What tips do you have for teaching conversation skills?

Hello colleagues, Supporting learners to engage in extended conversations in class can be challenging! What tips do you have for creating opportunities for students to engage in relevant, lively conversations in class? You are invited to post in our discussion group here as well as to join our Coffee Break on December 1 at 12:00 ET to share with colleagues your successes, questions, and challenges about teaching conversation skills.

REGISTER HERE!

Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition

Comments

I didn't get to be at the live event, but I did want to share some ideas for using photos to spark conversation. The New York Times does a feature every week called What's Going On in the Picture that students have enjoyed talking about together. I have also taken photos the depict different occupations and had students talk about what was happening in the photo and what occupation or job the person might have. I have also seen other teachers have English learners bring photos into class and tell what was happening in the photo and talk about themselves and their family or skills. 

Hi Chrissie and all, I love the ideas you identified for having students use photographs to spur conversation. Photos are essential tools for teaching English! I have often used the NYTimes "What's going on in this picture?" in my own classes with great success. 

I'd like to share an article by Weina Li Chen in the most recent TESOL Connections that discusses instructional strategies to support conversation using various digital tools. The author suggests offering these conversation activities as homework-- which is certainly worthwhile, but, of course, we can also engage learners in using these tools for conversation practice in the classroom. 

The free digital tools Chen highlights include:

  • Flip (formerly Flipgrid, which some members will be familiar with) "is an educational video recording and discussion platform."
  • "WeChat is an instant messaging tool that has a strong voice messaging function." [Note: This link https://www.wechat.com/ works best on Firefox]
  • "Adobe Express is a free-to-use graphic and video design tool."

In this article, Chen offers many ideas for utilizing these free tools in engaging ways. It would be great to hear from teachers who are using these or other digital tools to support conversation in the classroom.

Here's a LINK to Chen's article, "3 Digital Tools to Increase Speaking Practice."

Cheers, Susan