Page 204 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

Chapter 13
Setting Their Tongues Wagging: Speaking and Discussion
In This Chapter
▶ Starting the ball rolling
▶ Making the conversation last ▶ Sparking civil discussions
▶ Creating a discussion lesson
Speaking is the most important skill in English language teaching. It’s almost impossible to have true mastery of a language without actually speaking it. So in this chapter, I show you how to get your students chatting, arguing and generally wagging those tongues in English.
Getting Students Talking
In general, to encourage speaking in the early stages of a course and with students who are a little timid, give plenty of guidance on what the conversa- tions should be about. You can give students a list of questions to ask each other or specific topics and lots of language input first. So before the activ- ity gets under way make sure that the class knows the necessary grammar and vocabulary with appropriate examples. In this way students don’t have to think about what to say, only how to say things. Set speaking tasks for
pair group work as often as possible. The tasks should have clear aims and involve taking turns, so say ‘Find out what your partner thinks about X and make some notes’, rather than just telling them to discuss X. The advantage is that the students are more aware of the need to get the other person’s view instead of talking about themselves the whole time.