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Helping students speak and use the language to communicate..............
Hello!
I am working with a new group of students and the head teacher asked me to prepare material to work with them but she especially wants them to speak, and use the language. She explained that students are not used to this but to do thousands of grammar drills which are boring and they aren �t able to speak the languge.
However, even though they have been studying grammar and doing drills for such a long time they have a very very low level of the language! So I don �t know how to start! I mean, I �ve found that they have a hard time reading texts, they don �t understand things even though they are in simple present. They haven �t acquired vocabulary, they don �t understand most words... (even though they have seen it).
So, I need your ideas, suggestions on how to teach and help these students SPEAK. Edit: I forgot to clarify that students are between 14 to 17
I agree. First they should learn to speak and then you can sneak the grammar in later.
The best way I get my students to speak a lot is to give them conversation cards, boardgames or pictures to discuss together.
They speak twice as much doing pair work, then they do with speaking to the teacher, AND they don �t feel stupid speaking in front of the whole class. There are lots of board games here and conversation cards - or you can make the cards yourself or with the help of your students. You can make them by category, such as: Family pets hobbies and sports questions and answers what ever you think is exciting!
If I were you I would download a lot of cardgames and pairwork worksheets at eslprintables. Start with the very simple ones + ALWAYS write some examples what they should say... Eg. If there is a pairwork story with missing time expressions, write the example questions... Give a lot of examples, this may help... And boardgames for groups of 10 students (divide the big class into three groups...) and let the students decorate the boardgames with small illustrations / stickers, they like it better then...
PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
What did
When did
What do
How often do
What will
When will
I
study
yesterday
work
every day
buy
next week
my friend
break
last week
ask
often
come
this month
Mr Obama
teach
4 years ago
lend
sometimes
arrive
tonight
she
read
last month
forget
never
give
tomorrow
they
swim
5 days ago
sing
seldom
visit
next month
it (dog/cat)
go
last Sunday
sleep
usually
run
this evening
Try something like this and delete some textboxes - pair work - revision of questions making about past, present and future...
And go through the links you have from my ws... there are thousands of short stories, some very very simple... you may ask ss to write few keywords and retell the stories to the partner / class...
I would say start with basic dialogues, like introducing themselves, talk about favourite things, and then maybe you could use some images/pictures and challange them to find as many words as possible, then link them in simple sentences so to describe the image. After that you could expand those sentences or turn them into dialogues.
