Submitted 4 years 3 weeks ago by Paul Braddock.
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version

Unit 5 looks at a number of different techniques we can use to help our students with their speaking skills. This unit looks specifically at group work, warmers and controlled practice. In the video you will see teachers in Thailand organising activities, giving instructions and leading controlled practice. John Kay gives advice to focus teachers on these classroom techniques. This unit contains a short video, interactive reflection activities and PDFs with additional activities, answer key and further opportunities for reflection. If you are a teacher trainer and are planning to use the material in a face-to-face context, there is a set of trainer notes for each topic.

The interactive and downloadable material asks you or your trainees to think through the decisions that go towards making a speaking activity successful – groupings, instructions, language input etc. No ‘right’ answers are given but rather teachers are encouraged to think ‘it depends’ - the ‘right’ way to set up an activity depends on the nature of the activity.

The videos in this series express the view that “English language teaching has the same challenges the world over”, but that the solutions to these problems depend very much on the local context, and for this reason the approach taken focuses on tasks that enable the participants to relate the video to their own specific practice and experience.

Interactive tasks and video
Watch the video below. It shows Montakarn, Pathumporn, Sumalee and Supote talking about how they organise activities, give instructions and lead controlled practice. John Kay, the teacher trainer, provides commentary and advice.

Task 1: Using warmers. This task asks you to think about what an example warmer would be useful and not useful for.

Task 2: Giving instructions. This task asks you to match a number of statements with the teachers who said them.

Task
Downloads
PDF icon Teaching speaking - notes for trainers: 5. Techniques
PDF icon Teaching speaking 5: Techniques - activities
PDF icon Teaching Speaking: Answer key
Tags
Teaching Speaking

Comments

marno's picture marno replied on

Having your own classroom, I mean, an exclusive classroom for teaching English as a foreign language which you don´t have to share with teachers of other subjects, for instance: maths, geography, history, etc. facilitates your job.
In my country, Argentina, teachers in state schools move from classroom to classroom with their teaching material: CD player and CDs, posters, flashcards, books, dictionaries instead of students going to the language classroom.
So, displaying visual material on the walls and leave it there for students to refer to, is nearly impossible because break time is only five minutes long, not enough time to prepare the classroom before hand. Besides there are about 9 teachers more apart from you, that teach other subjects, who also need the walls to hang their stuff.
I hope it weren´t like that.

thinh13la's picture thinh13la replied on

Thank you for all of the useful resources!
I totally agree with Kay at the point that we unconsciously cool our students down after a warm-up activity. So are there any effective ways to lead in to the main point of the lesson after the warm-up section without cooling our learners with boring phrases?
Thank you

Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments