How to create good speaking activities

It can be difficult to create a good speaking lesson. Here are some tips to take into consideration

• Get to know your students

Find out what they like, their hobbies, what they like doing in their free time and use these ideas. You can create tasks based on this knowledge and such activities will be interesting for your learners and highly motivating.

• Personalise

It is easier and more enjoyable for learners to talk about familiar topics. 

Ask them to speak about themselves or to bring a photo of their parents/relatives or a thing that is special for them and to speak about it.

Moral issues can be very motivating as well.

You can use topical issues that are debatable and engage your students to share their points of view.

• Give reasons to speak

Your students need to understand that they speak not because a teacher told so. They need to have a purpose. Create such activities which will have it. For example, tasks which have an "information gap", learners communicate with each other to obtain information from their partner or from another group.

A good speaking activity often involves learners having to talk to each other to complete task.

• Find out why students are not speaking

Are they shy? Or are they afraid of something? Are they not speaking only because of the fear of making mistakes? Or because of bad marks? Is the activity too difficult/ complicated for them?

Find the reason and fix it. Speak with your students and explain everything to them.

• Give students thinking time

Students need time to think what they want to say, to form a sentence and to think over the development of their idea.

• Encourage interaction

Engage your students to speak English not only when they have speaking activities. Ask them to discuss the text they have read, to discuss their answers to grammar/ vocabulary exercises with a partner, to predict what they are going to listen to etc.

• Give positive feedback

Always encourage your students with positive feedback.

Your students deserve it even if not everything was perfect. By positive feedback, you can encourage them to continue improving their English. Point out to what they should pay more attention to but also highlight what was good in their speech. At least their efforts should be mentioned and praised. 

You can write on the board some things which you want to point out. These can be mistakes made by students.

You can change the task a little bit and engage your students to use the language they are practising but in a different context thus keeping the spontaneity and the fluency alive.