Improve Speaking Skills in the ESL Classroom

What do you do when students don't want to put that extra mile to do a speaking presentation, so they get cold feet and read from their notes just to get by. Improving speaking skills takes a lot of classroom practice, motivation to speak, and skill. Sometimes it is necessary to think beyond the box, adding creative elements wherever possible depending of course, on the skills of your students and how open they are to creative thinking.

Improving the speaking skills of your students may be difficult, but the added benefit is building confidence in students for speaking skills and strategies. Even though the professional years are still way in the future, help your students by starting small. Teach both speaking and listening activities, sometimes even in one lesson, while preparing them for that future presentation. That way, students don't feel the pressure and burden when it comes their turn to present a presentation due to remembering the fear of those earlier years during those speaking activities.

Teaching Activity Using Speaking Activities
1.Use picture prompts. Depending on the variety of visual resources and class level and ability, a teacher can brainstorm with the class a variety of sentences, (key) words, and phrases around a particular category or situational context that is the building block for a presentation.

2.Follow-up with a memory game or exercise. Students then work in pairs writing down or translating the words they remember.

Effective Teaching Continues
1.Another teaching activity involves asking questions or presenting statements that are not true about themselves, and then asking their friends to decide whether they are true or false. Students have a lot of fun with this one.

2.Play Adjectives All Around! Students have one minute to present all the adjectives they can in a sentence.

3.This person is _______________________________________________.