SPEAKING ACTIVITIES FACTORS AFFECTING SUCESS PROBLEMS IN SPEAKING ACTIVITIES Ss may feel have nothing to say or may not

wish to discuss topic Choose topic carefully Ensure topic part of an integrated focus not a one-off unconnected to other work the ss are doing Ensure tasks are clear, focused and meaningful to ss

Ss may lack aspects of language necessary to participate Anticipate problemsand pre-teach / revise anything necessary

Ss may lack speaking skills Ensure there is development of conversation skills / strategies as well as opportunity for speaking

Ss may find it difficult participating for cultural reasons How you organise the ss ie how they are grouped needs careful consideration If ss are not sued to a fluency focus or opportunities for extended speaking, implement learner training so that they become3 increasinly confident

Participation dominated by certain ss Think about allocating roles in activities Think through who is working with whom Work out culturally appropriate (and ones you feel comfortable using) strategies for controlling dominating students (e.g. giving quieter ss the chance to take on larger roles or putting stronger ss together in one group and quieter ones ina different group) Encourage a more co-operative approach in a one-to-one tutorial

Ss inhibitied by fear of making language mistakes Ensure a limited, anonymous approach to mistakes (e.g. collecting mistakes during an activity and putting up theexampleson the board for ss to correct as a group one the activity has finished) Encourage ss and praise them Ensure they know they are making progress

Ss may not see necessity for speaking fluency practce Ensure aims are clear and clearly communicated to ss. You may find that at the start of a course, you will have to establish a rationale for the balanced approach to language that you wish to /will take

Other factors which can make a task easier or harder. These issues which may be different as different level sand thse too can affect the success of an activity Too much time pressure can negatively affect a fluency speaking focus. It is important to allow for not only realistic production time, but also ss thinking / planning or preparatinon time Lower levels cope more easily with more concrete tasks and higher levels are often more tolerant of more abstract tasks. E.g. asking lower levels to plan a two-day tour of an interesting city in their country for classmates will be easier than asking them to agree on the ranking of statements about education Lower levels will speak more confidently and successfully if tasks involve things they are familiar with and unpredicatability is limited while higher levels can be motivate dwith graeter unpredictability. The example above illustrates this as well. SS may have very different opinioins and reasons for the orderthey feel appropriate int he ranking acitivty, hence, the unpredicatability; planning the tour can be set up to limit the variables and so the unpredicatability. It is important to minimised the linguistic complexity associated with completing the task: a task dealing with the her and now is linguistically less demanding than one which involves considering the hypothetical. The complexity of thetask itself can makethe task easier or harder. Thus a task involving groups making decisions about the food to serve at a party they are planning is less complex and so eaier than a roleplay of a negotiation with fee-in cards Finally ss familiarity with topc (regardless of level)will affect the ease and success with which they complete the task. The more they know about atopic, the more confidence they will have in doing a task related to it.

THOUGHTFUL AND THOROUGH PLANNING AND CAREFUL SETTING UP AND STUDENT PREPARATION IN CLASS FOR FLUENCY ACTIVITIES CAN INCREASE THE PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS. It is dangerous to assumethat fluency activities are easy to do in class: the care that needs to gointo the planning and exectution of them should not be underestimated.