4.

The teaching of
listening and speaking
G519 Methodology and Resources for Teaching English
Degree in Early Childhood Education
Degree in Primary Education

Prof. Marta Gómez Martínez

Office 240, Faculty of Education
Phone # 942 201298
marta.gomezm@unican.es
Contents
• Introduction: the four skills
• Listening
1. What does listening involve?
2. A listening activity: techniques
3. Assessing listening
• Speaking
1. What are the characteristics of spoken language?
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
3. Speaking tasks

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 2

INTRODUCTION: THE FOUR SKILLS
THE FOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

CODIFYING MESSAGE DECODIFYING

speaking→ ORAL MESSAGE ← listening

SENDER RECEIVER
writing→ WRITTEN MESSAGE ← reading

INTERACTION

MEDIATION

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 3

INTRODUCTION: THE FOUR SKILLS

PRE
A1

• Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97
• Consejo de Europa (2002). Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas: aprendizaje, enseñanza y evaluación. Madrid: MCED y Anaya.
https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca_ele/marco/
• Council of Europe (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Companion Volume. https://rm.coe.int/common-european-
framework-of-reference-for-languages-learning-teaching/16809ea0d4
• Consejo de Europa (2021). Marco común europeo de referencia para las lenguas: aprendizaje, enseñanza y evaluación. Volumen Complementario. Servicio de publicaciones del Consejo de
Europa: Estrasburgo. https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca_ele/marco_complementario/mcer_volumen-complementario.pdf
• García Sanz, G. (2018). Reseña: Common european framework of reference for languagesLearning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume with new descriptors. MarcoELE: Revista de
Didáctica Español Lengua Extranjera, Nº. 26, 2-7. https://marcoele.com/descargas/26/resena-mcer-companion-volume.pdf
4
INTRODUCTION: THE FOUR SKILLS
• Listening is considered as receptive skill and speaking as a productive one
• Both skills are learnt and taught almost simultaneously
• Reasons why you, as a teacher, should also combine the practice of these both with
reading and writing
• Only by the improvement of the four skills will our students succeed satisfactorily in
L2
• How can we tell the difference between knowledge and skill?
According to Bygate (1987:4)
one “fundamental difference is that
both can be understood and memorised,
but only a skill can be imitated and practised”.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 5

 LISTENING
1. What does listening involve?
2. A listening activity: techniques
3. Assessing listening
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 6
LISTENING
1. What does listening involve?
Do you know the difference between listening and hearing?
Does this difference exist in your L1?
• In English, the difference between listening and hearing is a question of cognitive
attention:
• That is, you can hear a car passing by your window while you are reading a novel. It means that your
attention can be placed on something else other than auditory input
• But listening is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “to make an effort to hear something”
• As you can see, listening implies something else than just “being there”. You have to take an active part in
the activity; if you do not, you are just hearing it.
• Listening is taken for granted, and that is the reason why it is not frequently found
in a combination with the verb learning but improving. The assumption is as
follows: “we speakers know how to listen; we only need to improve it”.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 7

LISTENING
1. What does listening involve?
• A “good listener” is someone who predicts correctly:
• may not hear properly what has been said, but can still deduce a lot from the context to
complete the missing information
• may also have problems with the quality of the sounds due to the environment but can guess
the main content of the message (even though s/he may not have heard the speech)
• can or cannot listen especially properly, but has many resources to guess, imagine, deduce
from the context and predict what has been said. It will be very important for the activities and
procedures the teacher will establish.
• Now, seriously, what does listening involve?
• Identifying information
• Searching memories
• Relating that information to those memories
• Filling it in the proper spot (or) creating a new place for it
• Using it when needed

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 8

 LISTENING
What interferes with listening comprehension?

• Unfamiliar vocabulary • Speed

• Grammar • Idiomatic speech
• Text too long • Task too difficult
• Several people talking • Unprepared for the
• Unfamiliar Context discussion
• Lots of details • Not prepared for the
• Topic not interesting format
• Theme not clear • A lack of background
information.
• Accent

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 9

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Keep in mind:
• Your students will always be tense when you announce that listening is going to
take place. The best way to overcome this feeling is by establishing a technique to
use throughout the course. If you explain to them the technique you are going to
adopt, every time you use it your students will be ready for the next step.
• Remember that some listening are more difficult than others. There are two ways
of grading the listening:
• By grading the recording (vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation / dialect, speed, etc.)
• By grading the activity
• Listening is a skill that should be practiced in the very first stages with the help of
images: Internet, DVDs and videos can be extremely helpful in this task.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 10

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
• Three teaching stages
• Pre-listening activities allow learners to ‘tune in’ to the context or
topic
• While-listening activities: what students are asked to do during
listening
• Post-listening activities: off-shoots of previous activities.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 11

 Predicting
Setting the scene
Pre-listening
Listening for the gist (/dʒɪst/quid de la cuestión)
Listening for specific information.

