Speaking refers to productive skills. As every other skill it could be both the aim of teaching or a medium (e.g. when developing reading skills we provide speaking exercises on the after-reading stage). Below we’re considering speaking skills as the aim of teaching.

Speaking has two forms: 

There are three stages of teaching speaking skills:

Stage 1. Introduction.
– show the context where this dialogue/monologue can occur (participants for a dialogue)

Stage 2. Guided Practice // Preparatory exercises:
– check whether learners understand the context (e.g. Listen and say who are the people speaking)
– check whether learners understand the structure (e.g. Put the sentences in the right order to make up a dialogue)
– check whether learners know how to vary the language (e.g. Which answer is the most appropriate to this question)

NOTE DOWN! This stage doesn’t mean that there should be three exercises, you may provide more of them, but the type (e.g. Fill in the blanks) should not be repetitive.

Stage 3. Free Practice // Speaking exercises:
– ask your learners to speak freely with prompts
– ask your learners to speak freely without prompts

Watch the video and note what exercises the teacher provides at Stage 1 and how she organises Stage 2.