English Teacher X - Speaking Activities That Don’t Suck: Foolproof Ways to Force Your EFL Students to Produce Enormous Amounts of English

The world needs more ass-showing and screeching! Alas, you, the Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, henceforth referred to as the teacher, You, or the dumbfuck, have the unenviable job of teaching your students to communicate. The one thing that history has shown us that all humans are pretty much uniformly terrible at. OH SHIT Calm down. A few things to remember first. Lets narrow your job down a little. First of all, your job isnt to teach the students to communicate.

Not really. Its just to teach them to SPEAK. There will be some presentation and exchange of ideas here, of course, but were mostly concerned with the act of speaking itself, not some kind of meaningful dialogue. ANY MORON CAN SPEAK Most human beings can speak, except of course for Harpo Marx, Snake Eyes on GI Joe, and Helen Keller and her noble brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, pretty much none of them have anything interesting, relevant, or meaningful to say. Now I come from a different generation I started teaching in 1995 when the ability to speak English was widely considered to be the only qualification necessary to be able to teach English.

Most native speakers got through their lessons in one of two ways: 1) They read to the students from the book. 2) They told the students stories about their lives and daily activities. Or some combination of the two. In Asia, especially, this was generally accepted just fine. But alas, about 2000 or so, the world started to seriously Globalize. Fast internet came along.

People from developing countries started traveling more. They began to realize they hadnt learned a fucking thing from listening to that florid-faced Australian guy stand in front of the class reading and telling funny stories. And anyway you arent being paid enough to be a standup comedian. If you like telling funny stories, youre wasting it on foreign students, who cant understand you anyway. If you like reading aloud, consider becoming a television news presenter. Or a politician.

YOURE TEACHING GYM, NOT HISTORY So the thing to remember here: SPEAKING IS A PHYSICAL SKILL, like swimming or playing football. Could you learn to swim by watching YouTube videos of people swimming? No, you gotta go out there and get your ass wet as much as possible. So remember, youre teaching a skill here, and you have to make the students practice that skill. BUT LETS DO A LITTLE MATH HERE Okay, they probably told you as much in your CELTA class, if you took one. Youre in a class with 12 students. You speak individually to each of those 12 students, over the course of one hour.

Quick, how much time did each student speak? Thats right. 2.5 minutes, assuming that you spoke half the time and the students each spoke half the time. Could you learn to swim with 2.5 minutes in the water, three times a week? Of course not. Pair work! is often the magic word spoken by training courses, to mitigate this time deficiency. See, you put your students in pairs to do the activities, and that will increase the amount of time they can speak. (In reality you can just walk around and nod thoughtfully and thatll be about all you need to do.) So your job is to shut up and let the students talk. (In reality you can just walk around and nod thoughtfully and thatll be about all you need to do.) So your job is to shut up and let the students talk.

BLOOD FROM A STONE Sure! Students will be more comfortable speaking to each other, probably. Theyll be speaking to someone with a more similar background and interests. Itll be more realistic communication, right? But what they dont spend enough time teaching you in CELTA courses is what the students are going to talk ABOUT. Heres a little feedback loop youll often hear: Okay, class, today were going to talk about oil pollution. Utter silence. Teacher tries gamely to ask a few questions and gets minimal responses while the kids in the back send text messages and talk in their native language.

Okay, get in pairs and ask some questions about oil pollution. Silence. Sound of ANGRY BIRDS being played on iPhones. Finally one smartass pipes up: Teacher, this topic is boring. Okay, what do you want to talk about? I dont know. Youre the teacher.

Sometimes the teacher makes a misguided attempt to salvage the class by adopting a topic HE considers interesting. Okay, lets get rid of this boring book. Lets talk about UFOs! One student says, I very liked X-FILES. Anybody here ever seen a UFO? asks the teacher. Everyone shakes their heads. Anybody know any interesting stories about UFOs? Everyone continues to shake their heads; at least, everyone who can be bothered to look up from playing ANGRY BIRDS.

Er, uh, get into pairsanduh? says the teacher. Silence. Okay lets just do a writing activity says the teacher, finally. The students groan and say no, no, lets do a speaking activity! What do you want to talk about? asks the teacher, wanting to cry. I dont know. Youre the teacher.