Category Archives: Speaking

Up and Down: Foreign Language Vocabulary and Verb Form Activities

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Up and Down: Foreign (World) Language Vocabulary and Verb Form Activity (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comThis is an effective activity for students to practice language forms and vocabulary.  It is adaptable to many different structures.

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The three activities offer students an opportunity to work collaboratively.  Here is my favorite one because it is most interactive:

Students cut up the squares and line them up in order in one long strip placing the response under the prompt. There are two variations

–Start with principio/début and go to fin

–Start with fin and go to principio/début

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You can also find 20 versions of this activity on a number of French and Spanish vocabulary and grammar topics on the links below:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Listening, Speaking

Guess Who Speaking Activity for the Entire Class

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This is a great activity to get the entire class involved in saying and listening to the vocabulary in the target language. The teacher begins by cutting the strips of paper on the dotted line and giving five students a slip with two pictures on it. These students go to the front of the class without revealing their pictures to the rest of the class.

The other students in the class each receive the first sheet and begin by writing down the names of the five students in the front of the room.

One at a time members of the class take turns trying to guess who has which picture  on their sheet. All students record the answers as they are given.

An order of students should be established by the teacher and this order will be repeated until a student has correctly identified all the people/pictures on his/her turn. If the answers are not correct the questions continue.

Students should be informed that each person has only two pictures and that no two people have the same picture.

You can also download several version of this activity here:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Listening, Speaking

Cooperative Learning in the Foreign Language Classroom

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Cooperative Learning is all about communication so it has an obvious  and useful place in a second language classroom.  In this context the teacher gives students  opportunities to  produce the language through speaking and writing in response to language that they are hearing and reading. Opportunities to engage with the language are an integral part of language acquisition and acquisition of communicative competence.  As foreign language teachers structure these cooperative learning opportunities for their students, these principles should be observed (based on Kagan Structures):

  •  Simultaneous Interaction: The optimal form is pair work, which is very frequently included as a stage in the various structures. Simultaneous interaction can easily increase the student’s speaking time.
  • Equal Participation: All students should contribute equally, with no one being forgotten or opting out.
  •  Positive Interdependence: The structures are built up in such a way that the students in a group need each other’s output if they are to solve the task they have been given.
  • Individual Accountability:  Each Student has an important role in the interactional pattern.  Individual accountability is one of the most important motivating factors in cooperative learning. Individual accountability is also implemented when students are being individually assessed.

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Posted in Classroom Procedures, Speaking, Teaching Methodology and Research

Speaking Activity to Practice Pronouns in a Foreign Language

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This is a fun and engaging way to gets students speaking while using direct and indirect objects with confidence. Students complete this activity in pairs. There are sheet for Student A and one  for Student B. The goal is to find the three rows (diagonal, horizontal and vertical) that do not have a “dommage” or “Lastima”  in them.

Speaking Activity to Practice Pronouns in a Foreign (World) Language. (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comPlayer A begins by choosing a number on the grid and saying the number to Player B in the target language. Player B then says the sentences on the top of the square to Player A, who then must repeat the sentence back with all of the direct and indirect objects replaced by pronouns. Player B has the correct response on his sheet and can verify if it is correct in the target language.  If it is not correct, the correct answer is not given because the player can try it again on another turn.

If the response is correct, Player A marks it off on the grid on the bottom of the page.  If Player A chooses a box with a “dommage” or “Lastima” in it Player B says “dommage” or “Lastima” (or the word that means “shame” or “pity” in the target language) and Player A marks it off on his grid on the bottom of the page. This indicates that the row and column where there is a “dommage” is not one of the three rows that he needs to find.

Play continues with Player B choosing a number and Player A saying the sentence on the grid to Player B. Turns continue back and forth between Player A and Player B until one of them has determined the three rows without a “dommage”  or “lastima” and he is declared the winner.

You can download these below:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Speaking

Foreign Language Speaking Activity that Moves Students from Novice to Intermediate

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At the novice level, students are speaking with single words and lists initially, then move on to chunked phrases.  As students move up to the intermediate proficiency level they begin to create discrete sentences on their own that move beyond chunked phrases.  This tends to be the most challenging for students as they begin to create with language and are not relying on memorized phrases to chunk together.  Teachers can help scaffold this process for students by assisting them in creating sentences.

Foreign Language Speaking Activity that Moves Students from Novice to Intermediate (French, Spanish) www.wlclassroom.comI have found that using question words with students is a simple and effective way to have students add details to their sentences that move from memorized, chunked phrases to discrete sentences that are created by the student.  The more they do this the more they will grow in confidence and begin to do it on their own when writing.

Here is a version of Memory (or concentration) with a twist. Instead of using pictures and words this version uses verb forms.  Half of the cards have a subject pronoun and an infinitive. The other cards have the correct verb form to match each subject/verb pair.  Along with the conjugated verb forms are 2 or 3 questions words as well as an affirmative or negative symbol [(+) (-)]. 

