Individual Hour Activities

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Individual Hour Activities

• Lets Talk!
• Speaking Talking Activities
• Social Interaction / Oral Presentation

Betty Simelmits
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Characteristics of Spoken Language

• Speaking is a skill, just like swimming, driving
  a car, or playing ping-pong.
• Too often, in the traditional classroom, the
  learning of English has been relegated to
  linguistic knowledge only, with little or no
  attention paid to practising language skill.

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How can we tell the difference between knowledge
and skill?

• one fundamental difference is that both can be
  understood and memorised, but only a skill can be
  imitated and practised.
• According to Bygate (19874)

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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 demotivated.

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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.

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• 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.

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Advantages of Using Group Work

• More opportunities. As compared with activities
  for the whole class, group work enables students
  to talk a lot because it increases the time for
  each student to practise speaking in one lesson.
• More motivation. Group work helps students avoid
  losing their face in front of a whole class, and
  thus it makes students courageous to speak.

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• More authenticity. Speaking in a small group is
  more natural than speaking in a large group.
• Different levels. Students can naturally perform
  to their abilities more readily in small groups
  than in a whole class.
• More cooperation. Small group work helps students
  learn to work cooperatively and it helps develop
  interpersonal skill fostering development of
  tolerance, mutual respect and harmony.

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Type of Speaking Tasks

• It is important to provide the students with a
  variety of speaking activities because
• A variety of speaking activities will enable
  students to cope with different situations in
  reality.
• Variety helps keep motivation high.
• Variety may suit students of different learning
  styles.

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Types of Speaking Activities

• Information-gap activities
• Dialogues and role-plays
• Activities using pictures
• Other speaking activities
• Problem-solving activities

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Bank of Performance Tasks

• Task 2 Getting to Know you
• Teacher conducts an informal conversation with
  pupils a list of questions is provided
• Task 3 Lets Talk About
• Working in pairs, pupils role-play one of the
  suggested scenarios
• Task 11 Please Leave a Message After the Beep
• Pupils listen to a recording of messages and
  write down the relevant information. Pupils play
  a game one dice shows whom to call and one dice
  shows what to talk about

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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.

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Pre-communicative activities

• For beginning students, pre-communicative
  activities are also 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.

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Pre-communicative activities

• Picture description
• Board games with general simple questions
• Talking Cards
• Use of sentence patterns

My favorite. I like I can. I need. / I want..
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Picture Description
Directions Ask your partner what is in
his/her
picture. Fore example Student A Whats in your
picture? Student B There is __________. Whats
in your picture? Student A There is __________.
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Talking Cards

• Cut out the cards and use them for conversation.
• You can use them as a sentences in a hat/box.
  Put some music on and pass the hat/box around.
  Pause the music and the pupil holding the box
  gets a card and talks about the topic. You might
  want to change/add some of the topics.

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A kind of music you like Your favorite band or singer
A film you liked Your favourite food
What your mom is doing now What you had for breakfast this morning
A book that was/is important to you Something that makes you angry
One of your qualities Something you really hate
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Dialogues and role-plays

• Two problems with most dialogues in textbooks
• Not authentic or natural.
• 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?

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• Playing the roles in a dialogue
• Step 1
• Practise the dialogue in pairs
• 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.

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A What time is it? B Its 300. 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.

• The students may paraphrase the underlined parts
• go to the post office / go to the bank,
  instead of go to the store.
• find my jacket/shoes, instead of finish this
  first.

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Role-play Telephone Skills
Each pupil gets a card. Teacher can bring two
phones and talk to each pupil. Later on,
pupils can talk in pairs.
You are calling to order food from your favorite
restaurant.
You are calling your friend Ken.  You want to
invite him to a party this Friday.
You are not feeling well. Your head and stomach
hurt. You must call your doctor.
You are calling your mom to ask and Convince her
to let you stay at your best friends house and
play your favorite game
Your pet is lost. Call the police, describe
it And ask for help.
Your Grandma sent you a birthday present Call and
thank her. Dont forget to ask her How is she.
You have 200 Shekels. You are calling Toys R Us
to order 3 toys.
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Using Cue Cards

• Card A
• You are talking to a new classmate.
• Begin the conversation with a greeting.
• 1. Greet your partner.
• 2. Ask your partner which school he/she went to
  before.
• 3. Ask your partner if he/she lives near the
  school.
• 4. Suggest you go shopping together after school.

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Using cue cards
Card B You are a new student at this school. One
of your classmates greets you. 1. Greet your
partner back. 2. Answer the question. 3. Answer
the question. 4. Respond to the suggestion.
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Interview a friend
Activity Time
get up
do sports
take a shower
get dressed in the morning
go to school
get ready to go to school
have a snack
do the homework
go to bed
A What time do you________________? B I
________________at _________________
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More Speaking Activities

• Find someone who
• Stand up and walk around the room. Ask your
  classmates what they like to do. Remember, you
  must speak in English only!

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Find someone who Name
likes to swim
likes to play basketball
likes to play badminton
likes to play tennis
likes to play football
likes to play volleyball
likes to roller skate
likes to ice skate

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A model conversation can be provided

• A Hi, Tom.
• B Hi, Dana.
• A Im conducting a survey for our school
  newspaper. Could you tell me, do you like to
  swim?
• B Yes, I do. I 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.

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How Would You Feel If

• You did a test and got 100
• Your brother broke your new bike
• You stayed up late watching T.V.
• You had nothing to do
• You would go to Euro Disney for the first time
• Your friend had a new ball and you dont

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If you could be an animal, what would you be?

If the whole world were listening, what would
you say?

If you could be a super-hero, who would you be?

If you could date a movie star, who would you
date?
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Problem-solving activities

• Problem solving activities require a higher level
  of language proficiency, but the difficulty
  levels can be controlled somewhat by the topic.

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What should I do?
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• You are going on a three days field trip with
  your class. You have a list of food to buy, but
  you only have enough money for 5 of the items.
• You must agree and decide which 5 items you will
  buy. Here is the list
• Water
• Candy
• Chocolate cake
• Tuna cans
• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Snacks
• bread

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Conclusion

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