How to Get a Quiet Class Speaking

One of the teachers on my Next Step programme gave us a great idea for practising the present perfect and simple past recently but she had a problem with it. Want to know what it was? (it’s a good one) and how you could make it work even with more reticent classes? Keep watching.

I’m Jo Gakonga, I’ve been in the classroom for 35 years and I’m a teacher educator, a CELTA and MA TESOL tutor and I’ve got a website at ELT-Training.com where I make video-based material for teachers at all stages of their careers. This includes my very supportive The Next Step programme so check it out at the link below and don’t forget to like and subscribe if you want to see more – I make a new video every week.

The idea- like all good ideas- is pretty simple and it’ll work well face to face or online. One learner (let’s call them A) asks a question starting with ‘Have you ever..?’ (for example, Have you ever been in a helicopter?) and their partner (let’s call them B) HAS to answer ‘Yes, I have’. EVEN IF THEY HAVEN’T! B then tells the story of when they did that, with A asking questions to dig deeper and has to decide whether their telling the truth or not.

It’s like the TV panel show ‘Would I lie to you?

This is great for practising the present perfect for past experience (have you ever- yes I have) but mainly for practising the past tense and (potentially) other narrative tenses and question forms. It’s also a bit of fun.

The difficulty that you might run into is that some people find it hard to be imaginative and it’s even harder when you’re having to think about the language as well as the content. What’s the answer … (drum roll) the secret is very simple. Give them time to prepare.

Here’s a suggestion for making it go better.

Give your learners some ‘Have you ever’ questions. For lower-level learners you could limit this to three. Maybe:

   Have you ever eaten something that made you (immediately) vomit?
   Have you ever been in a helicopter?
   Have you ever held a new-born baby?

For higher level learners, you could add more to make it more interesting.

Put them in pairs and give them a set time to make up stories for these three or tell their partner if they have a true experience of this. You monitor and help them with the language they need and- importantly- encourage them to be creative. This allows them time to come up with a good story (or remember the event) and space to activate and practise the language they’ll need.

Now to give a bit more support, elicit some questions that they might need and get these on the board.

When did you XXX? Why did you XXX? Who did you XXXX with? Where were you? What happened next? Etc. Drill these for connected speech and to help with fluency and elicit the tense you’re using (ie. NOT the present perfect because now we’re talking about a specific event, not a general question about past experience).

Now they’re ready. If you feel they need it, you could give them a bit more support by providing a model. Just choose one of your stronger learners and get them to ask YOU one of the questions:

   L: Have you ever eaten something that made you vomit?

   You: Yes, I have (this is the mandatory answer!)

   L: Really? Tell me about it…

Then tell the story and allow space for the learner to ask you questions.

So that’s it. Regroup the class so that they have a new partner and they can take it in turns to ask the questions and guess whether their partner is lying or not. You could award points for people who successfully pull the wool over a partner’s eyes!

You’ve taken the time to set this up, so do some delayed error correction. Swap partners and get them to play the game again. They’ll have different stories so it won’t be boring for the listener and for the speaker, it’s an opportunity to re-tell a story, focusing more on accuracy of the language.

Try it and see how it goes- and let me know in the comments below!

Have fun!