10 Ways to Kill Speaking Skills

If you want your students to be able to say ‘I can speak English’, they need speaking practice in class. But this often turns out to be difficult and messy, and many teachers avoid it. In this workshop, we will classify the practical problems of speaking practice activities into three kinds, relating to:

a. the social context of the classroom – inhibition in front of classmates; switching to mother tongue; ‘face’.

b. the speaking tasks we give – not enough contextualization to give them something worthwhile to say; no clear task objective; not enough fun.

c. the language they need to complete these tasks - not enough preparation and controlled practice; not enough support.

(I have also presented this workshop at in Warsaw, Krakow, Katowice, Gdansk and other cities in Poland at OUP events)

We will look at possible strategies for dealing with these three kinds of problem. We will culminate with a set of ‘what not to do’ tips: ‘10 ways to kill speaking skills’.