How To Write Speaking Activities: Training Course For ELT Writers, #20

By Sarah Cunningham

Learners of English are often reluctant to open their mouths and speak, and in turn, teachers around the world worry about trying out speaking activities in their class in case they grind to a halt. Who better then than Sarah Cunningham, co-author of Cutting Edge, to share her experience of writing speaking activities in this book. Sarah focuses on setting the students up to succeed. In order to do this, the writer has many things to consider: identifying the purpose of the speaking activity, finding appropriate topics for the target audience, stimulating interest in the topic, providing a reason to communicate, making rubrics clear, providing key language or a model, and avoiding potential problems that could bring the activity to an untimely halt. An Activity Bank doubles up as a reference as you work through the tasks in the book, and as a useful list to refer back to when you're writing your own speaking activities.
This book forms part of the ELT Teacher 2 Writer training series. The series is designed to help you write better ELT materials, either for publication, or simply to improve the quality of your self-produced classroom materials.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ELT
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311379580

Sarah Cunningham

SARAH CUNNINGHAM is an idea junkie who blogs about extraordinary friendships in a sometimes too ordinary world. She and her husband, Chuck, live in southern Michigan, where they serve as chief servants to the Emperor Justus, her 3 year old son and his newly-appointed chief of staff, the 5-month old, Malachi. She has authored three other books, does freelance event and communications work and attends a Wesleyan church plant that meets at her city's YMCA.

Book preview

HOW TO WRITE

SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

Sarah Cunningham

TRAINING COURSE FOR ELT WRITERS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other titles by ELT Teacher 2 Writer

A Lexicon For ELT Professionals

How ELT Publishing Works

How To Write And Deliver Talks

How To Write Audio and Video Scripts ⸕

How To Write Business English Materials †

How To Write CLIL Materials

How To Write Corporate Training Materials †

How To Write Critical Thinking Activities ⸕

How To Write EAP Materials †

How To Write ESOL Materials †

How To Write ESP Materials †

How To Write Exam Preparation Materials

How To Write Film And Video Activities

How To Write Graded Readers

How To Write Grammar Presentations And Practice

How To Write Inclusive Materials

How To Plan A Book

How To Write Primary Materials

How To Write Pronunciation Activities

How To Write Reading And Listening Activities ⸕

How To Write Secondary Materials

How To Write Speaking Activities ⸕

How To Write Teacher’s Books

How To Write Vocabulary Presentations And Practice ⸕

How To Write Worksheets

How To Write Writing Activities ⸕

Our paperback compendiums

⸕ How To Write Excellent ELT Materials: The Skills Series

This book contains the six titles marked ⸕ above.

† How To Write Excellent ELT Materials: The ESP Series

This book contains the five titles marked † above.

For further information, see eltteacher2writer.co.uk

How to Write Speaking Activities

By Sarah Cunningham

This edition © 2020 ELT Teacher 2 Writer at Smashwords

www.eltteacher2writer.co.uk

Contents

About The Author

Aims

Introduction: The Difference Between Being The Teacher And The Writer

Different Types Of Speaking Activity

Choosing The Right Topics And Activities For Your Target Audience

Setting The Activity Up To Succeed

Maximising Speaking

Ensuring The Activity Works Smoothly In The Classroom

Writing A Whole Lesson Around Speaking: Checklists For Different Types Of Lesson

Appendix: Activity Bank

Task Commentaries

About The Author

When I started teaching back in the early eighties, the range of teaching materials available was still fairly limited, and I started writing activities for my own classes almost as soon as I started teaching, often finding that I enjoyed preparing my lessons as much as I enjoyed teaching them!

Between stints teaching and training in Greece, Spain, Hungary and Argentina, I worked at International House London on and off throughout the mid-eighties to mid-nineties. There were a huge number of talented and creative people working there at that time, many of whom went on to become successful ELT writers, and it was a great atmosphere for developing ideas and beliefs. It was there that I was fortunate enough to meet Liz and John Soars, who asked me to co-write Headway Pronunciation, and that was how my materials writing career began, although it was many years before it took over from the day job.

One of the most talented colleagues that I met at IH London was Peter Moor, and we got married and started writing together at much the same time. Soon, along with having our three children, we began to think about how we could write a course ourselves, and after many ups and downs, Cutting Edge was published. For seventeen years we were writing constantly, working on further editions of Cutting Edge and the teenage course, Real Life. Speaking activities were central to both courses: writing them was always one of the most enjoyable and satisfying parts of the job, and we spent a huge amount of time thinking about how to make them work.

Over the years, we have worked with many experienced and talented editors, publishers and co-authors, who have helped us to understand the needs of different markets, and how to make our writing professional and accessible to all sorts of teachers. At the same time, we have travelled a lot, meeting teachers and observing classes. This, alongside our teacher training experiences, has helped us to appreciate better the wide range of teaching situations that exist around the world, and the many and various ways that different teachers use materials.

There is probably no methodological area in which those differences are more important than speaking, and so I really hope that in this eBook I can share what I have learnt – from much trial and error – and help you to write successful speaking activities for other teachers to use and enjoy.

Aims

The main aims to this eBook about writing speaking activities are:

1. to consider the differences between using speaking activities with your own classes and presenting them for use with a wider audience, particularly in print form.

2. to look at different types of speaking activities, and the issues and challenges they may present in a variety of teaching situations.

3. to look at how speaking can be maximised from the point of view of both quantity and quality, and to provide practical examples of how illustration, realia, rubrics, staging and teacher’s notes can help with this.

4. to provide practical tasks which focus on all these building blocks individually, leading up to writing a full speaking lesson of your own.

NOTE: The example activities I have used in this module are deliberately fairly generic and easily recognisable. My aim is to show how any speaking activity can be worked through into a lesson that other teachers can use. It has not been my aim to come up with ‘new’ or ‘original’ activities, although of course I hope you do!

All of the example activities can be seen in the Appendix: Activity Bank, but you can also find a printable version on our website, here.

Introduction: The Difference Between Being The Teacher And The Writer

‘Speaking’ is a huge area and describes so much of what we do in the language classroom today. It covers activities from oral drills, to quick discussions, to role play, to problem solving, to board games. These activities can have a wide range of different aims, from very controlled practice of grammar, vocabulary, functional language or pronunciation, to freer practice of these areas, to interest creation, discussion of ideas in texts and development of