One of your most important tasks as a teacher is to get children to speak English in your EFL class. This is the reason their parents send them to English classes, this is why you are employed to teach them. It is the reason that your English classes exist. They do not come just to play or to watch videos but to learn a new language and to use it. So you need to be aware of this when you are planning your lessons. As well as teaching English, you need to be constantly encouraging the children in your class to speak and use their new language as much as possible.
You can do this in a number of ways. Some of these involve your actual teaching materials and equipment. Others are about the way in which you teach. If you are at the beginning of your teaching career, it can be difficult to do this. It is not necessarily something that comes naturally to everyone and you may have to force yourself out of your comfort zone to get into the habit. However, with experience and a bit of practice, you will find it easier to get your children to speak in English in your EFL class and outside it too. And whatever their age, you will definitely see the positive effects on the kids in your class and their level of English.
Use fun and practical games to encourage speaking
If you want to encourage kids to speak English, you need to give them the opportunity to try. So rather than passive activities where they are just watching or listening, make your class do activities where they have to speak and really use their English. Of course, you need to teach them vocabulary but once you’ve drilled the words they will need, find a fun game which will make them speak. Some examples of games like this:
- simple role play – if you’re talking about food, get the kids to open a restaurant and play customers and waiters, or run a supermarket and ask for items for the shopkeeper
- have a quiz – choose one child to ask questions and put the others in teams to compete to answer the questions
- pair shares – put the kids with a partner and a couple of questions they need to ask and answer then swap partners so they can try different questions
- mingle – the kids have to walk around the class and stop to share information or ask questions with each other. You could use flashcards and ask them to find the person with the same job as them or the opposite adjective
- Interactive and fun games to practice vocabulary – you can find lots and lots of them covering a huge range of topics on the Games4ESL website.
There are loads of different games you could play with your class to encourage them to use English. The important thing is to make sure they are fun because then the kids won’t even realize how much English they are using. They will remember the new language much more easily than if it had been a passive and probably more boring activity.
Make sure you have more Student Talking Time than Teacher Talking Time
There is much discussion about what the appropriate ratio of Teacher Talking Time (TTT) vs Student Talking Time (STT) should be in an English class. Regardless of this, I think that what you need to remember is that it shouldn’t be you who is talking the most in class. Explain what you need to but make sure that the majority of the time is given to your students to talk and practice their English. So choose activities that will allow them to do this and keep an eye on yourself to make sure you’re not talking too much.
Try not to finish sentences for kids even if they’re taking a while to say them, let them answer questions rather than answering them yourself and make them ask for things rather than just second guessing them. Give the children in your class every opportunity you can find to actually speak rather than speaking for them. Make activities practical rather than spending too much time explaining, show them using lots of actions and then let them speak. Again, this is something that may not come naturally at the beginning but that will become a habit if you force yourself to do it so do make the effort.
Give lots of positive praise
I am a firm believer, as a life long language learner, that 90% of learning a foreign language is about having the confidence to try and speak it and not to worry about making mistakes. You want the children in your class to feel good about speaking English and to have the confidence to speak it. This means that they shouldn’t be worried about being criticized or made to feel bad every time they make a mistake. So positive praise and encouragement is very important.
We all like being praised. It makes us feel good about ourselves and gives us an incentive to try harder. If children associate speaking English with feeling good about themselves from an early age, this will make it much more likely that they will continue to learn it and get pleasure from it. It really doesn’t matter if everything they say is not 100% correct, the important thing is that they are trying and practicing. The more they practice, the better their English will become. Encouraging them in a positive way will only bring good results and make them confident English speakers.
Always insist on English
Make sure that you always speak English in your class even if you can speak the children’s native language. And insist that they reply in English too. It doesn’t matter if they make a mistake but they have to try. Use English not just when you are teaching but also for practical things. If the kids need something, they have to ask in English, whether it’s asking for a pencil or to go to the bathroom. This will hugely increase their everyday vocabulary and give them practice at using polite, practical English.
Encourage children to speak English outside your class too
An hour or two of English class a week will not produce a fluent speaker. Therefore you need to encourage the children in your class to use and speak English as much as possible even when they are not at school. You probably need to get the parents involved in this but here are some ideas:
- Suggest videos or songs for the children to watch at home and ask them to learn the song or ask them questions about the video they watched
- If you bump into children from your class while out and about in your city, always speak to them in English and never in their own language
- For older kids, ask them to research a topic in English and prepare a mini presentation at home. They’ll need to practice giving it so maybe can do this with parents or friends
- Encourage parents to take their kids to places where they can practice speaking English. Tell them to let their child do some of the speaking, maybe order in a café or ask directions, if they are on holiday in English speaking environments.
Whatever the age of the children in your classes, you need to encourage them to speak English as much as possible in as many different situations as you can. You will see that this has a really positive effect on their level of vocabulary and their level of confidence. How do you get the children in your EFL class to speak English? Are there any techniques that you feel work better than others? To stay up to date with new teaching ideas and posts, you can follow the GoogooEnglish Facebook page. Alternatively, sign up for email updates below.