This unit is about classroom activities that will help your students to speak independently in English. Being able to speak English well is a skill that will benefit your students in life outside and beyond school. In order to achieve this, your students need to learn to express themselves in English using the language for their own purposes: to discuss an issue, hold a conversation or gain some information. They need to take part in a variety of speaking activities, including ones that allow them to develop the skills they need for real-life communication. They also need the opportunity to speak using their own words. If words and phrases are always provided for them, or if they recite memorised words and phrases, they will have difficulties when they come to speak by themselves.
This unit gives you some ideas about how to run a variety of activities in your classes that support students in developing the skills necessary to take part in real life. It shows how you can provide opportunities for students to speak in English as much as possible by using pair and groupwork. Pair and groupwork help you to create situations where students have to use English to communicate with each other. There are challenges involved in using pair and groupwork for language practice, so this unit explores how other teachers organise and manage these kinds of speaking activities.
When students first start speaking English in pairs and groups, they need a lot of support. This can begin with giving them the text to say, such as reading aloud from the textbook, repeating phrases and sentences (see the unit Using more English in your classroom), or dictating a passage to a classmate (discussed below). As they gain confidence, you can give them less support and more space to communicate using their own words and ideas through speaking activities such as role play (see the unit Building your students’ confidence to speak English ), an interview or discussion (discussed below).
Students may need to speak in English in all kinds of situations in their lives beyond school. In order to be fluent and confident, they need to practise. However, many students do not have enough opportunities to do this; the only place where they can practise speaking English is in their classes. This means that you need to create opportunities to speak in English for real purposes, so that students use the language to communicate with you and with each other.
You may be thinking that it is difficult to give all your students the opportunity to speak in class, especially if you have a large number of students. One way that you can give all of your students the chance to speak is by organising them into pairs or small groups (for example, of three or four students) to talk with each other (Figure 1).
There are many advantages of using pair and groupwork for learning:
Pair and groupwork offer a safer environment for students to try out their speaking because fewer people hear them but all students have opportunities to speak and listen. This enables students to develop confidence in their speaking in English. You may want to have a look at key resources, ‘Using pair work’ and ‘Using groupwork’.
Pair dictation is a simple way to get your students used to speaking and listening to each other in English. This activity is not purely communicative, because students are not creating meaningful sentences on their own. However, the students who are speaking get useful practice in pronunciation and the students who are listening and writing also practise spelling and punctuation. These skills help them to develop their confidence and their ability in communicating in English in real life.
Ms Dutta recently attended a training session about the importance of giving students the opportunity to speak English in class. At the session, she learned about using pair and groupwork.
I teach Class IX, and we are working through Chapter 8 of the NCERT textbook Beehive. In the last class we reached page 108, which has the following dictation activity:
‘The Raincoat’
After four years of drought in a small town in the north-east, the vicar gathered everyone together for a pilgrimage to the mountain, where they would pray together and ask for the rain to return.
The priest noticed a boy in the group wearing a raincoat.
‘Have you gone mad?’ he asked. ‘It hasn’t rained in this region for five years, the heat will kill you climbing the mountain.’
‘I have a cold, father. If we are going to ask God for rain, can you imagine the way back from the mountain? It’s going to be such a downpour that I need to be prepared.’
At that moment a great crash was heard in the sky and the first drops began to fall. A boy’s faith was enough to bring about a miracle that not even those most prepared truly believed in.
Normally, I read dictations from the textbook aloud, and students listen and write. However, in the training session I learned that the teacher does not always have to be the person who is speaking in class. I realised that my students could be the ones who give the dictation. I thought they could do this in pairs. One student would read out the text, and the other would listen and write it down.
I told my students to make pairs with the person next to them. There were some students left over at the end of some benches, who made groups of three instead of pairs. Then I told my students to begin dictating the passage to their partner(s). I moved around the classroom, and noticed that most of the students were having problems. They didn’t know what to do, and they were just reading the passage. I realised that my instructions hadn’t been clear. I told everyone to stop, and decided to try again.
This time, I told the groups, ‘Decide who is Student A and who is Student B’. (Groups of three had two students with the same letter.) I gave them one minute to decide. Then I said ‘Student As, raise your hands. Student Bs, raise your hands’. This way I knew that everyone was clear about who was Student A and who was Student B. Next, I gave the class instructions for the activity and wrote them on the blackboard.