LISTENING While-listening

Post-listening

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 12

 LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques

Summary on pre-listening activities TYPES

• They are meant to activate the students’ • Predicting
schema for the contexts of the speech
they will hear • Setting the scene
• We may use more than one kind of pre- • Listening for the gist
listening activity; (/dʒɪst/quid de la cuestión)

• Pre-listening tasks should not take much • Listening for specific

time; information.
• The purpose of pre-listening activities is
to activate the students’ schema, i.e. to
provide context.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 13

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Predicting
• Good listeners are good predictors
• Visual aids are immensely helpful in aiding students’ comprehension: using
pictures for prediction
“They attract students’ attention and help and encourage them
to focus on the subject in hand” (Ur, 1984:30)

• In the beginning the students may have difficulty in predicting

• In this case the teacher can help them by asking leading questions
• Or maybe by labelling a picture
• Or giving opinions before listening.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 14

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Predicting
T: Where are they?
What are they doing?
What is the relationship between them?

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 15

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Predicting
Label the parts of a car without consulting anyone or using your dictionary.

Now listen to Mr Anthony Ng giving instructions about cleaning his car.

Try to finish the labelling of the parts of the car.
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 16
LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Predicting
• Let students read the listening comprehension questions before they listen
You will hear a telephone conversation between Mr Vincent Tan and
Michael of Sky Cable. Read the questions through before you listen and
then answer them after listening to the conversation.
• Which company does Michael represent?
• What kind of job is Mr Tan asking for?
• Why does he require a rush job of Sky Cable?
• What time will Mr Tan be home?
• What time is the man from Sky Cable coming?

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 17

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Predicting
• Let students look at a list of items (vocabulary) before they listen
Listen to Clarine and Henry talk about the things they do in the
house. But before you listen, look at the list below and familiarise
yourself with some of the words you’ll hear in the dialogue
wash up set/lay the table
make the beds do some shopping
tidy the room dish up the dinner

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 18

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Setting the scene
• The teacher can help provide the background information to activate
learners’ schema, so they will be better prepared to understand what
they hear.
e.g. A passage about Michael Jackson

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 19

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Listening for the gist
• Listening for the gist is like skimming a passage in reading
• The learner tries to pick up key words, intonation and other clues to
make a guess at the meaning
• The key is to ask students one or two questions that focus on the main
idea or the tone or mood of the whole passage
• Notice that students can answer the gist questions even though they
do not understand every word or phrase in the passage.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 20

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Pre-listening activities
Listening for specific information
• There are situations in real life where we listen only for some specific details
and ignore the rest of the entire message. e.g. weather forecast or
announcements in train stations/airports
• It is important to expose our students to a variety of types of listening texts
for a variety of purposes so that they will develop a variety of listening
strategies to use for different situations.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 21

 Predicting
Setting the scene
Pre-listening
Listening for the gist (/dʒɪst/quid de la cuestión)
Listening for specific information.

No specific responses
Listen and tick
Listen and sequence
Listen and act
LISTENING While-listening
Listen and draw
Listen and fill
Listen and guess

Post-listening

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 22

 LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques

Advantages of while-listening Summary on while-listening Types

activities
activities • No specific responses
• Most of the time, it is helpful to
• They personalize the lesson provide a task for the students • Listen and tick
and make the listening to do something while they are • Listen and sequence
listening
interesting • Listen and act
• By providing a variety of types • Listen and draw
• They integrate listening of tasks, students learn to listen
with the other skills, for a variety of purposes, which • Listen and fill
better prepares them for
especially speaking. listening in the real world
• Listen and guess
outside the classroom.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 23

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
No specific responses
• For stories, or anything that is interesting, humorous, or dramatic, we
just have the students listen and enjoy it.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 24

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and tick

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 25

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and sequence

As you listen to the story, number the pictures in the order they are described in the text.

