The Kate Languages Podcast - S7 Ep3 - My Favourite Speaking Activities

For the third episode of season 7 of the Kate Languages Podcast, I described my 5 favourite speaking activities to do in MFL lessons. Here is a summary of the episode, to listen to the whole episode, click "play" above.

Speaking activities can be challenging to implement and monitor effectively in language lessons. Here are five tried-and-tested activities that can be adapted for different contexts and ability levels, helping students develop confidence in using the target language.

Controlled Speaking Games: Mastermind and Connect 4

Mastermind, a vocabulary-focused game based on the classic board game, involves creating sentences from different columns (such as opinions, sports, and connecting phrases). Students guess the teacher's chosen sentence, receiving feedback on how many elements they've correctly identified without being told which ones. This encourages pronunciation practice and vocabulary retention in a controlled environment.

Connect 4, arguably one of the most engaging classroom games, adapts the traditional board game format for language learning. By placing vocabulary across the top row (making it visible to all students) and dividing the class into teams, students must produce target language phrases to place their team's counters. The competitive element and strategy involved make this particularly effective, even with typically less engaged students.

Building Complexity: Trapdoor and Hot Seat

Trapdoor presents students with sentence-building choices, where incorrect selections send them back to the beginning. This structured approach allows for differentiation and can be made more challenging by requiring translation from English.

Hot Seat, meanwhile, involves students describing vocabulary to a classmate who can't see the word, either in English or the target language, developing both vocabulary recall and descriptive skills.

Collaborative Writing as a Speaking Tool

Though seemingly counterintuitive, collaborative writing serves as an excellent speaking activity. By working together to create a text, students contribute ideas orally while the teacher (or a student) transcribes. This approach encourages longer responses and allows for immediate feedback and improvement. The resulting text can then be used for further activities like read-alouds or as a model for individual writing.

Implementation Tips

For all these activities, consider:
- Your class context and behaviour management needs
- The appropriate level of support and scaffolding
- Time management (especially for games like Connect 4)
- Ways to build complexity gradually

These activities can be easily adapted for different levels and contexts, making them valuable additions to any language teacher's repertoire. The key is to maintain a balance between challenge and support, ensuring students feel confident enough to participate while still pushing themselves to improve their language skills.

Remember to create a positive environment where students feel comfortable making mistakes and recognise that different activities may work better with different groups - what works brilliantly with one class might need adaptation for another.