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Five zero preparation speaking activities

For all levels, play 'one word at a time'. You begin a sentence or story with a word and then go round the class eliciting one word at a time to continue the sentence or story. Students could then play the game in groups. This can be amusing and forces students to monitor their grammar.

For intermediate and advanced levels play 'Just a minute'. Students have to try and speak about a topic for one minute without pausing badly or coming to a halt. If they do, another student 'buzzes in' to continue until one minute has elapsed. You can do this as a whole class game or, better, in small groups. The teacher can model the task first.

For advanced students, play 'Alibi'. You tell the class a crime was committed last night by two suspects in the class. Two volunteers go out and prepare their alibi - something they did together last night. They then come back in and are interrogated by the class in turn. While the pair were outside you will have prepared questions with the rest of the class. After questioning the class vote on whether they were guilty or innocent; if there are significant inconsistencies between the stories they will be guilty. This is a fluency and listening task, but you can focus a bit on past tenses, offering occasional correction with recasts.

With all levels, do simple transformational pattern drills. These make effective starters. A simple example is to give a sentence which students have to make one or two changes to. These could be a change of noun, tense or adjective. You could go from positive to negative too. These work well as students appreciate the simplicity and clarity of them. They are a great way to stay in the target language. Ignore the naysayers who question the value of drilling!

For all levels, keep a small repertoire of tongue-twisters. These are great for developing phonemic awareness. Vary the way you use them: go from very slow to fast, try whispers, singing them to a familiar tune, doing them in pairs with one word at a time.




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