A B C D E F
1 _________ 2 __________ 3 __________ 4 __________ 5 _________ 6 __________

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 26

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and act
• Total Physical Response:
• for beginners
“Stand up”, “Point to the …”;
• for intermediate learners
“Pretend you’re …(doing something)”.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 27

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and draw
• Draw a long horizontal line at the top of the page.
• Draw a vertical rectangle on the left of the page.
• Draw a circle at the bottom of the page.

• Draw a circle at the top on the left of the page.

• Draw a diagonal line inside the circle.
• Draw a circle at the top on the right of the page.
• Draw a triangle in the middle of the page.
• Draw a long zig-zag line at the bottom of the page.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 28

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and fill
• It is important NOT to overdo this type of tasks, since it gives students the
impression that they need to understand every word
• We may ask the students to fill in the blanks with function words, say, prepositions.
You are going to hear Mei Lin and Wendy tell each other what they bought at shopping malls. Fill in the
missing information in the chart below as you listen to the dialogue.

Name of the mall Things Mei Lin bought Things Wendy bought

Tangs

Centrepoint

Paragon
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 29
LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
While-listening activities
Listen and guess
e.g.
• For height, appearance, and personalities
• Four clues about an animal

http://speechtimefun.blogspot.com.es/2012/10/halloween-listening-for-details.html

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 30

 Predicting
Setting the scene
Pre-listening
Listening for the gist (/dʒɪst/quid de la cuestión)
Listening for specific information.

No specific responses
Listen and tick
Listen and sequence

LISTENING While-listening Listen and act

Listen and draw
Listen and fill
Listen and guess

Multiple choice questions

Answering questions
Post-listening
Note-taking and gap-filling
Dictogloss
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 31
 LISTENING
2. A listening activity:
techniques
Summary on post-listening activities TYPES
• Don’t demand students to • Multiple choice questions
remember more details than a
native-speaker would in a real-life • Answering questions
situation; are we testing the
students’ listening comprehension or • Note-taking and gap-filling
their memory
• Dictogloss
• Don’t spend too much time giving
students practise with traditional
test-taking questions;
• Integrate listening tasks with
speaking and writing.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 32

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Post-listening activities
Multiple choice questions
e.g. Compare Exercise A and Exercise B:

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 33

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 34
LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Post-listening activities
Answering questions
• Open-ended questions and inference questions can be asked.

Note-taking and gap-filling

• for a summary of the text

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 35

LISTENING
2. A listening activity: techniques
Post-listening activities
Dictogloss
• Preparation: briefly talking about the topic and key words
• Dictation: twice, first time focusing on the meaning, and second time taking
extensive notes
• Reconstruction: working in pairs/groups, reconstructing the text
• Analysing and correction: comparing their own version with the original
http://www2.klett.de/sixcms/media.php/10/A08105-53990004_EU_Dictogloss_EB.pdf

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 36

LISTENING
3. Assessing listening
Basic points on which listening assessment should be based:
• Assess in the same way as you have taught and with exercises of the same level. Set the same type
of exercises in the exam and follow the same techniques (as much as possible).
• Instructions must also be clearly established. This will facilitate their task, as well as yours!
• The recording in your assessment should not be very long. It is quite an upsetting task, and your
students may end up exhausted. Be careful to limit the length of your listening.
• Mixing many skills at a time when assessing listening is not a good idea. It is better to evaluate a
listening with simple writing exercises. Evaluating listening with simple and clear tasks will give you
a more exact idea of their improvement during the course.
• Dictations can be appropriate for tests only if you have practiced the technique in class. If not, your
students may not be used to the task and can easily fail its accomplishment.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 37

LISTENING
3. Assessing listening
• The first way of assessing students´ performance is by doing it informally.
• You can also ask them to make up a speaking activity and while they are engaged in it, you can
go round the class and listen to their performance. Take notes on what you hear so that you
can evaluate them later.
• The second way of assessing listening is by doing it formally. In a test, you can use band scales,
tailor-made to your needs. Here you have some you can use:
5. Student can understand the whole message.
4. Student has some difficulty with complex messages.
3. Student has difficulty with complex messages.
2. Student cannot understand complex messages.
1. Student cannot understand simple messages.
• Remember that these scales should be adapted to your needs and also to the grading of the task.
Do not change either the requirements nor the scales once the task it set, this will confuse the
enormously and you will not be acting honestly!

