The first thing to consider when preparing speaking exercise is to ensure that the target language should always be used whenever possible. It is important to be consistent and rigorous in reinforcing this expectation, otherwise students will take the opportunity to lapse into their native language.
Take time to tailor activities to the language abilities of each student - to be as easy or as challenging as students need. Importantly, Sanako Connect makes it easy for educators to distribute specific resources to students and can also allocate students into conversation pairs or groups.
This is an easy and straightforward activity to get things started and to build learners’ confidence. All you need is at least one good-quality image/images to test skills or vocabulary.
Using Sanako Connect, the image can be shared with all students, who then record themselves responding to questions / stimulus that you’ve provided. Students play back and review their responses and you can store them in Connect for review at a later stage.
A great way to introduce different speaking and intonation patterns to students. As the name suggests, they rely on imitation which is the way we learn almost everything.
For this exercise, the educator simply needs to create some audio content themselves or use an existing video/audio clip. Students listen to that content and then record themselves trying to reproduce it as accurately as possible. Using Connect the recording can either be done in advance and then shared with students, or it can be done live. All you need is a list of words or sentences that are relevant to the lesson.
Your students and their speaking skills take the spotlight – your role is to listen and monitor the ongoing conversations and to offer feedback as you circulate through the class (or the virtual language classroom!).
Encourage students to focus on building their fluency of communication rather than getting every single word correct. Ensure that everyone is using the target language and on staying on task but do get involved if a group seems to be struggling and isn’t making the right level of progress.
Role plays can be a fun and engaging way to bring the target language to life and to put your students into real-life scenarios. They can easily form part of a pair discussion. The activity can also be run as an individual activity, where each student plays the role of an audiobook narrator, a sports broadcaster, or a YouTube celebrity. All of this can be recorded via Connect so that students get the chance to listen to themselves acting the role and quite possibly surprising themselves with the quality of their language skills!
Sanako Connect is a powerful browser-based language teaching software that helps educators to improve students’ speaking skills. It enables teachers to:
- Create engaging speaking exercises using a wide variety of media including your own voice, sound files, podcasts, presentations, videos, and other digital content.
- Assign exercises for students to demonstrate their fluency.
- Easily divide students into pairs or groups for speaking practice. Or enable individual students to do the work they need to do in a focused environment.
- Give students access to the exercise/resources from any location with internet access, at any time and using any device.
- Provide detailed feedback via Connect’s feedback functionality. Students can immediately see where improvements need to be made. They can then relisten to the original audio material and record additional attempts.
If you’d like to find out more about how Sanako Connect could help to transform your students’ spontaneous speaking skills, please contact us now to arrange your FREE demo!