Facilitating Fluency

Right, so it's taken me 100 posts to actually get down to the bones of the matter. How on Earth are we to improve the fluency of our students? Well, generally speaking it's easy. Ensure they know that speaking in a language that isn't their mother tongue isn't easy and that making mistakes is both natural and useful. Once they're past that everything should start looking rosey.

How do we get past that and how do we apply it to a totally unnatural exam situation? Again, there are more ways that one. I'm just going to whizz you though a lesson I did with a few classes just last week based on an idea another teacher, and friend, came up with.

The lesson starts with a fairly simple statement. Ensuring students that the day will be about fluency over accuracy. Mistakes are ignored (not completely of course) and thinking (well, overthinking) is actively discouraged.

The first activity is simple. Put thirty seconds on the clock and students just speak. In English. About anything. Anything at all. If they're feeling particularly shy you can provide them with some kind of stimulus. The colour yellow or something equally obtuse.

Activity 2. After students have losened up I like to move onto the next section. This is where "the exam" comes into play. Be it a PET, FCE, CAE what ever. go to the picture section of the exam. Remind students of the types of thing examiners listen out for. In PET, some complex grammar, what people are doing, a bit of speculation etc.In FCE far more speculation, questions answering and a bit of comparing. The next step is to ask students to think about what they're going to say for a minute or two and then try and say it without taking a breath. Simply say what thay can in one nice deep breath. Give students 3 or 4 attempts. When they manage to complete the task they'll notice that their hesitation has gone and there are fewer umms and ahhhhs than ever before.

Activity 3and 4. Depending on class size you can do this first as a group actvitity and then broken down into pairs/threes. For this activity I get students to continue looking at the photo section of the exam, a new photo, of course. This time they work with their partner/group to create "The Perfect Minute" First they decide what they're going to talk about, then they take turns in saying a word each. This can be adapted to a sentence each if you so desire. The fact of the matter is, if students are only taking one word each, they aren't going to say um, ah, er or even... hang on a second.  When doing this, they may start by feeling silly but soon enough your students will be working in unison and giving some of the best answers you've heard. This also helps with communication further down the line. But for now we'll focus on our fluency.

Right, that's about all you're going to get from me. Saturday night has turned into Sunday morning and I think it's time I went to bed.

'Til the next time.

H