Janine Sepulveda - Fifty Ways to Teach Speaking: Tips for ESL/EFL Teachers

Most teachers use a textbook in class, which provides both instruction and practice but, often, not enough practice. Students need to practice again and again, and in different ways, not just to keep their interest but to both learn and remember.

This book gives you ideas to help your students practice speaking in English. It can be used with any textbook, or without any textbook at all. It tells you how to adapt and extend exercises; it gives you games and warm-ups that can be added to any class; it gives you methods to practice both accuracy and fluency.

Not every idea will work for every student or for every class. Thats why there are fifty. We feel sure that many of the ideas presented here will bring you results if you try them sincerely and practice them regularly.

Here is a suggested method for using this book:

1. Read through all of the fifty tips without stopping.
2. Read through the tips again. Choose five or six that you think might work for your class. Decide when you will try them.
3. Choose different types of ideas: Some that can be done independently, and some that work along with your textbook; some that focus on pronunciation, and some that focus on grammar or vocabulary.
4. Each time you use one of the ways, make a note about how well it worked for you and why. Remember that most of the tips will work best if you use them several times (or even make them a habit). Dont try a tip only once and decide its no good for your students. Give the tips you try a few chances, at least.
5. Every few weeks, read through the tips again, and choose some new ones. Discontinue using any methods that are not working for you.

Finally, consider trying some of the other books in our 50 Ways to Teach series. No one skill in English is really separate from the others. Speaking, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar are all connected. Students who improve in one area will almost always improve in other areas too. The series also includes special volumes for teaching pronunciation, young learners, teenagers, and for using technology in the classroom.

This book is for teachers who are new to ESL/EFL, or teachers who are looking for more interactive activities for their English classes. This isnt an exploration of research and pedagogy, but a list of speaking activities and tips for making activities more effective. Many of the ideas are based on a communicative language teaching approach.

Not all these ways may work for your class exactly as written. However, it is always a good idea to look at an idea and think about how you could adapt it to fit your own context. When you read a tip, think about how you could change it to fit your students ages, levels, culture, and interests. Please feel free to adapt the activities in any way you like.

This book is divided into 6 categories:

• Ice breakers
• Warm-ups/fillers/games
• Fluency
• Integrated skills
• Focused practice activities
• Tips to make activities more effective

Drills and memorization are useful in language learning, but students also need opportunities for real and meaningful communication. Most of these tips focus on giving students opportunities to communicate ideas, opinions, or information to others. Some activities focus solely on fluency development. However, there are also activities that focus on specific skills such as stress, intonation and prosody, pronunciation, vocabulary enrichment, and target grammatical structures, among others.