Speaking for Children 3

• Pair work

First ls look at some pair work activities. Keep in mind that lots of pair work activities can be done basically in class by making half the class turn their backs to the teacher/overhead projector/blackboard, & ensuring that all the pupils who have their backs to you have partners who are facing you. In the way, you can give information to the half of the class facing you, & they then must pass it on to those who cannot see the teacher/overhead projector/blackboard.

•    With older children working in pairs, give pupil map A & the other map B. Pupil A explains to pupil B where the various places are or vice versa.

•     The same is true for all these sorts of activities, whether pupils are matching cards, playing Happy Families, describing a picture for other pupils or doing a find the differences activity.

Group work
There's lots of examples of group work throughout this book, but here are which are simple to arrange, fun to do, simple to organize & which concentrate on oral work.

•   Take any picture story from your textbook, copy it, cut it up & give picture to each member of the group. Each pupil then has to describe to the others what is in his or her picture without showing it to the others. When the pupils have heard what is in all pics, the group decides on the correct order of the pics.

•     Another story-telling exercise which needs a bit more suitable for the four to0 year olds at level is where everyone in the group has objects or pics of object which must be woven in to a narrative.

• Whole class activities

In these activities all the pupils get up & walk about. Inevitably, they have a tendency to a bit noisy, & in the event you have over thirty pupils in your class, you ought to split them in to smaller groups.

•     The first activity is an identical activity. Make cards which are similar, but a small bit different.

•   Another activity which is useful & versatile & which they have already touched on in the listening chapter is using questionnaires. These are a combination of group work & whole class work, & a combination of written work & oral work.

• Free activities

Using controlled & guided activities which have choices wherever feasible provides a nice background for activities where children say what they need to say. Let look first at some characteristics of free activities.

•   They focus attention on the message/content & not on the language as such, although the language will usually be limited by the activity itself.

•    There is genuine communication although the situations are some artificial.

•   Free activities will show that pupils can or cannot use the language  this is something which you cannot be sure of in the event you only do guided activities.

•     Free activities concentrate on meaning over on correctness.

•   Teacher control is minimal in the coursework of the activity, but the teacher must be sure that the pupils have language to do the task.

•  The atmosphere ought to be casual & non-competitive. All pupils .

•    There is often a game element in the activity.