information Gap

In this activity, you will create two different versions of a dialogue and hand out version A to Student A and version B to Student B. The idea behind this is all the B section sentences that are missing on version A appear on version B; and vice versa.

Example:

Version A

Student A: How are you today?

Student B: _____________________!

Version B

Student A: ____________________?

Student B: I’m fine, thank you!

During the speaking task, students have to read out loud and listen to and write down sentences from the other student’s paper. You have to  make sure though that students are really having a conversation and not just sharing and copying each other’s dialogues.

Activity Type: Pair

Conversation Cards

If you don’t want all your kids to have a conversation at the same time, then conversation cards is just the answer! In this speaking game, you will only have up to 10 to talk in front of the class per round. I usually use this activity when teaching positive/negative question or sentence but I think you can adapt this one to your lesson.

To do this speaking activity, you need to prepare cards that have conversation starter sentence or question, such as “What did you do last weekend?” or “Do you like watching cartoons?” and so on.

• To start the game, give 1 different card to 5 students and let them go in front.
• Tell the rest of the class to close their eyes or put their heads down.
• The 5 students you chose will quietly put their card on other students’ desks and then come back to the front.
• Tell the class to open their eyes.
• One by one, ask the student who has a card on their desk to stand in front of the student who they think has given them the card and read the prompt written on it aloud.
• (You can change this last part according to your prompts) If the card does not match the person who gave it, that person will give a negative response to the question or statement and the other student will go back to his/her desk.
• If the card matches that person, the person will say a positive response and the two people will switch places.

Game Type: Pair

Talking Cards

Pin Me! Talking Cards: Conversation Activity

Speaking of cards, I also use traditional playing cards for a conversation activity. The regular size will do but I love using the giant version which I got for $2 from a stationery store. Basically, I make groups of four and let each one pick 1 card. Each suit (shape) will represent a topic, for example, students who got a “heart” will talk about love and the students who got a “diamond” will talk about money, and so on. You can assign any topic for each suit as you wish.

Activity Type: Group

Jenga

I saw this activity on Pinterest and I thought it was fun to do in my class too! To do this game, give each group their Jenga blocks and play as it is supposed to be played: stack the blocks in sets of three until they have built a tower that is 18 blocks high. They take turn picking 1 block from any level until the tower collapses. Just write a question in the target language, and have students answer as they pull the blocks out. You could also write verbs and pronouns on each block and make a game adaptable to any tense you are working on.

Activity Type: Group

Other common speaking activities that I do in my English class

So much for creativity, I believe we don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. Below are some common activities that we also shouldn’t ignore.

Discussions or Brainstorming

In groups, students share ideas, ask questions or find solution to an issue or problem that you give them. To make discussions work well, it is suggested to assign each member a specific role such as leader, time keeper, recorder, challenger, etc.

Role Plays

Students pretend they are in a different social setting taking on a different social role. To make role plays successful, it is important that students understand their role and the context of the situation. For example, students can be the waiter and the costumers in “In a Restaurant” role play, and so on.

Interviews

Students can interview foreigners about a certain topic to allow them to use the language outside the classroom. Another way to do this is to provide an opportunity to talk with some experts via Skype and have students prepare their questions beforehand.

Debates

Debate doesn’t have to be formal and serious. In my experience, ESL students don’t have the drive to do extensive research about a topic and then talk about it at a later date. I modify debate to make it easy and not tedious, for example, I do 30 seconds Debate where I group the class into two: For vs Against. I flash interesting and sometimes funny statements like “Soda should be banned” or “Students should not watch TV.” Each student-representative from each group will give their stand in 30 seconds per round.

Class Presentation or Reporting

There are many ways to do class reports in the classroom. Students can do a presentation about a project or you can provide opportunity for each student to teach the class about whatever topic that he/she is interested in. I did this activity before where everyday, one student got to talk for 5 minutes before I started the lesson. My colleague called this activity as “Students Can Teach Too!“

© teachingenglish101

12 LISTENING ACTIVITIES FOR ESL STUDENTS

12 LISTENING ACTIVITIES FOR ESL STUDENTS

• BY MELCHOR BERNARDO
 

Listening is an important component of learning. A student’s ability to effectively listen has a major impact on building the communication skills needed both inside and outside of school. If students do not understand what the other person is saying, then he/she will not know how to respond. Thus, it is indispensable to organize many listening activities for ESL students in the classroom.

