Speaking activities for adults using pictures

Greetings to everyone

As a matter of fact, most coursebooks offer speaking tasks in the form of either pair or group discussions or role-plays. However, this makes those speaking tasks slightly unrealistic. Also, our students are often bored as they constantly need to discuss lists of questions. Adding pictures in order to encourage students to speak can be very helpful as most of our students are visual learners.

Today our teacher Daryna Luhovska shares a few speaking tasks that you can set up with the help of pictures to make your lessons more real-life and therefore more enjoyable and effective.

Speaking activities for adults using pictures

ACTIVITY 1. CIRCLE SPEAKING

Let’s imagine that you have a group of six students. First of all, provide three students with a thought-provoking picture each (can be found on Google or anywhere else). You give these students enough preparation time, at least two minutes to prepare a story. Inform your students that they will need to talk for two minutes as soon as their preparation time is over, so they know the length of the story to be prepared. Meanwhile, you tell the other three students that they will be listening to a story which they are going to retell afterwards. By this, your students will know that they need to listen very carefully. When preparation time is up, students with stories stand back to back in a circle (Inside Circle) and those without stories (Outside Circle) stand facing students with stories, exactly as shown on the picture.

Step 1. Inside Circle tells their stories (monologue) for 2 minutes, Outside Circle listens carefully.

Change partners. Outside Circle moves clockwise to face a new partner.

Step 2. Outside Circle retells stories they have just heard to new partners, Inside Circle listens carefully.

Change partners. Outside Circle moves clockwise to face a new partner.

Step 3. Inside Circle retells stories they have just heard to new partners, Outside Circle listens carefully.

Change partners. Outside Circle moves clockwise to face a new partner.

Step 4. Outside Circle retells stories they have just heard to new partners, Inside Circle listens carefully.

Change partners. Outside Circle moves clockwise to face a new partner.

Step 5. Inside Circle retells stories they have just heard to new partners, Outside Circle listens carefully.

Change partners. Outside Circle moves clockwise to face a new partner.

Step 6. Outside Circle meets their first partners and retells their own stories to them. Inside circle listens to later report back on what has changed in their stories.

Feedback. 

On Content: This part is very important. Here you ask students from the Inside Circle to tell their stories and what has changed after their stories went round and around. This part brings a lot of enjoyment.

On Language: Depending on the topic of your lesson, you might need to focus on errors that students have made during the activity, i.e. if you asked your students to tell stories about past habits of people on the pictures, focus on the errors that they have made with used to+infinitive/ would+infinitive/ past simple.

Tips

• Provide very clear and staged instructions, i.e. for the first round provide students only with instructions for round one. Don’t forget to check your instructions with ICQs.
• Be prepared for an uneven number of students. If this happens, have either two students telling one story half-half on the Inside Circle, or have two students working together on the Outside Circle.
• Pre-teach some language (grammar/ vocabulary/ functional language) if necessary before students start speaking.
• Provide enough preparation time. The lower the level of students is, the more preparation time has to be provided.
• Have a clear signal for stopping.
• Returning to the first partner is not necessary. With six students in the class, students are able to return back to initial partners, but with ten students it is not going to work.

ACTIVITY 2. GALLERY WALK

Sometimes we actually need our students to discuss the questions from the coursebook. To make this more enjoyable and colourful, print out the questions on individual slips of paper with a picture that can be associated with the question.

With the help of BlueTack, put the questions with pictures around the room on the walls. Put students in pairs. Each pair starts at different destinations (i.e. with a different question and picture). Tell students that when they have finished talking about one question, they move clockwise to the next question. It is very important to tell students to remember their partners’ answers. As feedback on content, ask students to report back on what their partners told them. Following this, you can conduct feedback on the language if necessary.

ACTIVITY 3. FISHBOWL 

This activity was adapted from  100 TESOL Activities for teachers. It is a good activity to spark conversation and allow for students to really listen to each other. In this activity, only four learners speak while the others listen.

Set up the classroom accordingly (as on the picture) with four chairs in the middle facing each other and the other chairs around in a big circle facing the chairs in the middle. Four students sit in the chairs in the middle, the others sit in the chairs around the mini-circle. Basically, such classroom setting creates the look of a fishbowl.

Provide pictures for the four students in the middle. They need to describe these pictures. Invite every student from the four to talk at least once. After each student has spoken at least once, other students from the bigger circle around can take their place by lightly tapping them on the shoulder. Run the activity for as long as you think is best for the particular group of students (can take up to 20 minutes). Following this conduct feedback on content and language.

Students on the outside circle may be required to take notes. This works especially well for debates or controversial discussions, so make sure that pictures are carefully chosen so as to raise interest. The questions can be accompanied with questions.

We hope the activities we’ve offered today will reduce teacher talking time and increase the amount of time your students do the hard work. They will also make your classes as interactive, engaging and fun as possible!

From Grade Education Center