Classroom Techniques and Activities for Teaching Speaking

Speaking activities are often considered the focal point of instruction. Therefore, it is important to select activities which match the objectives of your program. The specific techniques and tasks that you choose should be based on the aims of the program coupled with the student's stages of development.

Audio Lingual Method (ALM)

The ALM is based on the notion that one can learn language by developing habits based on the patterns of language (Celce – Murcia, 2001) The first typical feature of ALM is drills. You can substitute one word in each line of the drill. See the following example.

(Children listen and repeat the sentences spoken by their teacher)
T: This is a yellow dress.
S: This is a yellow dress.
T: This is a blue dress.
S: This is a blue dress.

If you think your students can manage more complicated tasks, try to use this one...
T: This is a blue dress.
S: This is a blue dress.
T: This is a yellow dress.
S: This is a yellow dress.
T: pink
S: This is a pink dress.
T: green
S: This is a green dress.
T: jacket
S: This is a green jacket.
Etc.

Some students find that drilling is boring. To handle this one, you can modified the substitution or bring pictures of items. For example, instead of mentioning the word, you can just hold of the picture of the thing in front of your chest and show it to your students. For example:
T: (Holding the picture of a blue dress) This is a blue dress.
T: (show different picture: a red dress)
S: This is a red dress
etc.

The second feature of ALM is dialogues. Dialogues provide students with grammatically controlled scripts that they can use in real life. However, there are some problem that may be face when doing this activity: the children are to shy talking to their friends; they feel uncomfortable working in pairs or groups; they find it difficult to do this tasks. You can help them manage their problem by providing puppets for them. Puppet can easily model different dialogues for children to practice with their classmates. A child may feel very comfortable when the same adults or their friends are holding a puppet and speaking to the child as the puppet. Puppet also make the language – learning activity more fun.

Fishbowl technique
In this technique, the teacher can either invite a volunteer to do the activity with him or can model the activity using two or more puppet. It is very useful so that the children know exactly what they are expected to do.

Games
Play is purposeful activity and games are a part of playing. You can create or modify a well – known game to suit your objectives. For example, a game of concetration: MEMORY. This game can be played with partners or in small groups. The game is made with two sets of 10 matching cards (1 set contains of pictures of the vocabulary and another set contains of the words of the vocabulary) with the vocabulary items that children are studying (you can modify the number of matching cards). The 20 cards are placed face down on the table. Each player has to match the picture with the appropriate vocabulary. If the cards are matching, the player gets to keep them until the end of the game. If the cards are not matching, the player puts the cards back facing down on the table in the same spot they originally found them. The winner is the player with the most card at the end of the game.

Talking and Writing Box
You should provide a box and decorated it. Then choose one topic, and let the students bring the pictures or items they have self – selected and are interesting to them which are also related to the topic and put them inside the box. Next, ask them to pick the picture or item and ask them to share about it in front of the class. Just choose two or three volunteers on every topic. By using this box, children are able to personalize the information that they share. It will also help them develop the ideas of the speaking task.