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 38

 SPEAKING
1.What are the characteristics of spoken language?
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
3. Speaking tasks

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 39

SPEAKING
• Everybody would agree on the fact that teachers want their pupils to
achieve a communicative competence that allows them to interact in a
different language than their own.
• Somehow, this aim is not given the time and attention necessary in our
classes. The reasons are varied:
• the amount of students per class
• the time devoted to foreign language teaching
• the lack of motivation in both the students and the teacher …

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 40

SPEAKING
1. What are the characteristics of spoken language?
• Speaking is a skill, just like swimming, driving a car, or playing ping-pong.

According to Bygate (1987:4)

one “fundamental difference is that
both can be understood and memorised,
but only a skill can be imitated and practised”.
• Characteristics of spoken language
• Spontaneity
• Time-constraint

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 41

SPEAKING
1. What are the characteristics of spoken language?
Spontaneity
• In most situations, people do not plan ahead of
time what they are going to say.
• The fact that speech is spontaneous means that
Should we
it is full of false starts, repetitions, incomplete expect the
sentences, and short phrases. students to
produce
complete
sentences in
language
classroom?

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 42

SPEAKING
1. What are the characteristics of spoken language?
Time-constraint
• Students must be able to produce unplanned utterances in real time;
otherwise, people will not have the patience to listen to them.
• Which of the following activities do you think would help to prepare
students for real life speech in English?
• Reading aloud
• Giving a prepared talk
• Learning a piece of text or dialogue by heart
• Interviewing someone, or being interviewed
• Doing a drill.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 43

Which of the following activities do you think
would help to prepare students for real life
speech in English?
• Reading aloud: needs to be supplemented with more realistic activities as the level increases
• Giving a prepared talk: may be used for advanced level
• Learning a piece of text or dialogue by heart: more realistic activities as the level
increases
• Interviewing someone or being interviewed: yes. It helps to prepare students for real
life speech
• Doing a drill needs to be supplemented with more realistic activities as the level increases.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 44

SPEAKING
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
1. Student’s needs and suggestions for the classroom
• We should allow them to encounter examples of formal and
informal conversations so that they can choose in future situations
the appropriate language for different contexts
• It will be easier if they realized that spoken language is less
organized and not as specific as written language
• The interactions must be as real as possible
• We must allow our students some rehearsal time to improve the
results. Many times, the effectiveness of an activity rests upon its
preparation.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 45

 There are three levels or components in
the learning process that, sometimes,
overlap in time:

form-centered meaning-centered fluency

[pre-communicative] [communicative]

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 46

SPEAKING
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
• Form-focused speaking:
• The exposure to this language comes at the first stages of language
learning
• It is more acceptable at elementary level, since with this practice
we are paying attention to grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.
• As students are starting to learn the language, they will feel more
confident with a controlled oral practice.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 47

SPEAKING
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
• Meaning-focused speaking:
• Once the students have practiced new vocabulary and grammatical
structures by means of drills, they should be exposed to and be
able to produce meaningful communication with a real
communicative purpose
• In this way, we will be helping our students remember new
language items and learn them functionally, so they could use
those items in different contexts
• This step is intended to practice and acquire control of new
language items, not to learn those new language items.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 48

SPEAKING
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
• Speaking Fluency:
• This is the main goal of most language learners
• Signs of fluency (and characteristics of a high level of
communicative competence) are:
• speaking at reasonable speed,
• quite a great knowledge of vocabulary and grammar,
• more complex discourse,
• and a minimum number of pauses and hesitations (“ums” and
“ers”).

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 49

SPEAKING
2. Practical considerations for teaching speaking
3. One of the most important aspects is the CORRECTION OF ERRORS
• We must correct when needed without undermining our student´s confidence. First, we must let
them correct themselves.
• There are many situations when we should not correct our students:
• The learner makes an error because of nervousness
• The learner makes an error because the activity is too difficult or too complex and he/she needs to think
about many things during it
• The learner makes an error because the activity is confusing
• The learner makes an error because he/she has not been given the opportunity or sufficient time to
assimilate the form properly.
In other circumstances, we need to provide correction but avoiding the possibility of embarrassing
the students in front of the class. Nevertheless, we have to be extremely careful with recurrent or
fossilized errors. They are specially resistant to change and need to be worked on with help of
imaginative correction.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 50

