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Motivating speaking activities for lower levels


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These activities are all designed to motivate lower level learners

to speak in pairs or small groups.

Planning time has been shown to increase production in speaking tasks.

Lower level learners often find it especially difficult to speak spontaneously,

so these activities incorporate ‘thinking time’ during which learners can

prepare for speaking by planning what they are going to say, and asking

the teacher or using a dictionary to look up missing vocabulary. The

following activities are relatively short, with minimal materials preparation

time for the teacher. They are designed for use as a warmer or a filler in

the middle or at the end of a class. 

Definitions lists

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This activity is good for activating existing vocabulary or revising Yes, I agree
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vocabulary studied in previous lessons.
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Procedure:
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Choose a vocabulary topic (this can be vocabulary you have recently

studied or a topic you want to introduce). Tell students to write a list of

10 words they associate with this topic. To make the activity shorter,

reduce the number of words.

Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that....

You use it for... You find this in.... It’s an animal / object / place... It’s the

opposite of... etc.

Tell students to look at their lists and give them time to think of how they

can define these words (3 -5 mins).

Now students work in pairs (or groups of 3) to define their words. Their

partner must guess the word they are defining.

A faster moving, fun alternative to this activity is a team game.

Change the vocabulary to lists of famous people / books / films / objects.

Each team writes a list for another team (students can also 3 or 4 words

each on strips of paper to draw out of a hat)

Pre-teach / revise structures for definitions e.g. It’s a thing which / that....

You use it for... It’s a film / book / object.... He/ She’s an actor / a

politician.... He’s British / American / Spanish...

Each team nominates one person to define the words to their team.

Each team has 1 minute to define as many words as possible.

What were you doing...? (What are you going to do....?)

This activity can be adapted to revise a range of tenses (present simple,

past simple, continuous, future tenses) by changing the time prompts.

Procedure:

Write a selection of time prompts on the board e.g. yesterday at 6 o

´clock, this time last year, on September 11th 2001 etc

Tell students to choose some of the prompts and think of what they were

doing at these times. Tell students that they are going to tell a partner /

small group.

Give students time 5 minutes to plan what they are going to say and ask

for any vocabulary they need.

Students tell their partner / small group. Encourage students to ask for

more information. E.g. –I was watching TV yesterday at 6. -What were you

watching?

After speaking, students feedback and tell the class what they learnt. E.g.

Marie was watching TV at 6 o´clock yesterday. She loves chat shows!

Adjectives
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This is a variation on the above activity and is great for practising
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adjectives. Students
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experiences and feelings.

Procedure:

Write a selection of adjectives relating to feelings on the board.

Tell students to choose several adjectives (increase or decrease the

number depending on how long you want the activity to take). Tell them

to think of a time when they felt this way, and that they are going to tell

their partner / small group about their experience.

Give students time to plan what they are going to say. They can make

notes and ask for vocabulary if they want to.

Students tell their stories.

Feedback to the class.

Cartoons, cartoon stories and unusual pictures

There are many copyright-free comic strips, cartoons and unusual images

available online; you can also find cartoon stories in many EFL resource

books. These can be used in class in a number of ways.

Information gap activity: Order the story

Information gap and jigsaw tasks have been shown to be beneficial task

types in terms of promoting obligatory, as opposed to optional information

exchange and as a way of promoting collaborative dialogue in the

classroom. In this activity, students work in pairs and the information, i.e.

the pictures are divided equally between them. Students must work

collaboratively to put the story together in the right order. Suitable for

strong Pre-intermediate students and above.

Procedure:

Before the class, find a cartoon with at least 4 vignettes. The cartoon can

be with or without dialogue. The more vignettes and more elements in

the story, the more difficult the task.

Print the cartoon and cut up the vignettes. Divide the vignettes equally

between student A and student B.

Give students time to think about how to describe their pictures and ask

for any vocabulary they need.

Pre-teach any difficult vocabulary that has not come up as well as

phrases for talking about pictures and sequencing: e.g. In my picture

there is... I can see... I think this is the first / second / last picture... Then....

After that....

Tell students to work together to put the story in the correct order.

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Optional extension: Tell students to write the story.
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Write the dialogue
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Procedure:

Take a comic strip, a cartoon, or unusual image in which there are

several people or characters. If there is dialogue or captions, blank it out.

Display the comic / cartoon / image and elicit ideas from students about

what is happening in it. Who are the people / characters? What are they

doing? What happens next? What are they saying to each other?

