Developing Speaking Activities Developing Speaking Activities Traditional classroom speaking practice often takes the form of drills in which one person asks a question and another gives an answer.The question and the answer are structured and predictable, and often there is only one correct, predetermined answer.The purpose of asking and answering the question is to demonstrate the ability to ask and answer the question.In contrast, the purpose of real communication is to accomplish a task, such as conveying a telephone message, obtaining information, or expressing an opinion.In real communication, participants must manage uncertainty about what the other person will say.Authentic communication involves an information gap each participant has information that the other does not have.Resources. We update this page regularly.If you know of a resource that should be added, please contact us.What Language Teaching Is Teaching Goals and Methods.Communicative+Language+Teaching.jpg' alt='Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' title='Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' />In addition, to achieve their purpose, participants may have to clarify their meaning or ask for confirmation of their own understanding.To create classroom speaking activities that will develop communicative competence, instructors need to incorporate a purpose and an information gap and allow for multiple forms of expression.However, quantity alone will not necessarily produce competent speakers.Instructors need to combine structured output activities, which allow for error correction and increased accuracy, with communicative output activities that give students opportunities to practice language use more freely.Structured Output Activities Two common kinds of structured output activities are information gap and jigsaw activities.In both these types of activities, students complete a task by obtaining missing information, a feature the activities have in common with real communication.However, information gap and jigsaw activities also set up practice on specific items of language.In this respect they are more like drills than like communication.Information Gap Activities Filling the gaps in a schedule or timetable Partner A holds an airline timetable with some of the arrival and departure times missing.Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' title='Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' />Partner B has the same timetable but with different blank spaces.The two partners are not permitted to see each others timetables and must fill in the blanks by asking each other appropriate questions.The features of language that are practiced would include questions beginning with when or at what time.Answers would be limited mostly to time expressions like at 8 1.S4ff_CYCop8/TjFblM1hUeI/AAAAAAAAAB0/l9yC8JTzbTE/s640/ORGANIZADOR+2.JPG' alt='Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' title='Communicative Language Teaching Approach Activities' />Completing the picture The two partners have similar pictures, each with different missing details, and they cooperate to find all the missing details.In another variation, no items are missing, but similar items differ in appearance.For example, in one picture, a man walking along the street may be wearing an overcoat, while in the other the man is wearing a jacket.The features of grammar and vocabulary that are practiced are determined by the content of the pictures and the items that are missing or different.Differences in the activities depicted lead to practice of different verbs.Differences in number, size, and shape lead to adjective practice.Differing locations would probably be described with prepositional phrases.These activities may be set up so that the partners must practice more than just grammatical and lexical features.For example, the timetable activity gains a social dimension when one partner assumes the role of a student trying to make an appointment with a partner who takes the role of a professor.Each partner has pages from an appointment book in which certain dates and times are already filled in and other times are still available for an appointment.Of course, the open times dont match exactly, so there must be some polite negotiation to arrive at a mutually convenient time for a meeting or a conference.Jigsaw Activities Jigsaw activities are more elaborate information gap activities that can be done with several partners.In a jigsaw activity, each partner has one or a few pieces of the puzzle, and the partners must cooperate to fit all the pieces into a whole picture.The puzzle piece may take one of several forms.It may be one panel from a comic strip or one photo from a set that tells a story.It may be one sentence from a written narrative.It may be a tape recording of a conversation, in which case no two partners hear exactly the same conversation.In one fairly simple jigsaw activity, students work in groups of four.Each student in the group receives one panel from a comic strip.Partners may not show each other their panels.Together the four panels present this narrative a man takes a container of ice cream from the freezer he serves himself several scoops of ice cream he sits in front of the TV eating his ice cream he returns with the empty bowl to the kitchen and finds that he left the container of ice cream, now melting, on the kitchen counter.These pictures have a clear narrative line and the partners are not likely to disagree about the appropriate sequencing.You can make the task more demanding, however, by using pictures that lend themselves to alternative sequences, so that the partners have to negotiate among themselves to agree on a satisfactory sequence.More elaborate jigsaws may proceed in two stages.Students first work in input groups groups A, B, C, and D to receive information.Each group receives a different part of the total information for the task.Students then reorganize into groups of four with one student each from A, B, C, and D, and use the information they received to complete the task.Such an organization could be used, for example, when the input is given in the form of a tape recording.Groups A, B, C, and D each hear a different recording of a short news bulletin.The four recordings all contain the same general information, but each has one or more details that the others do not.In the second stage, students reconstruct the complete story by comparing the four versions.With information gap and jigsaw activities, instructors need to be conscious of the language demands they place on their students.If an activity calls for language your students have not already practiced, you can brainstorm with them when setting up the activity to preview the language they will need, eliciting what they already know and supplementing what they are able to produce themselves.Structured output activities can form an effective bridge between instructor modeling and communicative output because they are partly authentic and partly artificial.Like authentic communication, they feature information gaps that must be bridged for successful completion of the task. 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However, where authentic communication allows speakers to use all of the language they know, structured output activities lead students to practice specific features of language and to practice only in brief sentences, not in extended discourse.Also, structured output situations are contrived and more like games than real communication, and the participants social roles are irrelevant to the performance of the activity.This structure controls the number of variables that students must deal with when they are first exposed to new material.As they become comfortable, they can move on to true communicative output activities.Communicative Output Activities Communicative output activities allow students to practice using all of the language they know in situations that resemble real settings.In these activities, students must work together to develop a plan, resolve a problem, or complete a task.The most common types of communicative output activity are role plays and discussions.In role plays, students are assigned roles and put into situations that they may eventually encounter outside the classroom.Because role plays imitate life, the range of language functions that may be used expands considerably.Also, the role relationships among the students as they play their parts call for them to practice and develop their sociolinguistic competence.They have to use language that is appropriate to the situation and to the characters.Students usually find role playing enjoyable, but students who lack self confidence or have lower proficiency levels may find them intimidating at first.
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