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
• Designing speaking tasks:
• One important consideration: proficiency level of the students (challenging but not
too difficult)
• If the task is too easy or too difficult, the students may be discouraged.
• Common characteristics in successful speaking tasks:
• Maximum foreign talk: Try to avoid students’ talking in the mother tongue and avoid
too much Teacher Talk.
• Even participation: Try to avoid outstanding students’ dominating discussions. Try to
guarantee equal opportunities for students of different levels.
• High motivation: Interesting topic, and clear objective. Make sure that the task is in
line with the students’ ability
• Right language level: The task must be designed so that the students can complete
the task successfully with the language that they have. Otherwise, the task will
become frustrating, and the students are likely to give up or revert to the native
language.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 51

 Structural
[isolated linguistic elements, i.e. Grammar, Vocabulary,
Pre-communicative Pronunciation,…]
activities
[focus on form]
Quasi-communicative
[Dialogues, Role-plays, Find someone who,…]

SPEAKING Controlled activities

Semi-controlled activities
Functional Communication [informal]
[information-gap activities, activities using pictures,
Problem-solving activities, assembly,…]

Communicative
activities
[focus on meaning]
Social Communication [formal]
[Conference, Interview, TV/radio show,...]

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 52

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
• Type of speaking tasks
• For beginning students, pre-communicative activities are necessary, which
are more structural and allow the learner to practise the forms of the
language. However, we should make speaking tasks as communicative as
possible:
• Controlled activities
• Semi-controlled activities
• Information-gap activities
• Dialogues and role-plays
• Activities using pictures
• Problem-solving activities
• Other speaking activities

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 53

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Information-gap activities
• Information-gap activities can be designed at a very elementary
level, so that communicative practice can be done from almost the
very beginning of foreign language learning.

• Compare 2 activities:
Activity A

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 54

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Activity B:
Use the same pictures, but cut them up, paste them on cards, and give each student a different
picture.
Ask your partner what is in his/her picture.
For example:

Student A: What’s in your picture?

Student B: There is __________. What’s in
your picture?
Student A: There is __________.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 55

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Dialogues and role-plays
Two problems with most dialogues in textbooks:
• Not authentic or natural. The natural speech of native speakers is often
phrases or sentence fragments full of pauses, false starts, and repetitions
• The way most dialogues are taught. Teachers ask students to memorize
dialogues by heart

What can a teacher do to make a dialogue more communicative?

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 56

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Example 1: Playing the roles in a dialogue
• Step 1. Practise the dialogue in pairs
A: What time is it?
B: It’s 3:00. Why?
A: Oh, I need to go to the store! Do you want to come?
B: OK. Just a minute. I need to finish this first.
• Step 2. Ask a few pairs to perform the dialogue in front of the whole class,
speaking in different moods such as happy, irritated, bored, or in different
role relationships such as parent and a child, husband and wife, two friends,
etc.
• The students may paraphrase the underlined parts:
• “go to the post office”, “go to the bank”, etc. instead of go to the store.
• “find my jacket/shoes”, etc. instead of finish this first.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 57

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Example 2: Using cue cards
Card A Card B
You are talking to a new classmate. You are a new student at this
Begin the conversation with a
greeting. school. One of your classmates
greets you.
1. Greet your partner.
2. Ask your partner which school 1. Greet your partner back.
he/she went to before. 2. Answer the question.
3. Ask your partner if he/she lives 3. Answer the question.
near the school.
4. Suggest you go shopping together 4. Respond to the suggestion.
after school.
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 58
SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
• Then students should be ready to move quickly into less controlled types of
role plays, where only the situation and the relationship between the two
speakers are specified:
Card A
You and your friend are going out to eat lunch. You need to decide where to go. You
would like to try something different because you’re tired of the same food. You
make a suggestion.
Card B
You and your friend are going out to eat lunch. You need to decide where to go. You
would like to go to the place where you always go, because you like the food. You
don’t agree with your friend’s suggestion.
• Notice that the outcome of this role play is not specified in the cue cards. It
only sets up a point of disagreement.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 59

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
• Factors that affect the success of role-plays (Ur, 1996:133)
• Teacher’s enthusiasm;
• Careful instructions;
• Clear situation and roles;
• Making sure that the students have the language they will need to carry out
the role-play.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 60

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Activities using pictures
• In groups of 3 or 4:

• A secretary is appointed to mark a tick for each sentence said. Check which
group has got most ticks.
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 61
SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Activities using pictures
• In pairs:

