Motivating speaking activities

Learners need to be motivated to speak in order to make a speaking activity successful. The strategies below are effective for learners of any age or level.

Give learners a reason to speak

In general learners might not be motivated by new language,  but they will be motivated by an activity. It can be very difficult to get them to speak if they really don’t see the point. You can approach this by focussing on the following:

1. The function of the language and using an authentic or near authentic task (e.g. get them to sit back-to-back to practise speaking on the telephone).
2. A motivating task which uses the language you want them to practise (e.g. learners write questions on small squares of paper using the target language, then form the papers into a board game to be played using dice and counters).

Here are some possible examples, which apply to one or a combination of the above.

Information gap

A popular, well-known type of activity is the information gap. In this type of activity, one group has half of the information required to complete the task and the other group has the other half (or pairs of learners). The two groups need to exchange information to complete the task. Possible examples of tasks are:

• Making an arrangement: Each group has a diary, with appointments already filled in. They need to exchange information in order to agree when they can meet.
• Giving/receiving directions: Two sets of maps, each with information missing, and two sets of directions for these missing places. Again, the learners need to exchange information in order to complete their maps.
• Crosswords: Each group has some of the answers. They need to make up appropriate questions and then exchange, or ask appropriate questions. Hopefully, the learners will be more concerned about completing the crossword, rather than worrying about speaking.
• For a listening text, in which the learners would normally listen to a recording in order to fill in the gaps, why not give each group half of the answers? They are then given the opportunity to exchange information. They can listen to the recording afterwards as a final check.

Other communicative activities 

Here are some examples of other activities that can be used with young learners (or adults!)

• Secretly put an object in a paper bag (or hide it or write the word, or draw a picture). Then ask learners to guess what’s in the bag, by asking an appropriate question. The learner who guesses correctly takes over from me. Do this a couple of times, and then let the learners take over. Group vs group, or in pairs.
• Find your partner. Information is written on slips of paper, which can be matched in some way. Each learner receives a paper, then the class mingle and exchange information in order to find their partner. E.g. for a group of ten learners, to practise colours, colour in five slips of paper and write the words for these colours on the other slips. Learners ask each other, 'What colour have you got?' in order to find their partner. (The point of this activity from the learners’ perspective is finding their partner, not necessarily the practice of the language.) For higher levels, you could have slips of paper with two halves of a collocation, or phrasal verbs. The activity is easily adaptable to different levels and ages.
• The following example may be appropriate for more advanced students. It’s an example of a 'Find someone who’.activity. Each learners writes the end of the sentence on their own piece of paper - e.g. 'Find some who went to the beach last weekend. The learners then mingle and tries to find someone who fits their sentence. Hopefully conversations are started. (The learners can also use questions for this activity e.g. 'Did you go to the beach last weekend….?')

These are just some examples of simple speaking activities that can adapted for your classes to motivate learners to speak.