In their book Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, authors Murcia, Brinton, Snow and Bohlke offer the following listening activities and strategies that every ESL/EFL teacher can use in the classroom:

One-Way (Nonparticipatory) Listening Tasks

1. Listen and Restore

Skills: Listening for global understanding; listening for details

Product: An amended text in print

Materials: Different types of listening texts, such as narratives and information reports; the transcript of a text with incorrect details.

Procedure: 

1. Students work individually or in pairs to read the printed text.
2. They discuss the gist of the text and listen to the text once.
3. When they listen again, they correct the details in the written texts by changing, adding, or deleting words.

2. Listen and Sort

Skills: Listening for main ideas; listening for details

Product: A rearranged sequence of text or pictures.

Materials: A text that describes a sequence, a procedure, a chronological even, or items in ranked order; set of jumbled up text and/or pictures.

Procedure:

1. Students work in pairs to examine jumbled up texts or pictures.
2. They discuss what the text might be about and sort the texts/pictures according to their speculations.
3. They listen to the text and use the information to sequence the texts/pictures.

3. Listen and Compare

Skills: Listening for main ideas; listening for details

Product: A list of similarities and differences

Materials: Several short texts that have a common theme or topic.

Procedure:

1. Students listen individually to the text and identify similarities and differences.
2. They compare their answers with another student to confirm what they have identified.
3. The class listens to the text again and check their answers.

4. Listen and Match

Skills: Listening for global understanding

Product: Texts matched to themes

Materials: Several short texts that have different themes; theme cards (small cards with a single word written on each one, e.g., recycling, marriage, health). Note: Teachers should prepare more theme cards than the number of texts.

Procedure:

1. The teacher asks that students understand the meaning of words in the theme cards.
2. Students listen individually to the texts and identify the most appropriate theme for each text.

5. Listen and Combine

Skills: Listening for main ideas; listening selectively

Product: A combined summary based on information from different sources

Materials: A fairly long text (e.g., a news broadcast, narrative or procedure) divided into several parts

Procedure:

1. Students listen to one part of the text individually.
2. They make notes of what they hear.
3. In small groups, they report to one another and reconstruct a summary form of the original text.

6. Listen and Compose

Skills: Listening and predicting; listening and making inferences.

Product: The beginning or conclusion of a text

Materials: A narrative text (e.g., a short story) with either the beginning or the end missing

Procedure:

1. Students listen to the text in pairs or in small groups.
2. They discuss what the text is about and what the missing part should be like.
3. They write the missing part and a representative reads the part aloud to the rest of the class.

7. Listen and Evaluate

Skills: Listening for details; listening and making inferences (depending on the criteria for evaluation)

Product: A list of items based on their relative merits

Materials: Several short texts on a common theme or topic

Procedure:

1. Students listen to the text individually and assess the information or message based on predetermined criteria, such as clarity, interest level, accuracy and effectiveness.
2. In groups, they explain their choices.

8. Listen and Reconstruct

Skills: Listening for global understanding; listening for main ideas; listening for details

Product: A text that is reconstructed based on the content of the original text

Materials: A short text (e.g.,  an information report, procedures, or exposition of a viewpoint)

Procedure: 

1. Students listen individually to the text once.
2. They listen to it again and take notes of key content words or key points in a text (e.g., problems, solutions, and recommendations).
3. They use their notes to produce a text that is close in meaning to the original one.

Two-Way  (Participatory) Listening Tasks

9. Dictate and Complete

Skills: Listening for details; listening seletively

Product: A restored and complete text

Materials: Different types of listening texts (e.g., narratives and information reports); versions A and B of the text with blanks inserted in different parts of the text

Procedure:

1. Students read their version of the incomplete text individually.
2. They take turns dictating their version without showing it to their partners. Listeners must ask for clarification and repetition where necessary.
3. They write down the missing words in their version of the text.

10. Describe and Draw

Skills: Listening for main ideas; listening for details

Product: Pictures, maps, sketches and objects

Materials: Pictures of scenery and objects, plans and maps

Procedure:

1.  Students work in pairs, with one of them describing the content of a picture.
2. The other student draws it or completes a similar picture that is incomplete.
3. Listeners must ask for clarification and repetition where necessary.