I made sure that everyone understood the instructions by getting them to say what they needed to do in their home language. I told my students, ‘You have ten minutes for the pair dictation.’ The Student As began to dictate the passage to their partners [Figure 2]. As they did the activity, I walked around the classroom, listening to the pairs and checking that everyone was doing the activity correctly. Some of them were still not sure, so I explained again. Most of them were enjoying the activity and it was working well. It was good to hear so many of my students speaking in English.
As I listened, I heard that some of the students made mistakes with pronunciation. I didn’t interrupt them. I made a note of the most common pronunciation mistakes and decided that I could correct these mistakes with the whole class after the activity. I thought that my notes could be useful for assessment (see the unit Supporting language learning through formative assessment).
When nine minutes had passed, I told the students, ‘You have one more minute.’ When ten minutes had passed, some of the students had not quite finished reading, but I knew that everyone had had a chance to dictate some sentences. It was not possible for me to check all of their work, so I asked them to check and correct it themselves by comparing it to the passage in the textbook. This helped them to see where they had problems with spelling or punctuation.
The activity went well on the whole, although I realised that I need to give clearer instructions for these kinds of activities. I am going to use more pair work in my classes. I think that the more I use it, the more students will get used to it.
You can use this activity with any short passage and with any class. Follow these steps to try a pair dictation exercise with your students:
Pause for thought Here are some questions for you to think about after trying this activity. If possible, discuss these questions with a colleague.
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Students need to understand what they need to do before they work in pairs or groups. Writing instructions on the blackboard is a good idea so that students can refer to them as they work. You could also demonstrate the activity with the whole class first, getting two students to practise the activity in front of the whole class.
If not all of your students spoke, try to find what the problems are. Are your students afraid of making mistakes? Do they find working in pairs uncomfortable? Students may find pair and groupwork difficult at first. It can help if you tell them about the benefits, and that it will get easier with practice. Use pair and groupwork as often as you can and students will soon get used to it. See Resource 1, ‘Involving all’, for more on involving all students.
It is important to give students as many opportunities to speak in English as possible in English classes. But in many speaking activities, students are reading aloud or speaking set phrases that they have learned. These activities also do not require students to speak their own ideas or formulate sentences to share their thoughts.
When we speak in real life, we usually share information or ideas that are new to the listener. For example, you might give some information about a student to your headteacher, or you might tell your friends about something that happened to you on your way home from work.
Good speaking activities are modelled on real-life situations where information is exchanged. In such activities, students have to use language to communicate what they want to say.
Examples of speaking activities that develop communication skills are role plays, interviews and discussions – see Resource 2 for an example of a role play activity. In the activities and case studies that follow, you will look at interviews and discussions.
Pair or groupwork in which students conduct interviews with each other can be a good way to use English to communicate. One student can pretend that they are a journalist, while the other can be the interviewee (they could be famous movie starts, sports heroes, musicians, a local person, etc. …). While the students are playing roles, they are participating in an activity that is modelled on a real-life situation in which one person asks questions and another one gives a reply to communicate information.
Mr Sampath teaches English to Class IX at a government secondary school.
I teach Class IX, and we recently read a passage about Santosh Yadav, a woman who struggled against the odds to climb Mount Everest [see the NCERT Class X textbook Beehive, Chapter 8 – ‘Reach to the Top’]. She is a courageous, determined young woman, and I thought it would be interesting to use the character for an interview activity.
After reminding students about the passage, I told them to imagine that they were journalists, and they were going to interview Santosh Yadav, the climber. I asked the whole class to think of some questions they would ask and a few came up with some ideas. I wrote them on the board:
I then organised the class into pairs (with students working with the person sitting next to them) and told them to write as many questions as they could for Santosh. I encouraged them to be imaginative. I gave them a time limit for writing questions – about eight minutes. As they started writing questions I walked around and helped those who needed it, correcting some mistakes, and suggesting more inventive questions, saying:
I quickly made sure that each pair had written some questions, and then I told them to stop writing. I told my class that they were going to do the interviews, and I asked each alternate row to turn around on their benches so that the students faced each other, and gave some more instructions.
Students started the interviews [Figure 3]. I moved to the back of the room to listen to a group. As I listened, I noticed that one girl was not participating – her classmate was answering all of the questions. I told them that they must take it in turns to answer questions, and that her classmate could help her with words when she was stuck.
I then listened to a group in the middle of the room. I noticed that they were using their home language to answer the questions. I asked them why, and they said that they didn’t know a word they wanted to use in English. I gave them the translation of the word, and told them to try to use as much English as they could – even if they didn’t know a word. I also told them to note down any words they didn’t know, to ask me later or look them up in a dictionary.
