Speaking in and out of the classroom.ppsx

www.celt.edu.gr info@celt.edu.gr
Speaking Skills in &
out Class
Seminar Leader
Marisa Constantinides
Dip.RSA, M.A. App Ling
CELT Athens Director
CELTA & DELTA Tutor
Writer and Conference Speaker
A webinar offered by CELT Athens on February 28 2024

Is speaking easy to develop?

“If communication practice is one of the most
important components of the language
learning/teaching practice, it is one of the most
problematical. It is much more difficult to get learners
to express themselves freely than it is to extract right
answers in a controlled exercise.”
Ur (1981: 2)

Ideal Scenario
“[For students to improve on their fluency, teachers]
must be willing to let go of some of the control in
[their] classrooms; …[they] must be willing to set up
situations in which fluency can develop, and then
encourage the students to actually communicate.”
(Brown, 2003: 7)

Speaking as Skill

Skilled performer
characteristics
Skilled performance is observable;
analogies good for productive language
skills
Language as Skill

Skilled Performers…
…appear fast but …
…not rushed or hurried

…look confident

…make their performance
look easy and smooth…

..can deal with
the unpredictable

…are aware of the effects
of their performance
on others

…can deal with problems in their
own performance
and…

Qualities…in brief…
• fast
• confident
• smooth
• unrushed
• can deal with the unpredictable
• aware of effect
• aware of faults
• able to fix

How do they do it?
• repetition
• rehearsal
• knowledge
• awareness
• confidence
• flexibility

Analytical
Learning
Holistic
learning

Components of Spoken Performance
Fluency
Accuracy
• facilitating
• turn-‐taking
• repair grammar
• vocabulary
• pronunciation
Range
complexity of lexical and grammatical choices
appropriacy of lexical and grammatical
choices
Discourse management
o extent
o coherence
o relevance
Interactive skills & strategies
o participation (including listening to
interlocutor)
o initiating and Responding
o developing a topic

Characteristics of spoken language
Vocabulary: basic vs. precise
Grammar: complex vs. simple
Syntax: co-ordination vs. sub-ordination
Organisation: more structured vs less structured
Pronunciation adds to the meaning
Spoken language happens on the spot
Features such as fillers to play for time to think

In class Activities

In class activities can focus on interactive talk
Information Gaps
necessarily in pairs or groups; each student in a pair/group is
given different information
Opinion Gaps
all students share the same information but have to exchange
opinions
Reasoning Gaps (Problem Solving)
students have a problem to solve
Drama activities
role-plays, simulations, improvisations

Information Gaps
Opinion Gaps
Reasoning Gaps (Problem Solving)
Drama activities
E.g. Describe & Draw
Describe & Find the Differences
Find the other half (of a picture. Text etc)
E.g. Debates
Group Discussions
Panel Discussions
E.g. Who should we hire?
What shall we build in our town?
How shall we spend a day in London?
E.g. Dramatise scene from novel or story
Roleplay a committee meeting
Add/act out dialogue from silent movie

Games
Competitions
Improvisations
In Addition, consider the following activities

Picture Karaoke
Connect pics to make a story – 1 minute per picture

Collaborative Stories
http://storybird.com/books/my-friends-and-their-pets/

Rory’s Story Cubes
Buy or make your own

The Brainstormer
iPhone or
iPad app

When to use!
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

Speaking
in the lead in
stages

The task cycle
Task
Feedback
Explore
model
Notice
"gap"
Repeat
task

Questions Please
Ask as many Yes/No questions as
you can in 5 mins – recreate the
story in groups and report –
then listen to or read the
original

Ss in groups are asked to
use as many words to tell
the story they think these
words come from
Using word lists or a word cloud from a text or conversation

Speaking as the
main lesson activity
Six Thinking Hats (idea by E.de Bono)

Solve a problem – e.g.
how to raise money for
a school outing
Read and report in hat
mode
Join a discussion in hat
mode
Students wear a different hat for each activity

“Few if any people achieve fluency in a
foreign language solely within the confines of
the classroom.”
(Brown, 2007:1)

Out of class activities

Out of class activities
•Can focus on molonogues
•Rehearsed talk
•Long turns
•Can be a series of interactive
monologues

Maintaining a
long turn is
tested in exams
… and in our
professional and
academic life!

Make a Truth
or Bluff Video
Story on flipgrid
7919c631

Even
Reading
Homework
may work
better

Story-
Making
Machines

Animations – voiceovers- videos

 www.goanimate,com
 http:/goanimate4schools.com/pub
lic_index
 www.xtranormal.com
Guess who I am video
Made with iphone – ipad – pc camera

In Plain English Videos

Speaking as
homework

Great storyBoard
Can also be done online – compare with story in this post
http://marisaconstantinides.edublogs.org/2010/10/27/anim
ated-stories/#.UVoRrKv27mY

Sustained Talk
rather than
conversation
fragments

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
Higher Order
Thinking Skills
Lower Order
Thinking Skills

Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives
Higher Order
Thinking Skills
Lower Order
Thinking Skills
Talks, videos, presentations, Pecha Kuchas , voiceovers,
stories, improvisations, blog posts..
Facebook, twitter, forums, blog comments
Google searches, wikipedia, e-books, concordancers
Classroom Communication activities, games, surveys,
priority activities…
Reading / listening comprehension/ picking language
out of authentic data..
Mnemonics, contextualisation, imagery, associations

Some references
Barker, David. (2005). Encouraging students to take their language learning outside the classroom. JALT Hokkaido
Journal, 8, 79-86.
Bassano, Sharron. (1986). Helping learners adapt to unfamiliar methods. ELT Journal, 40(1), 13-19.
Brown, H. Douglas. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed). New York: Longman.
Brown, James Dean. (2003). Promoting fluency in EFL classrooms. Proceedings of the 2nd annual JALT Pan-SIG
conference. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://jalt.org/pansig/2003/HTML/Brown.html
Ellis, Rod. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krashen, Stephen. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. London: Pergamon.
Littlewood, William T. (1984). Foreign and second language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schneider, Peter H. (2001). Pair taping: Increasing motivation and achievement with a fluency practice. TESL-EJ, 5(2).
1-32.
Schmidt, Richard. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129-58.
Ur, Penny. (1981). Discussions that work: Task-centred fluency practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Get in touch about joining one of our
future courses
Send me an email to info@celt.edu.gr

Speaking in and out of the classroom.ppsx

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