• In groups of 5:

(Littlewood 1981: 23-4)

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 62

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Problem-solving activities
• You are on a committee that is in charge of deciding what to do with a small amount of money that
has been donated to improve your school. You have a list of things to do, but you only have enough
money for 5 of the items. You must reach a consensus (agreement) in your group on which 5 items
you will spend the money. Here is the list:
• Repaint 3 classrooms.
• Paint lines for games on the playground.
• Install lights that automatically turn off to save electricity.
• Buy curtains for 8 classrooms. This will make it easier to see the OHP (Overhead Projector) when the room is darker.
• Buy sound absorption panels for 2 classrooms. This will make the classroom quieter so it will be easier to hear each other.
• Buy an air conditioner for one classroom.
• Buy 4 new basketball hoops for the playground.
• Buy 15 young trees to be planted for shade around the edge of the playground.
• Buy fans for 6 classrooms.
• Remodel bathroom faucets so students can wash their hands using hot and cold water.
• Add soap dispensers and hand dryers to bathrooms.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 63

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
• Problem solving activities require a higher level of language
proficiency, but the difficulty levels can be controlled somewhat by the
topic.
• In problem-solving activities, “participants tend to become personally
involved; they begin to relate the problem as an emotional issue as
well as an intellectual and moral one” (Ur 1996:128).

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 64

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Find someone who …
e.g. Stand up and walk around the room. Ask your classmates what they
like to do. Remember, you must speak in English only!
Find someone who … Name
likes swimming
likes playing basketball
likes playing badminton
likes playing tennis
likes playing football
likes playing volleyball
likes roller skating
likes ice skating
…
G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 65
SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Find someone who …
• A model conversation can be provided
A: Hi, Tom.
B: Hi, Sherry.
A: I’m conducting a survey for our school newspaper. Could you tell me, do you
like swimming?
B: Yes, I do. In fact, usually go swimming once or twice a week.
A: Great. Would you mind signing your name here for me please?
B: Sure, there you are.
A: thanks a lot. See you around.
B: See you.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 66

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Bingo activities
This seems to be practicing listening rather than speaking if the words
are called out by the teacher.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 67

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Change the story
• Step 1: Form groups of 3-5;
• Step 2: The group together makes a list of about 20 random verbs.
e.g., go, sleep, teach, learn, jump, fall, look (at), hear, laugh, sing, etc.
• Step 3: Each one writes a short story, and underlines all the verbs in
the story; e.g., …

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 68

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Change the story
• Yesterday I saw a cat. She was running in the street. She had a
fish in her mouth. A dog was running after the cat. The dog
wanted to eat the fish too. Then the cat climbed up a tree.
The dog stopped under the tree. He could not climb the tree.
At last the cat ate the fish.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 69

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
Change the story
• Step 4: Each one reads his/her story but pauses at every verb. The
group then supplies one of the random verbs into that slot.
The results can be very funny.
• A possible version may be:
Yesterday I taught a cat. She was sleeping in the street. She learned a
fish in her mouth. A dog was laughing after the cat. The dog fell to
hear the fish too. Then the cat sang up a tree. The dog jumped under
the tree. He could not heard the tree. At last the cat looked at the fish.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 70

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Other speaking activities
No specific responses
The teacher calls out a verb and students hold up a letter card each and
rush to spell a word (this seems to be practising listening rather than
speaking).

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 71

SPEAKING
3. Speaking tasks
Conclusion
• The most important aspect of preparing students to speak in real life is
to give them as many opportunities as possible to practice producing
unplanned, spontaneous and meaningful speech under time pressure.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 72

 • What skills would students practice if you used vlogs in class?

What is a VLOG? • Compare them with those practiced when using blogs in class

https://www.aacademica.org/jose.luis.de.piero/4.pdf

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 73

References for further reading
• Littlewood, W. (1981). Communicative language teaching: An introduction.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Madrid, D. and McLaren, N. (eds). 2005. TEFL in Primary Education.
Granada: Universidad de Granada.
• McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. 1993. Materials and Methods in ELT. A
teacher’s guide. Oxford UK and Cambridge US. Blackwell.
• Varela Méndez (coord.). 2003. All about teaching English: a course for
teachers of English (pre-school through secondary). Madrid: Centro de
Estudios Ramón Areces.
• Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching: Practice and Theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

G519 Methodology & Resources for Teaching English 74