In order for the player to win the pair he or she  must say a complete sentence that includes the subject and correct verb form as well as the information from the question words and in the negative if indicated. If the player is not able to make a complete sentence he does not get the pair of cards and must turn them back over.  The winner is the player who has the most cards when all of the cards have been claimed.  The verb cards look like this:

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This activity helps move student speaking from the novice level to the intermediate level by showing them how easily and effectively they can can speak in complete, discrete sentences.

You can download resources to use with this proficiency-building activity by clicking the links below.

 

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Foreign Language Vocabulary Activities (The Barrier)

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I try to find new ways to use these materials beyond their original intended purpose before giving up on them.  One such activity is the Memory or Concentration game that always seems to be on a shelf somewhere in the classroom.

In this variation two students sit facing each other and place a barrier such a book between each other so that each one can’t see the tabletop area in front of the other person.  One student takes the picture cards and the other takes the cards with the words.   The student with the words lines the cards up in any order that he wants.  He then reads off the list to the other person who lines up his picture cards in the order that he hears.  When done, the barrier is removed and they can check to see that they are lined up in the same order.  They can then switch sides or try other variations such as having the student with the picture cards read off the list and the student with the word cards lines them up in the correct order.  Here is what it may look like:

French Memory Games

Spanish Memory Games

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Posted in Activities and Games, Listening, Speaking

Foreign Language Vocabulary Practice-Go Fish!

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Foreign (World) Language Vocabulary Practice: Go Fish! (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comStudents know how to play Go Fish and it great to be able to tap into this to have students practice vocabulary.  This activity remains very communicative because students must use the vocabulary to play, but the goal is to collect the cards.   The teacher simply needs to print out and cut up the cards and give a group of 3-4 students the pile to play. Several sets work best so that several groups can play. This is a an effective review game and a ideal opportunity for students to speak with each other in the foreign language.  Go Fish! also works well as a station activity.

Download Go Fish! games here:

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Classic Memory Game to Help with Vocabulary Retention

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Classic Memory Game to Help with Vocabulary Retention (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.com

Students enjoy playing Memory to review and practice vocabulary.   The cards can also be printed back to back and used as flashcards with pictures on one side and words on the other. Depending on the level of the students, they can make sentence out loud each time they get a pair.  I have found that this is also a great station activity.

Download  Memory Games on these topics :

French Memory Games

Spanish Memory Games

Numbers 1-20
Sports and Activities
Animals
City Places
Class Objects
Clothing
Colors
Food and Drinks
Fruits and Vegetables
Rooms ad Furniture
Musical Instruments
Jobs and Professions
Transportation

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Posted in Activities and Games, Reading, Speaking

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Interactive and Communicative Whole-Class Speaking Activity

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This is a very engaging and interactive way for students to practice  vocabulary in a communicative way. It requires students to speak to everyone in the class in order to complete the task. The activity employs information-gap and jigsaw language teaching techniques to engage student participation.

Each student has pictures of 4 things/objects (the example below uses city locations)  and students also have a sheet with all of the objects.   Students circulate and ask their classmates if they have the various objects (or are going to tge various places in the example below) and record their name if the answer is YES.

This is a great way to get students talking to everyone in the class and it reinforces the vocabulary through repetition in a meaningful and communicative context.

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Download Whole-Class Communicative Speaking Activities Here:

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Marzano’s Nine Strategies for Effective Learning

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Researchers at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) identified nine instructional strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade levels. These strategies are explained in the book, Classroom Instruction That Works, by Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock.

These nine strategies have been developed based on review of hundreds of studies in education and teaching and these strategies were most prominent in all of the data that reflected increased learning.  Not all of the techniques will work for every student all the time, but an awareness of them will help to refocus our classroom language learning  and enrichment activities.  These ideas will help guide teachers as they plan speaking, writing, listening and reading activities.  These language skills are inherent in many of the techniques, which make this list very valuable for the foreign language instructor.

Here are the nine strategies along with the increase in student achievement  as a result of implementation.  These percentages are based on standardized tests.

1. Identifying similarities and differences (45%)
2. Summarizing and note taking (34%)
3. Reinforcing effort and providing recognition (29%)
4. Homework and practice (28%)
5. Nonlinguistic representations (27%)
6. Cooperative learning (27%)
7. Setting objectives and providing feedback (23%)
8. Generating and testing hypotheses (23%)
9. Cues, questions, and advance organizers (22%)

Marzano’s Nine Instructional Strategies for Effective Teaching and LearningResearchers at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) have identified nine instructional
strategies that are most likely to improve student achievement across all content areas and across all grade
levels.

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Posted in Classroom Procedures, Speaking, Teaching Methodology and Research, Writing