Teaching the productive skills:
speaking
ENGLISH 5 AND 6
UFTM
VALESKA VIRGÍNIA SOARES SOUZA
SOURCES:
DALE, P.; WOLF, J. SPEECH COMMUNICATION MADE
SIMPLE: A MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE. LONGMAN, 1988.
HARMER, J. THE PRACTICE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
TEACHING. LONGMAN, 1991.
LLOYD, A.; PREIER, A. BUSINESS COMMUNICATION GAMES.
OXFORD, 1996.
ROSKOWINSKI, R. 5001 QUESTIONS FOR HOURS OF
CONVERSATION. RCR, 2005.
WRIGHT ET.AL. GAMES FOR LANGUAGE
LEARNING.CAMBRIDGE, 1983.
INTRODUCTION
 Communication between humans is an extremely complex
and ever-changing phenomenon, but there are certain
generalisations that we can make about the majority of
communicative events and these will have particular
relevance for the learning and teaching of languages.
 When two people are engaged in talking to each other we
can be fairly sure that the are doing so for good reasons:
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They want to say something. Speakers often make definite decisions
to address other people, otherwise they would keep silent.
They have some communicative purpose. They want something to
happen as a result of what they say. What is important is the message
they wish to convey and the effect they want it to have.
They select from their language store. Speakers have an infinite
capacity to create new sentences. In order to achieve this
communicative purpose they will select the language they think is
appropriate for this purpose.
Warm-up Activities
 As language teachers, many of us start class with a warm-up activity. Why?
Many reasons. It introduces the lesson topic. It gets everyone’s attention. It
can get the class working together as a group.
 There may be more. Learning English is a skill. As such, it is more like
music, physical education and other “learning by doing” classes at school
than it is like history where you just need to master and apply facts. How do
you start a music class? With a warm-up. What do you do before sports?
Warm-up.
 I use those two examples (as opposed to other “learning by doing” classes
like math or science) because of the kind of warm-up involved. They are
often physical. In music, people do scales. In physical education, some kind
of stretches. In English class? There are lots of options but the purpose of
this handout is to share some ideas for physical warm-ups.
 I am not suggesting that warm-up activities that involve movement are the
only good ones. They aren’t. But there are several reasons to make use of
physical activities.
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Source: http://www.mgu.ac.jp/~ic/helgesen/physical/physical_-prehtml.htm
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ACTIVITY: TELEPHONE EXCHANGES
Reaching a consensus
 The first type of activity designed to provoke spoken communication
in the classroom is reaching a consensus. Consensus activities have
been very successful in promoting free and spontaneous language use.
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Going to New York: In this activity students are told that they are going on
holiday and have to decide what 10 objects to take with them. They will have to
reach a consensus on these objects.
Stage 1: All the students are asked to write down the ten items they would
choose to have in their luggage if they were going to stay in New York for two
weeks.
Stage 2: When all the students have completed their lists, they are put into
pairs. Each pair has to negotiate a new list of ten items. This will involve each
member of the pair changing their original list to some extent.
Stage 3: When the pairs have completed their lists, two pairs are joined to
negotiate a new list, and this can go on...
Stage 4: When the teacher thinks the activity has gone on for long enough, a
feedback session is conducted with the whole class in which each group
explains and justifies its choices.
Discussions
 Many teachers can be heard complaining that their students
‘have nothing to say’: they complain, for example, that they have
no opinions and are not prepared to discuss anything. Part of the
problem is the way in which some teachers approach discussion
as an activity. If students are asked to express themselves fluently
on a difficult topic in front of their peers in a foreign language,
they may find themselves reluctant to do so! Here are some hints
about organizing discussions:
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Put students in groups first. This will allow them to give opinions in a
less threatening environment than in front of the whole class.
Give students a chance to prepare. Where a more formal discussion,
such as a debate, is due to take place, students need a chance to
prepare their opinions.
Give students a task. They can be given a list of controversial
statements about a topic and asked to score them from + to -.
• ACTIVITY – DISCUSSION LINES
Lessons from nothing
 ACTIONS BY ONE PERSON
 So often the present continuous is practised in the classroom
by reference to actions which are seen. In this game, the
learners close their eyes, listen and try to interpret what they
hear.
