Promoting Listening and
Speaking in Secondary
Foreign Language
Classrooms
Classroom theory and practice
Speaking up in class…


The development of L2 oral and aural skills
are being increasingly emphasized in
Taiwanese secondary classrooms.
Politicians, administrators, teachers, parents,
and students have all called for
speaking/listening exercises to receive more
prominence in secondary instruction, but no
one has yet produced any comprehensive
guideline as to how to include such activities.
Why focus on oral skills?



Speaking/Listening are the most fundamental
and widely used L2 communication skills.
Recent booms in travel, international
business, and information technology has
increased the likelihood of using L2 skills in
professional or private capacities.
Speaking/Listening skills are often
considered to be “knowing” the language.
Resistance to Speaking Activities
 Nevertheless, implementing activities
designed to compensate for the lack of L2speaking opportunities in the students’
native environment can often meet
resistance from:
 Students
 Teachers
 Administrators
Student Anxiety




Anxiety in foreign language classes is often centered
on speaking/listening anxiety.
Anxious students may also have difficulties in
discriminating sounds and structures or in catching
their meaning.
The use of new approaches/teaching methodologies
(such as using a communicative language teaching
approach with Taiwanese students unused to such a
classroom format) my heighten anxiety, thereby
preventing students from obtaining any benefit.
Many students fear embarrassment or correction,
and are thus afraid to use the TL in class.
 Many students exhibit surprise and
emotions of confusion or fear at the
thought of having to speak up in the
classroom (Rao, 2002)
 Unquestioning cooperation, on the part of
the students, is viewed as a sign of
respect throughout the region, though it
is often mistaken for boredom or apathy
on the part of Western teachers working
in Asia
Teacher Concerns





Teachers may feel that speaking/listening activities
take limited time that is better allocated to test
preparation.
Teachers are often under pressure from administrators
and other peers to stick to their textbooks, and to use
their authority in order to be viewed as competent and
committed.
Teachers sometimes lack confidence in their own
communicative abilities.
Teachers may fear a “loss of control” when the class
gets noisy – and it may be hard to guarantee that
students remain on-task or complete the activity in the
TL.
Teachers fear students will not be able to understand
instruction administered in the TL.


Teachers, themselves, often do not perceive
communicative teaching techniques to have any value.
A survey by Burnaby and Sun (1989), interviewing
Chinese teachers of English found that the teachers
mostly viewed communicative activities to be “games,”
as opposed to serious learning. According to these
teachers, concentrating teaching upon grammar,
literature, and analysis of linguistic features was seen as
much more prestigious (i.e., being a ‘real’ teacher) than
teaching activities to improve real communicative
competencies.
Cambell and Zhao (1993) showed that students and
teachers in China agree that “the teacher should
dominate the classroom while students listen passively
and engage in exercises on command. A teacher who
does not dominate the classroom is seen as lazy or
incompetent by all concerned” (p.5).
We can’t always change the syllabus or
administrator expectations. It may be
impossible to “add” communicative activities
into an already-busy syllabus. So how can we
promote speaking activities in class?
1.
2.
First, we need to motivate students to use English in
class.
We must use speaking activities to teach and
reinforce what is already in the syllabus. Use
communicative teaching methods are a means, not
an end to itself.
Motivating Students to speak in class
1.
2.
3.
Speak in the TL: The teacher sets the classroom
environment. The more time the teacher spends
speaking the TL, the more willing students will be to
respond in kind.
Extrinsic motivation: make a portion of the final
grade dependent on speaking. For example,
students may be required to either answer or ask
one question each class period (or week, dependent
upon time limits and class size), or students may be
rewarded for use of a “daily buzz word.”
Truly listen to the student response – not to the
structure (grammar), but to the meaning!
Motivating students to speak in class
4.
5.
6.
Promote a classroom environment where making
mistakes is ok. Point out your own errors (through
stories). When students make mistakes, point out
what they said right in addition to what they said
incorrectly.
Don’t try to “throw” discussion questions at learners
unfamiliar with Communicative Language Teaching
Methodology. Listening to a single speaker (even a
fellow student) can be monotonous. Pair and small
group work more accurately reflect how language is
used in most life situations. Discuss in pair-small
group- large group – class order.
Desk rearrangement can help to break routine.
Using Speaking Activities as a
teaching tool
 Any given lesson plan can implement
communicative activities. Use the
activities to cover/reinforce material.
 Examples:
 Using directed picture-drawing to practice prepositions of
location
 “Find a person..” interviews to practice specific grammar points.
“Do you…?”, “Have you…?”, etc.
 Situational skits/dialogues as a prelistening/prereading activity.
Sample Speaking/Listening
Activities: Beginning level students

Physical Descriptions: describe a picture or person,
giving or following directions to draw specific scenes…

Information Gap Activities: Finding the differences
between two pictures or stories…

Human dictionary/computer: Free-choice vocabulary
building exercise whereby teacher translates anything students
want to know how to say. The teacher may first require practice of
“classroom language” (i.e., “how do you say…?”) or
circumlocution/explanation.