11. Simulate and Discuss

Skills: Listening for global understanding; listening for details; listening and inferring;

Product: Views and recommendations

Materials: Cards with scenarios for simulations, roles, or statements of a problem and an issue and the required outcome, such as a set of recommendations

Procedure:

1. Students form small groups to discuss a problem or an issue in the simulation.
2. A moderator or the chairperson in the simulation is assigned to ask questions, elicit views, challenge assumptions, and clarify understanding.
3. Students in their respective roles listen to one another’s views, make notes, respond to views, and seek clarification.
4. They agree on a set of outcomes following the discussion.

12. Take notes and Clarify

Skills: Listening for global understanding; listening for details; listening and making inferences

Product: A set of notes; a list of questions for clarifying understanding of the content

Materials: Presentations by students or guest speakers

Procedure:

1. Students listen to presentations and take notes.
2. They review their notes and prepare some questions about the content of the presentation to the presenter.

© teachingenglish101

13 GRAMMAR GAMES AND ACTIVITIES FOR FUN LEARNING

13 GRAMMAR GAMES AND ACTIVITIES FOR FUN LEARNING

• BY MELCHOR BERNARDO

The best way to pique students’ interests in grammar lessons is to engage them in fun grammar games and activities that allow them to connect emotions with new knowledge or concept. This connection with emotions creates memories which do not easily go away and are easy to retrieve when needed.

Here are a few grammar games and activities that we can use to excite the students before, or during, grammar lessons. Some of them offer cool introductions of new concepts while others offer a teacher some methods to make practice more memorable.

1. The Verb Family Tree

Focus: Verb

This tree will teach the students different forms of verbs as children of the root verb.

You can do this activity on the whiteboard or you can opt for a worksheet version. Either way, you first have to start on the board so the students get the idea.

• Draw a family tree with four branches
• The root or trunk is the root word or the main verb
• Name every branch a particular form. For example, the branch of the eldest brother could be the third-person singular form of the verb. Another branch is plural or past form, and so on.
• Demonstrate with one word and call excited students to name siblings of verbs of your choice.

You may also let them play this game in pairs.

2. Magnet of Praise

Focus: Adjective, Adverb

This is one of the many grammar games and activities on this list that allows students to revise adjectives. You can also adapt this game to let them remember adverbs.

It is easy to conduct, and you can choose to give out worksheets or do play it on the board.

• Draw a magnet which is attracting nails.
• Tell the students that the magnet is a noun (or verb) and wants nails that define its qualities.
• Write any noun (verb) on the magnet and call the students to qualify or modify it.

Be ready to get surprised with the adjectives students create on the spot.

3. Time Box

Focus: Verb Tenses

This activity will help your students identify the time to which a sentence belongs after studying the verbs and auxiliary verbs.

• Divide the students into teams.
• Take six (or more depending on the number of teams you make) boxes and label them past present and future.
• Then write different sentences (thirty to fifty will do for a detailed game) on pieces of cardboard and make two piles.
• Teams will brainstorm and assign each sentence to the relevant box.

In addition to encouraging the students to practice grammar, this activity will also help them with communication skills as they will discuss before putting the sentences in right boxes.

4. Sentence Grid

Focus: Parts of Speech

This activity focuses on the basics of language. It allows the students to distinguish between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech.

It is another minimalistic activity that only requires the board and marker. You have to start by drawing eight boxes on the board. Label them accordingly. (You can enhance the layout by using different colors for different parts of speech.)

• Next, write random words from all parts of speech at a side column of the board. Or you can choose to dictate the words.
• Give an example by assigning some words of students’ choice to the relevant grid.
• Ask each one of the students to write dictated word in the appropriate grid box depending on the part of speech it represents.

5. Sentence Bus

Focus: Parts of Speech

So, every sentence follows a certain order. Simple sentences usually start with a subject, followed by an auxiliary verb, verb, and object. In between these components, we inject other parts such as adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, and interjections.

After explaining sentence structure and parts of speech, you can do the following steps to engage the students in Sentence Bus:

• Draw a bus on the board. Draw the number of seats according to the level of complexity of sentences you are teaching your students.
• Label these seats as Subject, Verb, Adjective, and other parts of the sentence.
• Write a random, jumbled up sentence and words at the bottom of the board and ask the students to get these passengers seated on their designated seats.
• After that, let them read their conjured up sentence using the sentence structure. 

Be ready to hear some funny combinations especially if you are using adjectives in these sentences.

6. Adjective/ Adverb Race

Focus: Duh…

This is similar to a typical vocabulary race in which two different teams of students compete against each other in finding more qualifiers. 

But, it has a twist!

