4 Summary

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:

• Using more English in your classroom.
• Building your students’ confidence to speak English.