Talking In Class

Bill Cooney

OBJECTIVES:

PROCEDURE:

Often, getting students to talk inside (and outside) the classroom is like pulling teeth – it’s difficult, painful and sometimes the students appear completely unconscious. Illicit use of pharmacological anesthetics by Japanese students aside, conversational and speaking ability is an important part of any second language and a crucial part of both senior high school and university entrance procedures.

The following activities aim to make speaking an everyday part of the language, just as listening, reading and writing are. By removing the association of “being put on the spot” when a speaking task in the primary text rolls around, students are more confident to converse in English outside the context of the classroom and display more creative uses of English in attempting to get their point across.

Both of the following activities can be introduced in a lesson and then used as a warm-up at the head of each class for a total of 10 minutes. The students become familiar with the routine and realize that everyone is going to be doing it, which aids in removing the “performance” factor from speaking tasks.

Speeches

1. Set a topic (hobby/dream/vacation/my opinion). The topics can be tied to current areas of study in the textbook, which helps students find appropriate examples of grammar or vocabulary to use.

2. Each class have 3-4 students speak. Give the students 1 lesson’s notice that they are to speak. We use lots (20 pairs of chopsticks split with a number 1-40 written on the end. Use these to randomly pull student numbers.) Skip a student if they’ve already been for that topic.

3. Set a minimum length, for example 4 sentences.

4. Initially, have JTE or ALT ask 2-3 other students questions, such as “What is their

hobby/dream?”, “How often do they play badminton?”, “What does Takumi think?”. Have the student who presented pick students to answer. After students have become familiar with the activity, the JTE or ALT can choose 2-3 students to ask questions.

5. Have the students write down the name of the student and their what the subject of their speech was. This ensures that students are paying attention.

Let’s Chat

1. Write a topic on the board. Relate these to current grammar points of study such as “What’s your favorite movie?”, “Which do you like better, Kat-tun or Arashi?”, “Is studying English important?” or topics. ie, on a Monday morning “How was your weekend?” or “What did you do during summer vacation?”

2. Students talk with a partner for 1 minute. We use a stopwatch. The partners can be assigned or random or based on the current seating plan.

3. Choose 2-3 pairs to speak in front of the class. Keep track of who has and hasn’t spoken in front of everyone, so you don’t always end up with the same students. Don’t forget to remind students to speak loudly and clearly. As the year progresses, randomly pick a few students to go head-to-head with the ALT – it’s interesting to see them talk with someone who may not be a rote memorization of the textbook. Correct any glaring errors after the conversation is finished but remember the aim of this activity is not perfectly correct English, but rather to build conversational fluency and confidence speaking,

4. Some students clam up and look at the ground. Pause the stopwatch for pauses of extended length. Part of the effectiveness of this activity, I feel, results from the fact that EVERYBODY does it and they know that eventually they will have to do it. This creates an artificial atmosphere of catch-up and helps somewhat in bringing lower-level kids up to a level higher than they would otherwise come to.

NOTES:

My students were very surprised when towards the end of the year, we skipped sections of the textbook because they had already surpassed the conversational level in some of the later NH Speaking Plus. It gives them a very good sense of achievement.