Then I realised that the room was quite noisy. I saw that some groups were being noisier than the others, so I moved across to them and told them to speak more quietly. Sometimes it is enough to catch the attention of a group and to use a gesture to quieten things down.
I noticed that many students were making mistakes. I knew that if I interrupted, I would discourage them from speaking – and the whole purpose of this activity is to get students speaking in English. Instead, I made a note of some common mistakes and decided that I could review these problems in another class.
After ten minutes I saw that many groups were finishing their interviews, so I decided to end the activity. I started counting down from ten to zero. By the time I reached zero, the groups were quiet, and had stopped talking. I asked students to use their notes from the interview to write a report about Santosh.
Follow these steps and try using interviews in your classroom the way that Mr Sampath did in Case Study 2. This will allow your students to practise communicating in English:
Pause for thought There are many benefits to using pair and groupwork. However, they also have their challenges, especially when used with large classes. After trying this activity with your students, think about what happened in your classroom:
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In Activity 3, you will explore these questions further.
Read some teachers’ comments about the challenges of using pair and groupwork for speaking activities. They are marked A, B, C and D:
Now read some advice from some other teachers. Decide which advice goes with which challenge, and write the relevant letter next to it. For example, the first piece of advice helps teachers who are worried about noise (B). When you are ready, check your answers with Resource 3.
It is up to you to let your students know what an acceptable level of noise is. Move around the room and keep an eye on all the groups and pairs so that you can immediately stop them if some students are getting to loud or not doing the activity. | B |
Make sure that you provide support for students who are struggling. They may need more help with words or phrases, or more time to plan what they are going to say. | |
Students could plan with others so that they can help each other. Try to encourage all of your students so that they stay motivated and eager to learn. | |
Talk to other teachers in the school and your headteacher so that they know why there is noise in your classroom. Make sure that they understand that the noise is a result of active learning and not a lack of discipline. | |
Don’t worry too much about mistakes. You can make notes and review common problems with the whole class after an activity. | |
If noise is a problem, agree time limits, or – if you can – go outside to do the activity. | |
Be positive about mistakes. Remember that the classroom should be a safe place for students to practise – they can learn from their mistakes and rehearse language before they have to use it outside the classroom in ‘real life’. | |
As you move around the classroom, make notes when students use their home language, and at the end of the activity, you could teach them the English they need. Encourage students to note down the words they don’t know, and to use a dictionary to look the words up in their own time. | |
Remember that it is natural for students to use their home language or to mix languages. Encourage them to use English as much as they can, but also understand that there are times when students don’t have the language skills in English to express what they want to say, and remember that even some English is better than none. |
As students become more confident at speaking in English, they can carry out activities such as discussions. These give your students opportunities to share and hear opinions. They also give your students the opportunity to speak more independently and express themselves in their own words.
You can do discussion activities with any class or level. Note, however, that you need to choose topics that are appropriate to the level and age of your students, and give more language support to students whose English is weaker. Here are ways in which you can support your students to participate in a discussion in English:
Ms Aruna teaches English in a secondary school. She reflects on how she tried to engage her students in a discussion in English by having them choose the topic.
I teach Class X and in the textbook there are often suggestions for discussions. My students used to find discussions very difficult. I would ask them a question and then ask them to say what they thought. One or two would stand up and give some opinions and then sit down. To be honest, it was always the same students. The others would not express an opinion.
In the end, I would write some sentences on the board for students to say, such as ‘I think it is right to kill animals to save a human being’, or ‘In my opinion, it is not right to kill animals to save a human being’. But I knew that they were just reading my sentences aloud, and not even giving their real opinions. This approach was not really developing their speaking skills.
I decided to try a new approach. I asked my students for some topics that they would like to discuss. We wrote a list on the board and we chose one: ‘Which is the best TV serial on today? Why is it the best? Is it good – or bad – for young people to watch TV serials?’
I wrote some phrases on the blackboard that students could use to express an opinion, and to agree or disagree with each other:
Then I gave the students two or three minutes to make notes of what they wanted to say. I encouraged them to write notes only and not to write a text. Then I gave the students some further instructions:
As students discussed, I moved around the room and listened to the discussions. I didn’t join in or correct their mistakes. The discussions were very interesting! I listened to two groups and I made some notes about grammar and pronunciation mistakes.
After five minutes I stopped the discussion and I asked the secretary of some of the groups to give a short report of the discussion to the whole class. Usually students don’t really listen much when others are reading out or speaking, but this time they were all interested to see what everyone thought about their favourite TV serial!
