Individual Hour Activities

1. Individual Hour Activities Let’s Talk! Speaking & Talking Activities Social Interaction / Oral Presentation Betty Simelmits

2. Characteristics of Spoken Language • Speaking is a skill, just like swimming, driving a car, or playing ping-pong. • Too often, in the traditional classroom, the learning of English has been relegated to linguistic knowledge only, with little or no attention paid to practising language skill.

3. How can we tell the difference between knowledge and skill? • “one fundamental difference is that both can be understood and memorised, but only a skill can be imitated and practised”. According to Bygate (1987:4)

4. Designing Speaking Tasks • One important consideration: Proficiency level of the students (challenging but not too difficult.) • If the task is too easy or too difficult, the students may be demotivated.

5. Common characteristics in successful speaking tasks • Maximum foreign talk • Try to avoid students’ talking in the mother tongue, and avoid too much Teacher Talk. • Even participation • Try to avoid outstanding students’ dominating discussions. Try to guarantee equal opportunities for students of different levels.

6. High motivation • Interesting topic, and clear objective. Make sure that the task is in line with the students’ ability. • Right language level • The task must be designed so that the students can complete the task successfully with the language that they have. Otherwise the task will become frustrating and the students are likely to give up or revert to the native language.

7. Advantages of Using Group Work • More opportunities. As compared with activities for the whole class, group work enables students to talk a lot because it increases the time for each student to practise speaking in one lesson. • More motivation. Group work helps students avoid losing their face in front of a whole class, and thus it makes students courageous to speak.

8. More authenticity. Speaking in a small group is more natural than speaking in a large group. • Different levels. Students can naturally perform to their abilities more readily in small groups than in a whole class. • More cooperation. Small group work helps students learn to work cooperatively and it helps develop interpersonal skill – fostering development of tolerance, mutual respect and harmony.

9. Type of Speaking Tasks It is important to provide the students with a variety of speaking activities because: • A variety of speaking activities will enable students to cope with different situations in reality. • Variety helps keep motivation high. • Variety may suit students of different learning styles.

10. Types of Speaking Activities • Information-gap activities • Dialogues and role-plays • Activities using pictures • Other speaking activities • Problem-solving activities

11. Bank of Performance Tasks • Task 2 – Getting to Know you • Teacher conducts an informal conversation with pupils – a list of questions is provided • Task 3 – Let’s Talk About… • Working in pairs, pupils role-play one of the suggested scenarios • Task 11 –Please Leave a Message After the Beep • Pupils listen to a recording of messages and write down the relevant information. Pupils play a game – one dice shows whom to call and one dice shows what to talk about

12. Information-gap activities • Information-gap activities can be designed at a very elementary level, so that communicative practice can be done from almost the very beginning of foreign language learning.

13. Pre-communicative activities • For beginning students, pre-communicative activities are also necessary, which are more structural and allow the learner to practise the forms of the language. However, we should make speaking tasks as communicative as possible.

14. Pre-communicative activities • Picture description • Board games with general simple questions • Talking Cards • Use of sentence patterns My favorite…. I like… I can…. I need…. / I want..

15. Picture Description Directions: Ask your partner what is in his/her picture. Fore example: Student A: What’s in your picture? Student B: There is __________. What’s in your picture? Student A: There is __________.

17. Talking Cards • Cut out the cards and use them for conversation. • You can use them as a “sentences in a hat/box”. Put some music on and pass the hat/box around. Pause the music and the pupil holding the box gets a card and talks about the topic. You might want to change/add some of the topics.

19. Dialogues and role-plays Two problems with most dialogues in textbooks: • Not authentic or natural. • The way most dialogues are taught. Teachers ask students to memorize dialogues by heart. What can a teacher do to make a dialogue more communicative?

20. Playing the roles in a dialogue • Step 1 • Practise the dialogue in pairs • Step 2 • Ask a few pairs to perform the dialogue in front of the whole class, speaking in different moods such as happy, irritated, bored, or in different role relationships.

21. A: What time is it? B: It’s 3:00. Why? A: Oh, I need to go to the store! Do you want to come? B: OK. Just a minute. I need to finish this first. The students may paraphrase the underlined parts: • “go to the post office” / “go to the bank”, instead of “go to the store”. • “find my jacket/shoes”, instead of “finish this first”.

22. Role-play: Telephone Skills Each pupil gets a card. Teacher can bring two phones and “talk” to each pupil. Later on, pupils can talk in pairs. You are calling to order food from your favorite restaurant. You are calling your friend Ken.  You want to invite him to a party this Friday. You are not feeling well. Your head and stomach hurt. You must call your doctor. You are calling your mom to ask and Convince her to let you stay at your best friend’s house and play your favorite game Your pet is lost. Call the police, describe it And ask for help. Your Grandma sent you a birthday present Call and thank her. Don’t forget to ask her How is she…. You have 200 Shekels. You are calling Toys R Us to order 3 toys.

24. Using Cue Cards Card A You are talking to a new classmate. Begin the conversation with a greeting. 1. Greet your partner. 2. Ask your partner which school he/she went to before. 3. Ask your partner if he/she lives near the school. 4. Suggest you go shopping together after school.

25. Using cue cards Card B You are a new student at this school. One of your classmates greets you. 1. Greet your partner back. 2. Answer the question. 3. Answer the question. 4. Respond to the suggestion.

27. Interview a friend A: What time do you________________? B: I ________________at _________________

28. More Speaking Activities Find someone who … Stand up and walk around the room. Ask your classmates what they like to do. Remember, you must speak in English only!

30. A model conversation can be provided • A: Hi, Tom. • B: Hi, Dana. • A: I’m conducting a survey for our school newspaper. Could you tell me, do you like to swim? • B: Yes, I do. I usually go swimming once or twice a week. • A: Great. Would you mind signing your name here for me please? • B: Sure, there you are. • A: thanks a lot. See you around. • B: See you.

31. How Would You Feel If… • You did a test and got 100 • Your brother broke your new bike • You stayed up late watching T.V. • You had nothing to do • You would go to Euro Disney for the first time • Your friend had a new ball and you don’t

32. If you could be an animal, what would you be? • If the whole world were listening, what would you say? If you could be a super-hero, who would you be? If you could date a movie star, who would you date?

33. Problem-solving activities • Problem solving activities require a higher level of language proficiency, but the difficulty levels can be controlled somewhat by the topic.

34. I feel sad because my fish died. What should I do? 1. You should... 2. You shouldn’t...... I feel very tired. What should I do? 1. You should.... 2. You shouldn’t..... It’s a nice day today. What should I do? 1. You should.... 2. You shouldn’t..... It may rain today. What should I do? 1. You should.... 2. You shouldn’t..... What should I do?

35. You are going on a three days field trip with your class. You have a list of food to buy, but you only have enough money for 5 of the items. • You must agree and decide which 5 items you will buy. Here is the list: • Water • Candy • Chocolate cake • Tuna cans • Fruit • Vegetables • Snacks • bread

36. Conclusion • The most important aspect of preparing students to speak in real life is to give them as many opportunities as possible to practise producing unplanned, spontaneous and meaningful speech under time pressure.