 Ask everyone to close their eyes and put their heads on their
arms to reduce the chance of them sneaking a look!
 Give a written sequence of actions to one learner to perform.
Ask the learner to do the sequence of actions twice. During the
first sequence, the class listen and say nothing. During the
second sequence, you can ask questions.
 Walk across the room to the teacher’s desk  Place your
school material on it  Walk towards the window  Open
and then close it  Walk across the room  Open the
classroom door  Go out and close the door
Using the board: build a story (silent teacher)
 This activity does rather depend on your ability to draw
quickly. The drawing does not need to be good!
 Essentially, you begin to draw a large picture on the board.
From the moment you begin, invite description and
interpretation of what you are doing. If you remain totally
silent, the effect, though somewhat bizarre to begin with, can
be impressive. The learners feel responsible for the story. You
can mix your role: you can confirm a suggested interpretation
as if the story already exists in your mind or you can accept
another interpretation which will lead the story away from the
one you had planned.
 When you and the class feel the story is complete, you can
speak. Congratulate them. Then ask each student to
reconstruct the story and to prepare to tell it to their
neighbour. This will demonstrate that each person
experienced the story differently.
Questions for conversation
 Do you enjoy studying English? Why?
 What do you like most about studying it?
 What are some good ways to learn English?
 Do you read magazines or books in English? Which?
 When you watch a movie in English, how much do
you understand?
 Which English is easier for you to understand,
American or British?
 When you listen to music, do you understand the
lyrics?
• ACTIVITY: ASK A QUESTION CIRCLE – COLORS / IDIOM BOOK
Communication games
 Communication games are based on the principles of
information gap, in which one person has
information the other doesn’t. Students are put into a
situation in which they have to use all or any of the
language they possess to complete a game-like task.
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Find the differences (or similarities): Students are put into
pairs. In each pair, Student A is given a picture and Student B is
given a picture which is very similar, but different in some vital
aspects. They are told that they must not look at each other’s
material, but that they must find out a certain number of
differences between the two pictures through discussion only.
Simulation and role-play
 The idea of a simulation is to create the pretence of a real-life
situation in the classroom: students ‘simulate’ the real world.
Thus we might ask them to pretend that they are at an airport,
or we might organise them to together to plan an imaginary
reunion. What we are trying to do – artificially of course – is
to give students practice in real-world English.
 As for necessary characteristics, Jones (1982) says that there
needs to be a ‘reality of function’ (students must accept the
function; they must not think of themselves as language
students, but as the people in the simulation). A simulated
environment (we do not take the students to a real airport –
that would no longer be a simulation, it would be the real
thing!) and structure (there must be some structure to the
simulation and essential facts must be provided).
• BURNOUT ACTIVITY
Speaking to persuade
 Persuasive speaking is all around us. Any speech is
persuasive if its purpose is to convince others to change
their feelings, beliefs, or behavior. A salesperson trying to
convince someone to buy a product, a political leader
trying to get someone to vote a certain way, and a teacher
lecturing about why a history class should be required are
all speaking to persuade.
 When do we make persuasive speeches? We make them all
the time. When we ask a friend to lend us money, ask our
teacher for a higher grade, try to convince a sibling to lose
some weight, or try to persuade a parent to buy us
something, our goal is to try to change or influence others.
Preparing for the Persuasive Speech
 As with other kinds of speech, you build a persuasive
speech step-by-step. The persuasive speech blueprint
below will help you create persuasive presentation that
are interesting and effective.
 The steps for preparing a persuasive speech are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Determining your specific purpose
Choosing your topic
Analyzing your audience
Gathering information
Preparing visual aids
Organizing your speech
Determining your specific purpose
 To change audience’s belief (that something is true or false),
such as:
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a reported fact is either true or false
something will or won’t happen
an event was represented accurately or inaccurately
 To change audience’s opinion (about something’s value), as
something is:
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good or bad
Fair or unfair
Helpful or not
Important or unimportant
Better or worse (than..)
 To change audience’s behavior, convince your listeners to
either:
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do something they are not doing now
stop some behavior they currently practice