Put students in pair or small groups. Tell them to work together and write

the dialogue and /or captions for the comic, cartoon or image.

Students practice their dialogues and read their version out to the class.

What’s the question?

This activity is good for practising questions and for fluency practice on a

range of topics.

Procedure:

Write a list of questions (one per student in your class) relating to your

chosen topic. For example, if your topic is music, you could think of

questions like: Who is your favourite singer? What is your favourite music

to dance to? What’s the best concert you have ever been to? Who is a

singer / group you hate? etc. Adapt the questions to the level of your

class.

Give each student a question. Tell students to write the answer to their

question (not the question itself) on a piece of paper or a sticky label.

Tell them not to show anyone their answer yet.

Tell the class the topic (e.g. music). Give students 5 minutes with a

partner to brainstorm possible questions related to this topic.

Now tell students to stand up and stick their label on their chest or hold

their paper with their answer in front of them. Students move around the

room and ask each other questions to try to discover the questions that

the other students were originally asked.

Encourage students to ask follow up questions and try to have a

conversation. -What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to? -Michael

Jackson -When was the concert? -Why was it good?

Feedback and ask students what they found out.

Author: Anna Blackmore

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Activities (/category/articles-site-structure-11)

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Comments

zuhalolgun replied on 11 December, 2012 - 19:51 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/69487#COMMENT-69487)

DEFINITIONS LIST

(/COMMENT/69487#COMMENT-69487)

The activity might be difficult for the elementary level

students.I think they have a limited vocabulary. However, it is

generally good idea.

Astina replied on 19 December, 2012 - 08:19 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/72282#COMMENT-72282)

SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

(/COMMENT/72282#COMMENT-72282)

Thanks Anna,

It will be useful in preparing my lesson plans.

Astina

Malaysia

richard_vijay replied on 25 December, 2012 - 16:14 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/74199#COMMENT-74199)
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EXECLLENT
Yes, I agree
useful to you. IDEA. (/COMMENT/74199#COMMENT-

By 74199)
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11/17/2017 Motivating speaking activities for lower levels | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

Thanks Ana. I think teachers must give students time to

marshall, organize and compose their answers. This must be

applied to elementary learners but it can be applied to basic

learners, albeit , the teacher must help the students with

ideas.

lailanarsingani replied on 17 January, 2013 - 03:57 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/82297#COMMENT-82297)

BRILLIANT IDEA! (/COMMENT/82297#COMMENT-

82297)

Thanks for sharing such wonderful ideas , I will defenately try

in my class.

Nataly59 replied on 25 January, 2013 - 15:34 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/86988#COMMENT-86988)

MOTIVATING SPEAKING ACTIVITIES FOR LOWER

LEVEL (/COMMENT/86988#COMMENT-86988)

Thank you, Anna! I like your activities and try to use them

with my students...

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replied on 21 February, 2013 - 04:19 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/106993#COMMENT-
Mimi' Fatchan
106993)

THANK YOU, ANNA

(/COMMENT/106993#COMMENT-106993)

Thank you, Anna. That's very useful. Is the activity applicable

for teaching-learning online? I sometimes provide an online

lessons for my private teen-students.

Sally Trowbridge replied on 27 February, 2013 - 11:40

PERMALINK (/COMMENT/113007#COMMENT-

113007)

ONLINE (/COMMENT/113007#COMMENT-

113007)

Hi Mimi

You could certainly adapt these activities for your

online lessons. Let us know which ones you use! Have

you seen our 'Teaching teens' section? There are lesson

plans and articles all focusing on teenagers.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-teens

(http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teaching-

teens)

Sally

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rohan arbloy
Yes, I agree
useful to you. replied on 5 June, 2013 - 23:45 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/191068#COMMENT-191068)
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WOW... THANKS SO MUCH

(/COMMENT/191068#COMMENT-191068)

wow... thanks so much..it's useful for me...

nadoura replied on 12 June, 2013 - 10:10 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/194086#COMMENT-194086)

INTERESTING IDEA

(/COMMENT/194086#COMMENT-194086)

I thank you so much for this idea .I personnaly going to try it

with my pupils .

KarenJohnson replied on 9 July, 2013 - 23:48 PERMALINK

(/COMMENT/200442#COMMENT-200442)

WHAT'S THE QUESTION

(/COMMENT/200442#COMMENT-200442)

I love this activity. I often struggle to get students to

generate questions using appropriate question words. I will

try this activity when we resume. Thanks

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