How To Develop Speaking Skills And Vocabulary Simultanoeusly

Normally teachers always resort to formal exercises in books when it comes to teaching grammar and other aspects of English language. Well that is good, I won't say it's wrong. However, from my point of view, there are two obvious disadvantages about this kind of exercises. One: it is boring and tiring, second: this type of exercises doesn't develop speaking skills.

I have an idea in mind, so bear with me for a few minutes and let's see if it's good to use. Hopefully it can help attract students to participate enthusiastically in the activity and improve themselves.

First, I'll explain to them what nouns, verbs and adjectives are. It they are already taught in the previous lesson, recap and write some examples for all three categories on the whiteboard for students to refer. Then proceed with the activity.

The activity is:

I'll write a sentence, with a blank in it, on the whiteboard and then ask students to complete the sentence with appropriate nouns, verbs or adjectives (I'll decide which one to use at a time).

The procedures will be:

1. Teacher writes the sentence on the whiteboard. For example, "I'm ......... today". For this sentence, students need to come up with an appropriate adjective to complete it. Students can sit in pairs, or groups, or do it individually, and the only way to play this activity is by saying it out loud; which means students need to speak in order to give their answers. Please be reminded that teacher should provide one good example for the activity before asking the students to produce one of their own. For instance, "I'm SAD today".

2. Then after a number of students have given their answers, teacher changes the sentence as well as the component involved in it. This time teacher can either focus on verbs or nouns. Examples of sentences are; for verbs, "I don't want to ........... them" (love/hate/hurt/help/punish) and for nouns; "I always want to buy a .......... for my mother" (car/beg/house/computer/radio). Just make sure that students come up with with their own answers and produce them orally. This can help build their confidence in speaking up their minds.

This is my personal opinion which I would like to share with all of you. Be happy to use it or develop a new activity based on it. Good luck!