You can make it a solo activity, where a single student from each team comes to the board and list all adjectives (or adverbs) that come to their mind. Or it can be a group activity where the student on the board receives examples from his/her teammates (insert total chaos!).

But where is the twist?

 It lies in the restriction that the students will only define the word you have assigned.

• Start with making two teams of students.
• Call both to the board and assign different noun (verb) to them.
• Ask them to qualify these words only according to the qualities they attract.
• Every qualifier will attract a definite mark and the team with most qualifiers will win.

7. Friends

Focus: Subject-Verb Agreement

In this activity, students will match subjects with their appropriate verbs and auxiliary verbs.

One of the hardest parts in English for my students is to choose appropriate verb form for different subjects. I often get sentences where the pronoun ‘she’ is followed by the verb ‘play’ in the simple present tense. 

How do you make them practice? The following is a cool grammar activity to help them with matching verbs to their subjects. 

Again, you can do this activity on board or you can create your own worksheets.

• Name the tense you want to practice for the day.
• Write ten to fifteen subjects including nouns and pronouns, a similar number of verbs, and adverbs.
• Ask each student to make as many groups of friends as they can from these words in proper order.
• So the word “plays” can befriend ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, and any singular noun you have used.
• In a worksheet scenario, you can compare the group of friends your students make and declare the winner.

8. DressingUp

This is another activity which allow students to revise the verbs and use auxiliary verbs to mold into the tense of your choice.

You can conduct this activity both at the board and on the worksheet.

Start by informing students about the party of the day. This party should be one from the grammar tense. 

Explain how verbs change forms to suit the dress code of the party. For example, in Past Simple Tense, verbs will dress up in simple past form and Present Perfect will require past participle form. 

Now assign one verb to each student and ask them to dress these words up for party of the day like Present Simple, Present Continuous, and likes.

You can also ask them to dress them up according to their (subject) friends. For example, verb ‘grow’ will dress up as grown to pair with ‘he’ and ‘has’ to go to Present Perfect Tense’ party. 

9. Playing Boss – Part 1

This grammar activity will connect the nouns with their pronouns.

The concept is simple. Students will have to assign the duties of the boss to theirsubordinate in their absence. Teacher will give as bosses students will give pronouns which are capable of serving the boss. 

Simple prompts will be:

Joe has an appointment out of office. Who will take of his affairs at the office? He? She? They?

10. Playing Boss – Part2

Focus: Kinds of Pronouns

The purpose and design of this activity are similar to the previous one but with a little expansion in concept.

Joe’s out-of-office appointment will give rise to the need for delegation of various duties. One of the duty is to act like Joe in every work (subject pronoun), to receive order and communication as the boss (object pronoun), and to possess his valuables (possessive pronouns).

11. Rolling Ball

Focus: Any 

This grammar game can include any aspect you may want your students to practice. You can ask them to give a particular type of noun, a verb that follows a particular subject of tense, an adjective of a particular degree, or a preposition.

The game is simple:

• Start by giving a ball to show starter student.
• Ask them to give an example of the part of speech you have mentioned.
• Ask them to pass the ball until the music is on. Play music.
• The last receiver of the ball will have to give you an example of the part of speech you have decided.
• Those students who fail to give an example quick enough will be out of the game.

12. Twenty Questions

Focus: Any

This famous grammar game collects various qualifiers from all parts of speech to define a single noun (usually a perfect noun).

The game takes a pair of students one of whom defines the character while the other guesses it. But the student who is defining the character (or noun) cannot say that word and the recipient has to rely on clues to know the noun.

A few questions which can help the guesser include the size of the thing (adjective), work he does (verb), quality of his services (adverb), its origin (noun) and so on.

Other than allowing the students to inventory relevant parts of speech, the activity also allows them to make different questions and hold conversations. 

13. Community Members

Focus: Comparative/Superlative

Through this grammar activity, teachers can help the student in identifying and using different degrees of an adjective. Like all other adjectives-related activities on this list, you can also adapt this activity to study adverbs.

You have to come up with a picture of a community or a group of related nouns. An example of such a group is animals living in the jungle.

Keep it relevant to your kids’ interests to make it more exciting. For example, I would show them a picture of all characters from Ben10.

• Show a picture of a group of persons, places, or things.
• Tell an adjective and ask them to compare two of the members of the presented community according to the adjective.
• Then ask them to find the member which is the epitome of that adjective among the whole community.

© teachingenglish101