Direction Activities: TPR, directed craft-building, puzzle
solving, etc.
Sample Speaking/Listening
Activities: Advanced level students



debate: organized discussion of viewpoints on topic matters –
can be in group or pair-work or whole class.
opinion/subject presentation: Prepared presentations
teaching about a given subject.
conversation circles: A means of literature/theme
discussion. Organize students into consistent (semester-long)
“conversation circles” wherein they can discuss opinion matters
before engaging in class dialogues.
It is generally advisable to conduct issue
discussions in the following order: pair,
small group, small group with teacher
input, whole class.
Various Speaking Activities
 There are literally thousands of speaking
and listening activities available for
teachers to choose from. Use creativity in
adapting them to your larger class focus.
Games such as $64,000 Pyramid,
Jeopardy, 4 Truths and a Lie, etc. can be
used to cover a wide variety of language
goals while simultaneously enlivening
lethargic classes.
Activity Examples:
British Council:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/speaktry/speaking_activities.shtm
l
The new student role
play
Food flashcards
People, rooms, lives
Telephone role-plays
The secret code game
Staged role-play
The cooking test
Story in a bag
True / False stories
Why didn't you come
to the party?
Picture dictation
The holiday maze
Family tree
Getting the whole
class talking
Improving discussion
lessons
Getting teenagers to
talk
Improvisations
Find the murderer
Bingo mingle
Short projects to get
them talking - Lists
Superlative questions
Summer destinations
Preposition basketball
Running dictation
Simple picture activity
ARM exercises
Doctors and patients
Nursery rhyme roleplay
Fun discussion of
controversial topics
Motivating speaking
activities
Third conditional
guessing game
Shop service role-play
Dating game
Story telling grid
Getting teenagers
talking 2
Discussion wheels
The crime scene
Technology free
crime scene
Chain story telling
Task based speaking
Discussion bingo
Mini-talks
Erase the dialogue
Interview the experts
Activity Examples:
Dave’s ESL Café
http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Games
The "Who Am I?" Guessing
Game
5x5 Word Game Show
Another Famous Name
Game
Barbie and Ken Havve Fun
with Prepositions
Another improvement on
Hangman
Bargaining game- Shopping
vocab.
Aphabet Jumble-
Basketball Madness
Article Jeopardy--with
questions!
Battleships
A Date With Bingo
using the Darwin awards
and urban legends
"Botticelli" in the
classroom....fits many levels
$100,000 Pyramid
A new variation on myster
box and twenty questions
A ship comes loaded
Agree to Disagree
'Not what it seems auction'
Alejo's Word Pum
'Stock your pantry' some
and any Go Fish variation
Alibi for Murder
20 Questions
3 Part Sentences
4 legs, 2 legs, none (Duck
duck goose variation)
AUCTION FOR
SENTENCES
bean bag toss. Alphabet
sounds
Baby! What time is it?!?
Beginner's Brilliant
Birthday Bingo
BACK DRAW
Best comparison game ever!
Ball Bomb!
Big Thom's Adjective
Dominoes
Alphabet Soup
Alphabet Soup Attack!
Amnesia
balloon buster
angry swimming, happy
hair brushing,
Banana Banana
Banana's
Big Thom's In, On and
Between Concentration
Any lesson can be adapted to include
communicative components!
A reading activity:








Copy story, cut out individual paragraphs and paste around the
room.
Divide students into teams of 4. Each team has a reader, a writer,
a speaker, and a listener.
The listener goes to the teacher and is given a question, which the
student must then deliver to his/her group.
The writer copies the question.
The reader takes the written question and looks at the pages
pasted on the walls for the answer.
When the answer is found, the student reports back to the group.
The writer then writes the answer.
The speaker then goes to the teacher and reports the answer and
then becomes the listener as the teacher gives him/her the next
question.
Everyone shifts roles. The first team to answer all the questions
wins. Students may then be encouraged to pull the paragraphs
off the wall and assemble the story into the correct order of
events.
Use your imagination!
• You can always integrate speaking
activities into the FL classroom…
All that is needed is a little
imagination, ingenuity, and work.
The more oral communication
becomes as regular component of
classwork, the more students will
respond to it.
Good Luck
The End