At the end of the class, I reviewed the grammar and pronunciation mistakes. I wrote words that students had pronounced incorrectly on the board, and asked them to repeat the words after me. Then I wrote some sentences with mistakes that the students had made on the board, and asked them to find the mistakes and write the correct sentences in their notebooks.
The students enjoyed the class, and they spoke much more using this approach. Next time, I plan to follow up the discussion with a writing activity so that students can have more time to develop their ideas about the topic.
Follow these steps to carry out group discussions with your students:
Pause for thought Here are some questions for you to think about after trying this activity. If possible, discuss these questions with a colleague.
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Remember that speaking in another language is difficult for many students. Be encouraging and give positive feedback. Some students will need more support than others. You can give these students more words and phrases, more time to plan and prepare, or put them with classmates who can help them.
Being able to speak in English is a skill that will be useful for many students in their personal and work lives outside and beyond school. In order to develop this skill, students will need a lot of practice in speaking in English. You can do this by providing as many opportunities as possible for your students to do so. One way of doing this is by getting students to speak English in pairs or small groups. This means that all students have the opportunity to speak at some point in an English class.
You also need to give students a variety of speaking activities, such as interviews and discussions. At first, students may need lots of support and may need to have the language provided for them (such as repetition and pair dictations). Over time, students can move on to activities with less support (such as role plays, interviews and discussions). These kinds of activities will help students to develop the skills that they need in order to take part in real-life conversations in English.
For more ideas for speaking activities, see Resource 4 and the additional resources; for ideas about how to develop your own speaking skills, see Resource 5.
Other secondary English teacher development units on this topic are:
The diversity in culture and in society is reflected in the classroom. Students have different languages, interests and abilities. Students come from different social and economic backgrounds. We cannot ignore these differences; indeed, we should celebrate them, as they can become a vehicle for learning more about each other and the world beyond our own experience. All students have the right to an education and the opportunity to learn regardless of their status, ability and background, and this is recognised in Indian law and the international rights of the child. In his first speech to the nation in 2014, Prime Minister Modi emphasised the importance of valuing all citizens in India regardless of their caste, gender or income. Schools and teachers have a very important role in this respect.
We all have prejudices and views about others that we may not have recognised or addressed. As a teacher, you carry the power to influence every student’s experience of education in a positive or negative way. Whether knowingly or not, your underlying prejudices and views will affect how equally your students learn. You can take steps to guard against unequal treatment of your students.
There are several specific approaches that will help you to involve all students. These are described in more detail in other key resources, but a brief introduction is given here:
This role play is based on a restaurant scene. You could write the menu on the blackboard or get your students to make their own menus for the role play.
Here is the menu of a small restaurant:
A group of young people enter the restaurant and look at the menu. They have to choose two rolls from the given menu. There are some conditions: two of them are vegetarians, and the others prefer to eat non-vegetarian rolls. Two of them have Rs. 50 each and the other three have Rs. 30 each. Take roles in groups of four and you may use the following words and phrases, or your own:
It is up to you to let your students know what an acceptable level of noise is. Move around the room and keep an eye on all the groups and pairs so that you can immediately stop them if some students are getting to loud or not doing the activity. | B |
Make sure that you provide support for students who are struggling. They may need more help with words or phrases, or more time to plan what they are going to say. | C |
Students could plan with others so that they can help each other. Try to encourage all of your students so that they stay motivated and eager to learn. | C |
Talk to other teachers in the school and your headteacher so that they know why there is noise in your classroom. Make sure that they understand that the noise is a result of active learning and not a lack of discipline. | B |
Don’t worry too much about mistakes. You can make notes and review common problems with the whole class after an activity. | D |
If noise is a problem, agree time limits, or – if you can – go outside to do the activity. | B |
Be positive about mistakes. Remember that the classroom is a safe place for students to practise – they can learn from their mistakes and rehearse language before they have to use it outside the classroom in ‘real life’. | D |
As you move around the classroom, make notes when students use their home language, and at the end of the activity, you could teach them the English they need. Encourage students to note down the words they don’t know, and to use a dictionary to look the words up in their own time. | A |
Remember that it is natural for students to use their home language or to mix languages. Encourage them to use English as much as they can, but also understand that there are times when students don’t have the language in English to express what they want to say, and remember that even some English is better than none. | A |
Here are some TeachingEnglish links to speaking activities for the English classroom:
Here are some tips and links for developing your own speaking skills:
Better Speaking is a series by the BBC World Service about improving speaking skills: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ worldservice/ learningenglish/ webcast/ tae_betterspeaking_archive.shtml
Here are some links to articles and tips for teachers of English about developing and evaluating speaking skills:
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