The document discusses techniques for getting language learners speaking and improving their speaking skills through practice. It recommends giving learners undivided attention and control over conversation topics to increase their potential talking time. Learners' individual needs can be addressed and they receive both corrective feedback on errors and input of new vocabulary and phrases through techniques like dictogloss, where they retell a story they have listened to.

1. Jo Gakonga
www.elt-training.com
Get them speaking
– get them speaking right.

2. Learning a language is a practical skill – to
improve you have to practise

3. Undivided attention
Huge increase in
potential talking time
Learner can choose
topics and control the
direction of the lesson
Individual needs can be
addressed

4. Output and
input
Corrective
feedback

5. How do you
keep them
talking?
Relevant Interesting

6. The only way to learn a language is
in a country where it is spoken.

7. Text chat talk
• Slows conversation down
• Gives thinking time
• Allows for easier correction

10. Speaking
dictogloss

11. novelist
remote
dropping in
secluded
isolated
dawn
solidly built

12. ..concentrate on my ------ without any ------
..getting fed up with people ---ing the -------
It definitely prevents ---- from -------ing in
I --- much better ----
If I feel the need for ----- I can always --------
Whenever I ------ there’s a -------

13. 1.Listen to the story
2.Retell the story
3.Look at some vocabulary
4.Listen again
5.Retell the story
6.Look at more phrases
7.(Listen again)
8.Retell the story.

15. Bring the outside in

18. Another of my favourite techniques is to tell something to a speaker
of the language and have that person tell the same thing back to
me in correct, natural form. I then tell the same thing again, bearing
in mind the way in which I have just heard it. This cycle can repeat
itself two or three times… An essential feature of this technique is
that the text we are swapping back and forth originates with me, so
that I control the content.
‘Earl Stevick’ activity from ‘Success with Foreign Languages’ (1989: 148):

19. Who was your favourite teacher?
If you could meet anyone in history, who would it be?
What is your first childhood memory?

20. Recording and
analysing
conversation

22. Output and
input
Corrective
feedback

23. When is feedback most effective?
Hot correction –
on the spot

24. When is feedback most effective?
Cold correction –
after the event